Ron Wyden asks for rules about whether you own your digital purchases
When you buy a digital copy of something, you’re usually just buying a license.
Great. More dems asking the hard questions. Acting as if business as usual when we have a literal Russian agent and fascist in the WH.
We’re doomed because of DT, complicency and continued complacency.
I buy hard drives, it is the best way to own a physical copy of media. Arr
You don’t. You don’t even really own physically purchased digital goods (like BluRays or video games). It’s a great time to be alive folks!
It’s a great time to be a pirate 🤔
The only difference between a physical and digital copy of a video game is the format of the license key (on disc vs attached to your account). In either case, you're buying a license key that can be revoked by the manufacturer at any time. A playable game isn't even on the disc any more, since games aren't finished by the master date any more (so you need to have internet access regardless of if it's a disc or digital copy)
At least California is doing something and forcing stores to make it clearer that you're only getting a revokable license rather than actually buying the product: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digital-purchase-disclosure-law-ab-2426
I'd like to see an economist explain the rationale behind the first-sale doctrine applying to IP on physical media but not if it's not tied to physical media in the US (note that the EU currently does approximate applying it to non-physical media). I have a really hard time seeing a reason for that.
I can believe that the doctrine of first sale shouldn't be a thing. And I can believe that it should be a thing, and should apply to all forms of media. But applying to one but not the other seems like a pretty hard sell to me.
Physical copies degrade over time, whereas digital information may not. Works in digital format can be reproduced without any flaws and can be disseminated worldwide without much difficulty. Thus, applying the first sale doctrine to digital copies affects the market for the original to a greater degree than transfers of physical copies.
Okay. But...so what? Why do we care whether the market for the original is affected? If that were a factor, wouldn't we object to the legality of making backups? Wouldn't we treat more-durable forms of media differently than less-durable forms of media, or take into account the decay in value of the IP itself that lives on the media?
Like, I could understand maybe an argument that permitting a vendor to restrict physical media transfers of IP is economically desirable but simply isn't enforceable, ergo we're better off without a lot of halfway attempts to restrain it. But I've never seen it explained with that as a rationale.
For some things, you can get non-DRM downloadable files, and those you do own. They're very much the minority, though, and mostly limited to smaller, less-popular shops where they do exist.
I would very much like a law that says that streaming services and DRM'd downloads are required to use words like "rent" or "lease", never "buy" or any synonym thereof.
No. Outside of VERY rare occurrences, you are still licensing that media. If you owned it you would be able to distribute it yourself and so forth.
And if you actually checked through the fine print for the old big box games you would see very similar verbiage. Presumably the same with music
I do think it would be good to make people more aware of what they are actually paying for. But once EVERYTHING says "lease" it will just kill the meaning of the word.
There are two different types of ownership here, and you're conflating them.
One is the ownership of a digital copy on the same terms as a physical copy. That allows you to resell your copy, lend it to a friend, move it to a different device, retain the use of it even if the seller no longer exists . . . stuff that falls under the first-sale doctrine and other actions that are generally accepted as "okay" and reasonable. That's what's being called out here as not existing for most digital copies.
The other is the ownership of the copyright and permissions to reproduce additional copies. However, that isn't what most people expect to get when they're purchasing a copy of a media work, regardless of whether it's digital or physical. How IP in general and copyright in particular is handled does really need an overhaul, but that isn't a problem specific to the digital world—it's equally applicable to print books, oil paintings, and vinyl records.
And to be honest, I'd prefer to see "lease" lose its meaning than "buy" go the same way, because apparently we can't have both.
I buy the correct way and it's been working okay so far. The moment something is taken away, I'll get it back another way.
Even though physical discs are superior, with audio especially, I really don't have room to store all the things I want.
I'll get it back another way.
Aye, matey.
I buy the correct way and it’s been working okay so far. The moment something is taken away, I’ll get it back another way.
Have you ever heard of "lost media"? Countless books and movies and songs were never actually backed up for one reason or another. And this is especially concerning as Amazon are pioneering the way to increasingly lock down kindle ebooks when they already have a history of editing books on their servers with no notice to the customer. It basically results in the GoG problem where even if you CAN back up everything yourself, you never will because of the updates and won't know if it is important to keep 1.01567 of a game because that was the last version where they were able to distribute a specific version of an art file.
Speaking of video games: There are hundreds of games over the years that just never got cracked. It was usually a case where the DRM model was such that only one or two groups knew how to handle it and they were busy the week that game came out. And since there is no "prestige" in going back to crack a five month old game... they didn't. Starforce was particularly notorious for this and my understanding is that denuvo is even worse. Let alone all the indie releases and patreon games where people just don't bother at all.
Because... people also need a reason to bother backing stuff up. For example, I recently got it in my head that I should re-read the 100% free and available online webcomic Chimneyspeak. Color me surprised when it sounds like nobody bothered to back it up when it was still available, the author took it down because it cost too much money (hard to run ads on porny sites), the author has been "missing" from the internet since before covid, and the wayback machine was missing large swathes of it. There wasn't even any DRM or licensing to worry about. People just didn't think to back it up and by the time they did, it was too late.
I buy i own i don't care.