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It's not a special status, anyone has the right to deny you a hardware product as well. I don't have to sell cars to anyone if I don't want to. If I do want to

It's not a special status, anyone has the right to deny you a hardware product as well. I don't have to sell cars to anyone if I don't want to. If I do want to sell someone a car, I can specify a contract or license that they must follow if they buy my car. Ferrari famously only sells exclusive models to customers who have been pre-approved, i.e. they have a certain amount of income and own 5+ Ferraris already. I also cannot walk into a Lockheed Martin dealership and tell them to sell me a F-22, even if I can afford it, even if my country has permissive laws regarding the ownership of fighter aircraft. As for software, well, EA has the right to ban me from their servers if I hack their games, even if I did pay for the product, and this makes sense because it ruins everyone else's experience. I don't pay for HN but if I did they still would have a right to ban my account if I start posting slurs or other abusive content. Is it desirable? Of course it's desirable; imagine having no control over your own creations and having to deal with the consequences of other people abusing it.

rowanG077 6y ago
The examples of software you list aren't close to equivalent. They are all services and you can get banned from a service if you misbehave. But a piece of software such as a driver is not a service.
- nexuist 6y ago
  Software updates aren't a service? Doesn't Nvidia provide updates to its drivers over time? They can choose to cut anyone off from those, including the very first initial driver download. Sure, you can own and do whatever you want with the hardware - but good luck getting it to do anything useful if you can't access Nvidia's driver download service.
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    Yes software updates can be a service. Nvidia however doesn't provide a working version of their driver with a card. Just like buying a game is not a service but recievig updates can be.
ImprobableTruth 6y ago
>If I do want to sell someone a car, I can specify a contract or license that they must follow if they buy my car. Only in a limited form e.g. exhaustion doctrine prevents you from restricting resale. If someone wants to resell their exclusive Ferrari, there's nothing Ferrari can legally do (though this'll probably get you blacklisted from ever receiving an exclusive vehicle). In general, terms can't go against existing laws and have to be 'conscionable' to be enforceable (i.e. they can't be obviously 'unfair').
laumars 6y ago
None of those examples are equivalent. The hardware examples are where companies refuse to sell a product (so you never own the product to begin with) where as the EA example is where you’ve been kicked off online services (you still have the capability to play the game offline, you just can’t access their servers, but you don’t buy their servers when you buy the game) and the HN example is a termination of subscription. Neither of those examples demonstrate legal limitations to software usage with a product you own (though the EA one at least comes close from a superficial perspective).
- nexuist 6y ago
  > you still have the capability to play the game offline EA famously uses online-only DRM in many of their modern titles; if you get banned from, say, SimCity, you can't run the game at all. There is no "offline mode".
  - ebertucc 6y ago
    And is this desirable? How does hacking your copy of a single player game harm anyone? Also, SimCity eventually got an offline mode.
    - nexuist 6y ago
      It's not a single player game I'm pretty sure - there are leaderboards and achievements that allow you to compete with your friends. Obviously these features are moot if the top 10,000 players have a score of MAX_INT. It would have been nice to "disconnect" your city from the leaderboards if you wanted to go crazy, but unfortunately this mode was not added. For the record I am against always on DRM so I did not buy this game nor any other game that uses it. I don't believe we need to codify laws banning the practice or any such thing that requires software developers to build things they don't want to build (with the exception of critical fields such as healthcare and aviation). It's desirable in that a one time purchase does not entitle a customer to a lifetime of server resources; they paid for the game and they can certainly keep the game, but they don't have a right to the services required by the game (those are recurring costs). This makes sense since the alternative is forcing EA to pay to host servers for people that violated their terms of service. You are correct that it got an offline mode eventually, I overlooked this. But this demonstrates that the market corrected this problem: Enough consumers complained to force a change. Therefore, is there need for external intervention? The simple solution to always-on DRM seems to be to just avoid buying any products that use it.
amelius 6y ago
> Ferrari famously only sells exclusive models to customers who have been pre-approved, i.e. they have a certain amount of income and own 5+ Ferraris already. Sounds like discrimination to me, and not desirable.
- nexuist 6y ago
  That's the point of luxury models. Not everyone can have them.
- alacombe 6y ago
  > Sounds like discrimination to me, and not desirable. Are you allowing everybody who want to have sex with you to have sex with you or are you discriminating to a select few / unique person ? Discriminations is part of human nature.
  - wsgeorge 6y ago
    > Discriminations is part of human nature. Glad to see someone also came to this conclusion!
- PeterisP 6y ago
  Only a few very specific types of discrimination (religion, sex, ethnicity/race, etc) are prohibited, every other discrimination is fair game and often desired. For example, it's quite desirable to discriminate potential developer hires according to their programming ability, to discriminate potential borrowers according to their ability to repay the loan, etc.
  - amelius 6y ago
    But building a brand by only selling to rich people?
    - PeterisP 6y ago
      Sure, everything that's not explicitly prohibited is permitted, and wealth is not one of those very few things prohibited for discrimination. You're free to have a club that only admits billionaires or offer a discount that applies only to people below a certain amount of income. The example on ability to repay is closely related to discrimination by pure wealth, but there are businesses with even more straightforward criteria, e.g. financial services that are offered only to individuals with net worth above a certain (quite large) amount, and having less money than that automatically disqualifies you from that service even if you were able and willing to pay the involved fees.
lsiebert 6y ago
Sure, but a reseller could resell it under the first sale doctrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

rowanG077 6y ago

The examples of software you list aren't close to equivalent. They are all services and you can get banned from a service if you misbehave. But a piece of software such as a driver is not a service.

