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If you download something from a torrent, that's digital ownership too, and it doesn't suck. The "digital" is not the issue here, the "ownership" is. If you "b

If you download something from a torrent, that's digital ownership too, and it doesn't suck. The "digital" is not the issue here, the "ownership" is. If you "buy" something, there should be an implied right of ownership, lending to others and resale, and we probably need a better regulation of those. If you can't do that, you're not buying but leasing/borrowing and that should be clearly noted. And this should be true for physical items too... buy a cloud enabled camera with features requiring cloud access? Manufacturers should put guarantees for how long they intend to support those features at the purchased price, and refund the customers if they fail to do so. It's a lot easier and more scammy to sell a "camera that you can watch on your phone" than if it had a large label "guaranteed to work at least until 1.1. 2025" on the box... you'd reconsider buying that product if you knew that it'll maybe last only a few months or maybe a year or two, but you have no way of knowing that in advance (ahem, Nest). I could expand this also to parts and software availability, right to repair, etc.

vannevar 3y ago
The way the law is currently structured, there is no such thing as digital ownership, only licensing. And since there is an enormous disparity in negotiating power between consumers and massive copyright owners, the prevailing licensing terms overwhelmingly favor the copyright holders. The solution is to change the law. But the disparity in power between corporate copyright holders and consumers manifests itself in politics just as it does in the market.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  From Sony's website... As of 31 December 2023, due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library. Note the use of "purchased" (not "licensed"). To a layman, purchased means "I bought the thing" not "I bought an ephermeral license to the thing". US consumer protection law sucks goat ass - language around digital content licensing could easily be "fixed" (but won't because our government is a revolving door with industry insiders).
  - vannevar 3y ago
    Yeah, they definitely pretend you've purchased the content. But you've only purchased a license, and even the license is so weak that it effectively says "you can use this as long as we arbitrarily decide you can, and we can take your license away at any time without refunding your money." So you're not really buying anything at all.
  - mfer 3y ago
    Polls have found that the average person in the US can't tell you many of the basics of how their government works. The laws aren't based on people taking the time to understand them. It is complex enough there really isn't the time. Especially if you spend the average amount of time staring at rectangle screens. "our government is a revolving door with industry insiders" ... this is partly due to government compensation compared to the free market and our present desire for those with the ability to navigate this complexity to want to make piles of money. It's all about the benjamins. Which is also why IP holders use the law the way they do.
  - freejazz 3y ago
    You can "purchase" a "license". In fact, what else would you call the exchange of monetary value for a license?
    - Joeri 3y ago
      If the license expires I would call it a rental. For me if DRM is involved it is always a rental, license or no, as I am left unable to legally keep an archival copy to retain access to the purchased item beyond the undisclosed access window.
      - freejazz 3y ago
        >If the license expires I would call it a rental. A license is a license. They don't have to expire either. I can sell a perpetual license to something. > For me if DRM is involved it is always a rental, license or no, as I am left unable to legally keep an archival copy to retain access to the purchased item beyond the undisclosed access window. Call it whatever you want. The correct term is a license. You were licensed something in accordance with a bunch of terms that may have included, for example, DRM. It's a license to use the good in accordance with the terms of the license. Why confuse things?
- freejazz 3y ago
  Nothign about the law precludes you from owning anything digitally. I can sell you a digital copy of a photograph, giving you the copyright and everything. No need for a license. What makes you think otherwise?
  - vannevar 3y ago
    You've answered your own question here. It's not so much about what precludes you from selling something digitally, as it is about what precludes that person from simply making copies and distributing them for the marginal compute cost plus some profit. The answer is copyright law, which has been steadily strengthened over the years in response to the lobbying of corporate copyright holders. In order to sell even one digital copy to another person, they'd have to buy the copyright from you. And why would you sell the copyright to them when you can leverage it to sell licenses instead? Agreed that I should've said "there is no such thing as digital ownership in practice", at least for consumers.
at_a_remove 3y ago
I agree, in principle, but "ownership" is almost too nebulous. To get down to brass tacks, to look for unambiguous features that cannot be weasel-worded away, we're really looking at remote revokability or, the Bizarro cousin to that, the ability of any other party to suspend or cease playable activation via DRM. Someone smarter than I would need to flesh these out, but if we are want to law up on this, we cannot rely on fuzzy terms.
- c0pium 3y ago
  Ownership isn’t fuzzy though, it has a clear definition. The problem is that clear definition makes pirates angry because they want it to mean something other than what it does, so they try to make the situation cloudy. If you have an enforceable claim on something, then you own it. If your claim is not enforceable then you possess it.
  - mantas 3y ago
    Playstation users did „purchase“ that content. Is that enough for a claim or not?
    - c0pium 3y ago
      Purchasing a license is not the same as purchasing the thing, and everyone knows that. It’s not 1997 anymore. Whether they have an enforceable claim to access the content depends on the terms of their license, and while I haven’t read it I think we all know they won’t.
      - mantas 3y ago
        Purchasing a rent license! Yay for newspeak. Rent is rent, purchase is purchase. Hey, we ended contract with the store were you bought your DVDs. Please return them.
        c0pium 3y ago
        Please, please let me know before you fly next. I cannot wait to hear you explain to the gate agent that you purchased a ticket so legally the plane is now yours.
amelius 3y ago
Then for content it will never be possible to "buy" it, according to your view. (Because it would mean I would be able to lend my copy to the rest of the US population and the original seller would never make more money than from my 1 copy.)
- tadfisher 3y ago
  Lending usually deprives the owner of usage for the period of the lease.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    At least with a digital lend, you should be able to revoke the lend status and have it "returned" for the owner's usage again. This would be much more satisfying than lending your physical item to a friend who then moves across the country before returning the borrowed item.
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  Sure, you can buy a book/dvd/lawnmower/drill and lend it to the rest of the US population, why not?
  - amelius 3y ago
    Well, you can show a movie to a group of hundreds of people simultaneously, which is something you can't really do with a physical book.
c0pium 3y ago
> If you download something from a torrent, that's digital ownership too No, that’s possession. That’s why they call it piracy; you have it but you definitely don’t own it.
- teeray 3y ago
  Periodic reminder that torrents != piracy. Parent could have been referring to Linux ISOs or the contents of Wikipedia.
  - c0pium 3y ago
    Sure sure, we can grant them their fig leaf. Note however that the same logic applies to their “Linux ISOs”. Possession does not imply ownership. Edit: there’s no need to give these reminders, btw. Everyone knows that torrents have theoretical uses beyond piracy. Just like everyone knows they’re almost entirely used for piracy.
- ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
  > you have it but you definitely don’t own it. This could apply just as much to "buying" something from the Playstation store.
  - COGlory 3y ago
    In that case, you neither have it OR own it.
- baz00 3y ago
  I haven't given a fuck if I own it or not for about 25 years.
- doodpants 3y ago
  Suppose I "buy" a piece of digital media, which let's agree for the sake of argument actually means "bought a license for". Suppose I also then torrent a copy of that same media for the purpose of backup and/or offline access. Is it still piracy? After all, I have a license for it.
colonelpopcorn 3y ago
Digital ownership seems like a wonderful use case for blockchain technology, and it baffles me that there hasn't been a DRM company yet that's jumped on this idea.
- mcmcdtx 3y ago
  I keep seeing things that seem like they would be good uses for blockchain security and then I remember that all the investment in that space has gone into trying to print money.
- mfer 3y ago
  I think there is a misconception. Most of the time you don't own the digital asset. This is an intentional quirk around money, contracts, etc. You have the right to use it in the present form through the platform as long as the platform has a contract with the IP owner to enable that. For this to change there either needs to be incentive for the platform and IP owners or there needs to be legal changes to require it. Also, blockchain means that anyone who has your ID can know you entire catalog of ownership. This removes privacy.
- ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
  Putting digital ownership on a blockchain would mean enabling a secondary marketplace. Why would any big media company ever want to allow that?
  - Goronmon 3y ago
    Why would any big media company ever want to allow that? Not even "big media companies". Why would even say, an indie game developer, want to have a secondary marketplace where there games are sold?
    - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
      Why would a consumer want a game, that they can't even resell? Imagine the same applied to phones, cars, houses, etc? Should the governments (=laws and regulations) be protecting a few media houses or millions of consumers?
wand3r 3y ago
This is why I download fitgirl repacks. I bought an eBook 10 years ago and it disappeared. Moral, Legal or not, I personally favor consistency and predictability.
- rc202402 3y ago
  Piracy justifies capitalism. However I feel bad for small indie games.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Nothing is forever. PirateBay died how many times now? Less than Limewire, that's for sure. even fitgirl repacks will die one day. be it a legal issue, lack of interet from the pirates providing content, or a change in ownership crashing the site to the group. Change is the only constant
justinpombrio 3y ago
Let's sketch a "law" for digital goods. This law is entirely about how digital products are labeled and advertised. If the seller uses "ownership" words like "own", "buy", or "purchase", then the product must be usable _indefinitely_. If at any time it becomes not usable, e.g. due to a server shutting down, a full refund must be provided to everyone who "purchased" the product. Also, there must be some way to lend the product; it's OK if this lending deprives the original owner of the product while it is lent. One way to satisfy the "ownership" clause is to sell the product without DRM. Another alternative would be to sell it with DRM initially, but remove the DRM when you want to shut down your hosting servers. An online-only multiplayer game that requires a central server cannot feasibly be sold by "ownership", because the seller would eventually lose all their money when they shut down the server. So the next option is "rental", where the seller can use the word "rent" along with a clear time period like "for 1 year" or "through 2024". The product must be usable through this time period, or you get a full refund. No requirements about it being lendable to friends. I imagine almost all companies would pick the second option. This is fine! Consumers still get two benefits: (i) clear labeling, including knowing how long they can expect to use the thing for, and (ii) a full refund in case the content gets removed before that time period. As for getting banned from an online game: this is completely allowed via the "rental" option. The company just needs to give the player a full refund.
- wolpoli 3y ago
  Labeling and advertising is definitely a good angle to ensure that customers aren't hit by surprises: I would also require a standardized disclosure box that must be included in the promotional materials. The disclosure box could contain information such as ownership period and so on, and consumers will get used to reading that box before purchasing digital goods.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    Rental period. If there us ownership, I want to be able to put it in my will and pass it to my heirs
jrm4 3y ago
Yup. There's lots of law already in existence that gets toward this, e.g. "title" and "possession." With torrents, you always have possession, even without title. With, e.g. Playstation, for a while "title" gave you "possession" (as it should) and then it didn't, breaking the whole thing.
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]
randomcarbloke 3y ago
Agreed, imagine if you bought a car and the purchase agreement stipulated having to store that car in the manufacturer's garage, and after six months of minor incremental changes performed during downtime the car was nothing like the product you actually bought, the product you wanted to begin with.
randombits0 3y ago
If Sony sold something they are not licensed to sell, that’s fraud.

vannevar 3y ago

The way the law is currently structured, there is no such thing as digital ownership, only licensing. And since there is an enormous disparity in negotiating power between consumers and massive copyright owners, the prevailing licensing terms overwhelmingly favor the copyright holders. The solution is to change the law. But the disparity in power between corporate copyright holders and consumers manifests itself in politics just as it does in the market.

alistairSH 3y ago
From Sony's website... As of 31 December 2023, due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library. Note the use of "purchased" (not "licensed"). To a layman, purchased means "I bought the thing" not "I bought an ephermeral license to the thing". US consumer protection law sucks goat ass - language around digital content licensing could easily be "fixed" (but won't because our government is a revolving door with industry insiders).
- vannevar 3y ago
  Yeah, they definitely pretend you've purchased the content. But you've only purchased a license, and even the license is so weak that it effectively says "you can use this as long as we arbitrarily decide you can, and we can take your license away at any time without refunding your money." So you're not really buying anything at all.
- mfer 3y ago
  Polls have found that the average person in the US can't tell you many of the basics of how their government works. The laws aren't based on people taking the time to understand them. It is complex enough there really isn't the time. Especially if you spend the average amount of time staring at rectangle screens. "our government is a revolving door with industry insiders" ... this is partly due to government compensation compared to the free market and our present desire for those with the ability to navigate this complexity to want to make piles of money. It's all about the benjamins. Which is also why IP holders use the law the way they do.
- freejazz 3y ago
  You can "purchase" a "license". In fact, what else would you call the exchange of monetary value for a license?
  - Joeri 3y ago
    If the license expires I would call it a rental. For me if DRM is involved it is always a rental, license or no, as I am left unable to legally keep an archival copy to retain access to the purchased item beyond the undisclosed access window.
    - freejazz 3y ago
      >If the license expires I would call it a rental. A license is a license. They don't have to expire either. I can sell a perpetual license to something. > For me if DRM is involved it is always a rental, license or no, as I am left unable to legally keep an archival copy to retain access to the purchased item beyond the undisclosed access window. Call it whatever you want. The correct term is a license. You were licensed something in accordance with a bunch of terms that may have included, for example, DRM. It's a license to use the good in accordance with the terms of the license. Why confuse things?
freejazz 3y ago
Nothign about the law precludes you from owning anything digitally. I can sell you a digital copy of a photograph, giving you the copyright and everything. No need for a license. What makes you think otherwise?
- vannevar 3y ago
  You've answered your own question here. It's not so much about what precludes you from selling something digitally, as it is about what precludes that person from simply making copies and distributing them for the marginal compute cost plus some profit. The answer is copyright law, which has been steadily strengthened over the years in response to the lobbying of corporate copyright holders. In order to sell even one digital copy to another person, they'd have to buy the copyright from you. And why would you sell the copyright to them when you can leverage it to sell licenses instead? Agreed that I should've said "there is no such thing as digital ownership in practice", at least for consumers.

at_a_remove 3y ago

I agree, in principle, but "ownership" is almost too nebulous. To get down to brass tacks, to look for unambiguous features that cannot be weasel-worded away, we're really looking at remote revokability or, the Bizarro cousin to that, the ability of any other party to suspend or cease playable activation via DRM. Someone smarter than I would need to flesh these out, but if we are want to law up on this, we cannot rely on fuzzy terms.

c0pium 3y ago
Ownership isn’t fuzzy though, it has a clear definition. The problem is that clear definition makes pirates angry because they want it to mean something other than what it does, so they try to make the situation cloudy. If you have an enforceable claim on something, then you own it. If your claim is not enforceable then you possess it.
- mantas 3y ago
  Playstation users did „purchase“ that content. Is that enough for a claim or not?
  - c0pium 3y ago
    Purchasing a license is not the same as purchasing the thing, and everyone knows that. It’s not 1997 anymore. Whether they have an enforceable claim to access the content depends on the terms of their license, and while I haven’t read it I think we all know they won’t.
    - mantas 3y ago
      Purchasing a rent license! Yay for newspeak. Rent is rent, purchase is purchase. Hey, we ended contract with the store were you bought your DVDs. Please return them.
      - c0pium 3y ago
        Please, please let me know before you fly next. I cannot wait to hear you explain to the gate agent that you purchased a ticket so legally the plane is now yours.

amelius 3y ago

Then for content it will never be possible to "buy" it, according to your view. (Because it would mean I would be able to lend my copy to the rest of the US population and the original seller would never make more money than from my 1 copy.)

tadfisher 3y ago
Lending usually deprives the owner of usage for the period of the lease.
- dylan604 3y ago
  At least with a digital lend, you should be able to revoke the lend status and have it "returned" for the owner's usage again. This would be much more satisfying than lending your physical item to a friend who then moves across the country before returning the borrowed item.
ajsnigrutin 3y ago
Sure, you can buy a book/dvd/lawnmower/drill and lend it to the rest of the US population, why not?
- amelius 3y ago
  Well, you can show a movie to a group of hundreds of people simultaneously, which is something you can't really do with a physical book.

c0pium 3y ago

> If you download something from a torrent, that's digital ownership too No, that’s possession. That’s why they call it piracy; you have it but you definitely don’t own it.

teeray 3y ago
Periodic reminder that torrents != piracy. Parent could have been referring to Linux ISOs or the contents of Wikipedia.
- c0pium 3y ago
  Sure sure, we can grant them their fig leaf. Note however that the same logic applies to their “Linux ISOs”. Possession does not imply ownership. Edit: there’s no need to give these reminders, btw. Everyone knows that torrents have theoretical uses beyond piracy. Just like everyone knows they’re almost entirely used for piracy.
ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
> you have it but you definitely don’t own it. This could apply just as much to "buying" something from the Playstation store.
- COGlory 3y ago
  In that case, you neither have it OR own it.
baz00 3y ago
I haven't given a fuck if I own it or not for about 25 years.
doodpants 3y ago
Suppose I "buy" a piece of digital media, which let's agree for the sake of argument actually means "bought a license for". Suppose I also then torrent a copy of that same media for the purpose of backup and/or offline access. Is it still piracy? After all, I have a license for it.

colonelpopcorn 3y ago

Digital ownership seems like a wonderful use case for blockchain technology, and it baffles me that there hasn't been a DRM company yet that's jumped on this idea.

mcmcdtx 3y ago
I keep seeing things that seem like they would be good uses for blockchain security and then I remember that all the investment in that space has gone into trying to print money.
mfer 3y ago
I think there is a misconception. Most of the time you don't own the digital asset. This is an intentional quirk around money, contracts, etc. You have the right to use it in the present form through the platform as long as the platform has a contract with the IP owner to enable that. For this to change there either needs to be incentive for the platform and IP owners or there needs to be legal changes to require it. Also, blockchain means that anyone who has your ID can know you entire catalog of ownership. This removes privacy.
ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
Putting digital ownership on a blockchain would mean enabling a secondary marketplace. Why would any big media company ever want to allow that?
- Goronmon 3y ago
  Why would any big media company ever want to allow that? Not even "big media companies". Why would even say, an indie game developer, want to have a secondary marketplace where there games are sold?
  - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    Why would a consumer want a game, that they can't even resell? Imagine the same applied to phones, cars, houses, etc? Should the governments (=laws and regulations) be protecting a few media houses or millions of consumers?

wand3r 3y ago

This is why I download fitgirl repacks. I bought an eBook 10 years ago and it disappeared. Moral, Legal or not, I personally favor consistency and predictability.

rc202402 3y ago
Piracy justifies capitalism. However I feel bad for small indie games.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
Nothing is forever. PirateBay died how many times now? Less than Limewire, that's for sure. even fitgirl repacks will die one day. be it a legal issue, lack of interet from the pirates providing content, or a change in ownership crashing the site to the group. Change is the only constant

justinpombrio 3y ago

Let's sketch a "law" for digital goods. This law is entirely about how digital products are labeled and advertised. If the seller uses "ownership" words like "own", "buy", or "purchase", then the product must be usable _indefinitely_. If at any time it becomes not usable, e.g. due to a server shutting down, a full refund must be provided to everyone who "purchased" the product. Also, there must be some way to lend the product; it's OK if this lending deprives the original owner of the product while it is lent. One way to satisfy the "ownership" clause is to sell the product without DRM. Another alternative would be to sell it with DRM initially, but remove the DRM when you want to shut down your hosting servers. An online-only multiplayer game that requires a central server cannot feasibly be sold by "ownership", because the seller would eventually lose all their money when they shut down the server. So the next option is "rental", where the seller can use the word "rent" along with a clear time period like "for 1 year" or "through 2024". The product must be usable through this time period, or you get a full refund. No requirements about it being lendable to friends. I imagine almost all companies would pick the second option. This is fine! Consumers still get two benefits: (i) clear labeling, including knowing how long they can expect to use the thing for, and (ii) a full refund in case the content gets removed before that time period. As for getting banned from an online game: this is completely allowed via the "rental" option. The company just needs to give the player a full refund.

wolpoli 3y ago
Labeling and advertising is definitely a good angle to ensure that customers aren't hit by surprises: I would also require a standardized disclosure box that must be included in the promotional materials. The disclosure box could contain information such as ownership period and so on, and consumers will get used to reading that box before purchasing digital goods.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
  Rental period. If there us ownership, I want to be able to put it in my will and pass it to my heirs

jrm4 3y ago

Yup. There's lots of law already in existence that gets toward this, e.g. "title" and "possession." With torrents, you always have possession, even without title. With, e.g. Playstation, for a while "title" gave you "possession" (as it should) and then it didn't, breaking the whole thing.

AniseAbyss 3y ago

[dead]

randomcarbloke 3y ago

Agreed, imagine if you bought a car and the purchase agreement stipulated having to store that car in the manufacturer's garage, and after six months of minor incremental changes performed during downtime the car was nothing like the product you actually bought, the product you wanted to begin with.

randombits0 3y ago

If Sony sold something they are not licensed to sell, that’s fraud.