12 ms·

I think ultimately the only way to solve this is to legislate some notion of digital "ownership." Steam SOLD me a game. Amazon SOLD me an e-book. Shut down my

I think ultimately the only way to solve this is to legislate some notion of digital "ownership." Steam SOLD me a game. Amazon SOLD me an e-book. Shut down my account or refuse to do further business with me as you like, that's your right, but if you SOLD me something, you can't have it back. You need to either make it available to me or return my money. If Amazon wants to put the word "buy" on a button, then something needs to be sold. Otherwise the button needs to read "acquire revokable license" or something. And, of course, this leads to the reason it'll never happen: first sale doctrine. If I own something, I need to be able to transfer it to someone else.

munk-a 4y ago
Isn't a big blocker in this space the fact that when you can hide behind a digital license to use a copy of the game the potential that you may, at some point in the future, be unable to deliver a copy of that game to the consumer isn't a big issue? I had thought that electronic goods dealers (e-books, steam, whatever) had some issues with actually selling goods because of the fact that a sold good needs to continue to be accessible even if their platform becomes too expensive to operate at some point. I wonder if we could shift the definition of sale to something more reasonable access-wise in the long term and come up with a reasonable path for resale since, with a third party host like steam, infinite transferability isn't really feasible - there are technicalities around account registration and the like that would need to place some limits on your right to resell the item.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  While not realistic to get the world to move to this there is a simple test - if you're still selling it and/or still protecting it with DRM then you have capability to distribute. If the answer to both is no then accessing the content where you originally bought it isn't a big issue anymore. What's a reasonable amount of access (e.g. "can I just redownload the game 24/7 for 8 years") would need to be defined but that's a much easier problem. With the current model you run into an inherent conflict between protecting content you aren't truly relying on the monetization of anymore and what's fair to users because it requires putting the publisher/publisher's agent in front of the access.
- paulmd 4y ago
  Or you may not be licensed to deliver a copy of that game. This has already happened with e-books, the rights are negotiated for a term and then when they're not renewed the copy is deleted off the consumer's device. https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703 https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-ki... Another odd place this might crop up is music licensing... if the license for some music expires, often the show will be re-mastered with a different track instead. But that could be viewed as a different "edition" of the work, and if you aren't allowed to yoink the user's purchased copy (or simply stream the newer edition) then you have a problem. Frankly these issues have already gotten out of hand and forcing producers/authors to reach less predatory agreements may be a good thing. I'm not thinking of the small author here, they're already losing, but the estate of a dead artist of some smash-hit catalog will often milk that extremely hard.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > Isn't a big blocker in this space the fact that when you can hide behind a digital license to use a copy of the game the potential that you may, at some point in the future, be unable to deliver a copy of that game to the consumer isn't a big issue? It is for online only things, but if you buy a game and download it that shouldn't come with some assumption or requirement that I can forever re-download a copy. If I buy a download, it's fair to expect me to backup the thing I purchased. That works for music, movies, and ebooks - any DRM that requires a connection to some server, or an account should allow for transfers and companies who use that kind of DRM should be required to notify owners and patch the DRM out of products if the company no longer wants to maintain the servers and accounts provide that protection. MMOs are still a problem since you aren't selling the game, just access to the systems that run it, but I think most people understand that.
wkat4242 4y ago
[dead]
moffkalast 4y ago
> Otherwise the button needs to read "acquire revokable license" or something. Somebody get the EU on that, stat.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  The GDPR flagged this as a "TODO" item and left it explicitly there, so someone was at least already thinking about it. I sometimes wonder if it is going to take a massive Estate Law court case to push the needle on this. We're about to the point where "Grandma's Steam Library" is going to be big enough in expected cash value that descendants would meaningfully fight over it, and open up the can of worms that is current digital goods laws. (Including the fact that technically Grandma's Steam Library has *no* survivorship guarantees and Steam's TOS, like most TOS agreements in current digital services, terminates along with the person it was contracted with.)
javajosh 4y ago
Totally agree. Either that or they should be forced to change the wording from "buy" to "conditionally gain access subject to revocation at any time for any reason without recourse".
kfrzcode 4y ago
> only way to solve this I dunno, I've had a solution on hand that has consistently provided high-quality, seaworthy FLAC, MP3, MKV, MP4, etc... of all of my favorite media content. Since around maybe 2003, 2004.

munk-a 4y ago

Isn't a big blocker in this space the fact that when you can hide behind a digital license to use a copy of the game the potential that you may, at some point in the future, be unable to deliver a copy of that game to the consumer isn't a big issue? I had thought that electronic goods dealers (e-books, steam, whatever) had some issues with actually selling goods because of the fact that a sold good needs to continue to be accessible even if their platform becomes too expensive to operate at some point. I wonder if we could shift the definition of sale to something more reasonable access-wise in the long term and come up with a reasonable path for resale since, with a third party host like steam, infinite transferability isn't really feasible - there are technicalities around account registration and the like that would need to place some limits on your right to resell the item.

zamadatix 4y ago
While not realistic to get the world to move to this there is a simple test - if you're still selling it and/or still protecting it with DRM then you have capability to distribute. If the answer to both is no then accessing the content where you originally bought it isn't a big issue anymore. What's a reasonable amount of access (e.g. "can I just redownload the game 24/7 for 8 years") would need to be defined but that's a much easier problem. With the current model you run into an inherent conflict between protecting content you aren't truly relying on the monetization of anymore and what's fair to users because it requires putting the publisher/publisher's agent in front of the access.
paulmd 4y ago
Or you may not be licensed to deliver a copy of that game. This has already happened with e-books, the rights are negotiated for a term and then when they're not renewed the copy is deleted off the consumer's device. https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703 https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-ki... Another odd place this might crop up is music licensing... if the license for some music expires, often the show will be re-mastered with a different track instead. But that could be viewed as a different "edition" of the work, and if you aren't allowed to yoink the user's purchased copy (or simply stream the newer edition) then you have a problem. Frankly these issues have already gotten out of hand and forcing producers/authors to reach less predatory agreements may be a good thing. I'm not thinking of the small author here, they're already losing, but the estate of a dead artist of some smash-hit catalog will often milk that extremely hard.
autoexec 4y ago
> Isn't a big blocker in this space the fact that when you can hide behind a digital license to use a copy of the game the potential that you may, at some point in the future, be unable to deliver a copy of that game to the consumer isn't a big issue? It is for online only things, but if you buy a game and download it that shouldn't come with some assumption or requirement that I can forever re-download a copy. If I buy a download, it's fair to expect me to backup the thing I purchased. That works for music, movies, and ebooks - any DRM that requires a connection to some server, or an account should allow for transfers and companies who use that kind of DRM should be required to notify owners and patch the DRM out of products if the company no longer wants to maintain the servers and accounts provide that protection. MMOs are still a problem since you aren't selling the game, just access to the systems that run it, but I think most people understand that.

wkat4242 4y ago

[dead]

moffkalast 4y ago

> Otherwise the button needs to read "acquire revokable license" or something. Somebody get the EU on that, stat.

WorldMaker 4y ago
The GDPR flagged this as a "TODO" item and left it explicitly there, so someone was at least already thinking about it. I sometimes wonder if it is going to take a massive Estate Law court case to push the needle on this. We're about to the point where "Grandma's Steam Library" is going to be big enough in expected cash value that descendants would meaningfully fight over it, and open up the can of worms that is current digital goods laws. (Including the fact that technically Grandma's Steam Library has *no* survivorship guarantees and Steam's TOS, like most TOS agreements in current digital services, terminates along with the person it was contracted with.)

javajosh 4y ago

Totally agree. Either that or they should be forced to change the wording from "buy" to "conditionally gain access subject to revocation at any time for any reason without recourse".

kfrzcode 4y ago

> only way to solve this I dunno, I've had a solution on hand that has consistently provided high-quality, seaworthy FLAC, MP3, MKV, MP4, etc... of all of my favorite media content. Since around maybe 2003, 2004.