nexuist 6y ago
Software updates aren't a service? Doesn't Nvidia provide updates to its drivers over time? They can choose to cut anyone off from those, including the very first initial driver download. Sure, you can own and do whatever you want with the hardware - but good luck getting it to do anything useful if you can't access Nvidia's driver download service.
- rowanG077 6y ago
  Yes software updates can be a service. Nvidia however doesn't provide a working version of their driver with a card. Just like buying a game is not a service but recievig updates can be.

ImprobableTruth 6y ago

>If I do want to sell someone a car, I can specify a contract or license that they must follow if they buy my car. Only in a limited form e.g. exhaustion doctrine prevents you from restricting resale. If someone wants to resell their exclusive Ferrari, there's nothing Ferrari can legally do (though this'll probably get you blacklisted from ever receiving an exclusive vehicle). In general, terms can't go against existing laws and have to be 'conscionable' to be enforceable (i.e. they can't be obviously 'unfair').

laumars 6y ago

None of those examples are equivalent. The hardware examples are where companies refuse to sell a product (so you never own the product to begin with) where as the EA example is where you’ve been kicked off online services (you still have the capability to play the game offline, you just can’t access their servers, but you don’t buy their servers when you buy the game) and the HN example is a termination of subscription. Neither of those examples demonstrate legal limitations to software usage with a product you own (though the EA one at least comes close from a superficial perspective).

nexuist 6y ago
> you still have the capability to play the game offline EA famously uses online-only DRM in many of their modern titles; if you get banned from, say, SimCity, you can't run the game at all. There is no "offline mode".
- ebertucc 6y ago
  And is this desirable? How does hacking your copy of a single player game harm anyone? Also, SimCity eventually got an offline mode.
  - nexuist 6y ago
    It's not a single player game I'm pretty sure - there are leaderboards and achievements that allow you to compete with your friends. Obviously these features are moot if the top 10,000 players have a score of MAX_INT. It would have been nice to "disconnect" your city from the leaderboards if you wanted to go crazy, but unfortunately this mode was not added. For the record I am against always on DRM so I did not buy this game nor any other game that uses it. I don't believe we need to codify laws banning the practice or any such thing that requires software developers to build things they don't want to build (with the exception of critical fields such as healthcare and aviation). It's desirable in that a one time purchase does not entitle a customer to a lifetime of server resources; they paid for the game and they can certainly keep the game, but they don't have a right to the services required by the game (those are recurring costs). This makes sense since the alternative is forcing EA to pay to host servers for people that violated their terms of service. You are correct that it got an offline mode eventually, I overlooked this. But this demonstrates that the market corrected this problem: Enough consumers complained to force a change. Therefore, is there need for external intervention? The simple solution to always-on DRM seems to be to just avoid buying any products that use it.

amelius 6y ago

> Ferrari famously only sells exclusive models to customers who have been pre-approved, i.e. they have a certain amount of income and own 5+ Ferraris already. Sounds like discrimination to me, and not desirable.

nexuist 6y ago
That's the point of luxury models. Not everyone can have them.
alacombe 6y ago
> Sounds like discrimination to me, and not desirable. Are you allowing everybody who want to have sex with you to have sex with you or are you discriminating to a select few / unique person ? Discriminations is part of human nature.
- wsgeorge 6y ago
  > Discriminations is part of human nature. Glad to see someone also came to this conclusion!
PeterisP 6y ago
Only a few very specific types of discrimination (religion, sex, ethnicity/race, etc) are prohibited, every other discrimination is fair game and often desired. For example, it's quite desirable to discriminate potential developer hires according to their programming ability, to discriminate potential borrowers according to their ability to repay the loan, etc.
- amelius 6y ago
  But building a brand by only selling to rich people?
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    Sure, everything that's not explicitly prohibited is permitted, and wealth is not one of those very few things prohibited for discrimination. You're free to have a club that only admits billionaires or offer a discount that applies only to people below a certain amount of income. The example on ability to repay is closely related to discrimination by pure wealth, but there are businesses with even more straightforward criteria, e.g. financial services that are offered only to individuals with net worth above a certain (quite large) amount, and having less money than that automatically disqualifies you from that service even if you were able and willing to pay the involved fees.

lsiebert 6y ago

Sure, but a reseller could resell it under the first sale doctrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine