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Incomprehensible to me that not a single country's courts put a stop to this. By now this “straight up commercial fraud” has become established industry practic

by patrec 4y ago

Incomprehensible to me that not a single country's courts put a stop to this. By now this “straight up commercial fraud” has become established industry practice and the corrupted meaning of “buy” (for “lease”) looks set to not only stay with us but gradually replace the old meaning in all walks of life as increasingly everything becomes “smart” (as the oft-quoted Ubik line goes: '“The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”'). I wonder both how far away we once were from some less dystopian alternative timeline and what the chances of escaping our current apparent trajectory are.

andsoitis 4y ago
It is worth noting that when I buy a physical book, I am not acquiring ownership of the text. I do not have the right to do with the text what I please (e.g. make copies & distribute). The same goes for music. The same goes for software. What the format (digital+DRM vs. physical) makes possible is more fine grained control by the owner (or their proxy) of the work.
- patrec 4y ago
  You seem to imply that technological advances have made new forms of contractual agreements about property possible that are not covered well by existing concepts such as "buy" and "lease" and that therefore to extend the meaning of "buy" to cover app store or kindle purchases is reasonable rather than fraudulent. What an app store or kindle "purchase" provides you with is exactly a lease. You gain a temporary right to utilize a resource (such as a particular physical or digital copy of a work) subject to various restrictions. By contrast property rights always imply the ability to transfer (via sale, inheritance or gift or voluntary abandonment) as well as to in fact not transfer. Both of which are fundamentally lost here. You can't sell your kindle ebooks, pass them on to your children or even keep them if Amazon decides otherwise (as in the case of 1984). And there is absolutely no technical or economic reason you can't inherit or sell a DRM protected work.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > You seem to imply that technological advances have made new forms of contractual agreements about property possible that are not covered well by existing concepts such as “buy” and “lease” and that therefore to extend the meaning of “buy” to cover app store or kindle purchases is reasonable rather than fraudulent. Nope, licenses as a form of intangible personal property long predate the “modern technological advances” being discussed (or, say, the existence of the US, for example), and the meaning of the word “buy” already encompasses buying licenses, which may have a variety of terms, including termination conditions. It’s just that you seem to be trying to falsely generalize the specialized meaning of “buy” that applies when the object of the purchase is an item of tangible personal property to things which are not tangible personal property.
    - patrec 4y ago
      Do you have a good example of a pre-digital private everyday transaction where people would use "buy" to refer to entering in some complex licensing arrangement which did not grant any transferable rights? What you write is true and I see where you are coming from. But my contention is that what you refer to as the "specialized meaning of buy" was pretty much the only meaning an average person would have used it in. And that such a person's reasonable and natural assumption when first confronted with a "buy" button for an ebook would be that it pressing it would confer analogous rights of transfer as buying the physical copy. And furthermore that courts and regulators allowing this assumption to be violated was a major oversight. If for no other reason than that it is foolish to the extreme to bring about a system where a single dominant entity having a bad day could in a blink wipe out a large fraction of accessible books.
vel0city 4y ago
It is not a lease though. A lease has a specified time. "Buying" in this context has an unspecified time. I have movies I "bought" on these platforms which have been accessible for well over a decade. If this was forced to be a lease which specified a time (say, 1 year? 5 years?) I would have already lost access to it, massively reducing its value to me.
- patrec 4y ago
  Leases can be and not uncommonly are of unlimited or extremely long duration (e.g. till the leasee's death or exceeding a single human life span).
  - vel0city 4y ago
    Extremely long duration != unlimited. Stating "until this person's death" isn't unlimited, it is a very exact end condition which will happen. A 99 year lease still has an end date on it. These licenses do not have an end date. The only time it is generally supposed to become unavailable is "due to potential content provider licensing restrictions or for other reasons." https://www.primevideo.com/help?nodeId=202095490&view-type=content-only https://www.primevideo.com/help?nodeId=202095490&view-type=c... Buying a limited license which allows "an indefinite period of time" is still inherently different from renting. It is definitely different from buying a physical good, I do agree. But I still don't seem to be convinced that its "renting" or "leasing". If Amazon had to put an end date ahead of time on all the movies they listed with "Buy", do you think they'd put that date as 99 years or would they make it more like one year? Personally I'm perfectly fine with the tradeoff that sure, some move I "bought" 15 years ago on Amazon might some day disappear from their service, as I knew it ahead of time that was the trade-off of "buying" a license on their Unbox service versus owning a physical copy of the VHS or DVD at the time. But in the end I felt it was worth the tradeoff for the connivence. For all we know Amazon may continue on forever, offering some kind of version of its streaming service and continue to offer these movies forever. Its not guaranteed Amazon will lose the rights to some of these movies, its not guaranteed they'll stop offering a streaming service, its not guaranteed they'll eventually be replaced by Walmart which will buy out Weyland-Yutani. There's no real pre-defined end condition to it at all, other than until the rights holders say we can't or until some other situation happens that makes it unavailable. Its definitely different than owning a physical good, I completely agree. Its still very different from renting or leasing.

by patrec 4y ago

andsoitis 4y ago

It is worth noting that when I buy a physical book, I am not acquiring ownership of the text. I do not have the right to do with the text what I please (e.g. make copies & distribute). The same goes for music. The same goes for software. What the format (digital+DRM vs. physical) makes possible is more fine grained control by the owner (or their proxy) of the work.

patrec 4y ago
You seem to imply that technological advances have made new forms of contractual agreements about property possible that are not covered well by existing concepts such as "buy" and "lease" and that therefore to extend the meaning of "buy" to cover app store or kindle purchases is reasonable rather than fraudulent. What an app store or kindle "purchase" provides you with is exactly a lease. You gain a temporary right to utilize a resource (such as a particular physical or digital copy of a work) subject to various restrictions. By contrast property rights always imply the ability to transfer (via sale, inheritance or gift or voluntary abandonment) as well as to in fact not transfer. Both of which are fundamentally lost here. You can't sell your kindle ebooks, pass them on to your children or even keep them if Amazon decides otherwise (as in the case of 1984). And there is absolutely no technical or economic reason you can't inherit or sell a DRM protected work.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > You seem to imply that technological advances have made new forms of contractual agreements about property possible that are not covered well by existing concepts such as “buy” and “lease” and that therefore to extend the meaning of “buy” to cover app store or kindle purchases is reasonable rather than fraudulent. Nope, licenses as a form of intangible personal property long predate the “modern technological advances” being discussed (or, say, the existence of the US, for example), and the meaning of the word “buy” already encompasses buying licenses, which may have a variety of terms, including termination conditions. It’s just that you seem to be trying to falsely generalize the specialized meaning of “buy” that applies when the object of the purchase is an item of tangible personal property to things which are not tangible personal property.
  - patrec 4y ago
    Do you have a good example of a pre-digital private everyday transaction where people would use "buy" to refer to entering in some complex licensing arrangement which did not grant any transferable rights? What you write is true and I see where you are coming from. But my contention is that what you refer to as the "specialized meaning of buy" was pretty much the only meaning an average person would have used it in. And that such a person's reasonable and natural assumption when first confronted with a "buy" button for an ebook would be that it pressing it would confer analogous rights of transfer as buying the physical copy. And furthermore that courts and regulators allowing this assumption to be violated was a major oversight. If for no other reason than that it is foolish to the extreme to bring about a system where a single dominant entity having a bad day could in a blink wipe out a large fraction of accessible books.

vel0city 4y ago

It is not a lease though. A lease has a specified time. "Buying" in this context has an unspecified time. I have movies I "bought" on these platforms which have been accessible for well over a decade. If this was forced to be a lease which specified a time (say, 1 year? 5 years?) I would have already lost access to it, massively reducing its value to me.

patrec 4y ago
Leases can be and not uncommonly are of unlimited or extremely long duration (e.g. till the leasee's death or exceeding a single human life span).
- vel0city 4y ago
  Extremely long duration != unlimited. Stating "until this person's death" isn't unlimited, it is a very exact end condition which will happen. A 99 year lease still has an end date on it. These licenses do not have an end date. The only time it is generally supposed to become unavailable is "due to potential content provider licensing restrictions or for other reasons." https://www.primevideo.com/help?nodeId=202095490&view-type=content-only https://www.primevideo.com/help?nodeId=202095490&view-type=c... Buying a limited license which allows "an indefinite period of time" is still inherently different from renting. It is definitely different from buying a physical good, I do agree. But I still don't seem to be convinced that its "renting" or "leasing". If Amazon had to put an end date ahead of time on all the movies they listed with "Buy", do you think they'd put that date as 99 years or would they make it more like one year? Personally I'm perfectly fine with the tradeoff that sure, some move I "bought" 15 years ago on Amazon might some day disappear from their service, as I knew it ahead of time that was the trade-off of "buying" a license on their Unbox service versus owning a physical copy of the VHS or DVD at the time. But in the end I felt it was worth the tradeoff for the connivence. For all we know Amazon may continue on forever, offering some kind of version of its streaming service and continue to offer these movies forever. Its not guaranteed Amazon will lose the rights to some of these movies, its not guaranteed they'll stop offering a streaming service, its not guaranteed they'll eventually be replaced by Walmart which will buy out Weyland-Yutani. There's no real pre-defined end condition to it at all, other than until the rights holders say we can't or until some other situation happens that makes it unavailable. Its definitely different than owning a physical good, I completely agree. Its still very different from renting or leasing.