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> Obviously, that isn't portable to a zero-copy-cost digital realm. I'm not sure how you figure that. Its still a sale. You might want to read though how much

> Obviously, that isn't portable to a zero-copy-cost digital realm. I'm not sure how you figure that. Its still a sale. You might want to read though how much case law there is all over the world that conflicts with that conclusion. Read that post, it has plenty of examples how it doesn't matter if its digital. Here is one in particular: In a 2016 Australian case regarding Valve's refund policy for Steam, Australia's High Court carefully examined whether computer games sold through Steam are goods (and therefore property and consumer rights apply to them) or services (and therefore no property or consumer rights or apply to them), and concluded that they are fully goods, and that Valve doesn't merely sell a license to use the software, but in-fact sells the software itself, and that whoever buys a game from Steam becomes owner of the software that they purchased. Australia's High Court concluded: "Each of Valve’s challenges to the applicability of the Australian Consumer Law fails. The conflict of laws provisions in the Australian Consumer Law did not essentially carve out an exception for conduct by foreign corporations like Valve governed by a different contractual proper law. Valve supplied goods (which are defined as including computer software)."

ethbr1 2y ago
It's incorrect to look at the concept of ownership from solely legal or solely technical perspectives, because reality is a joint application of both simultaneously. What point is legal prohibition if technical implementation is trivial? And what of legal requirements if technical implementation is impossible? The unwritten assumption girding physical ownership was "... and it's non-trivial and expensive to physically copy a book." With digital copying, that's no longer the case. Consequently, simply to maintain the same system the law would still need to change. Unfortunately, in the back and forth between extreme positions, publishers used this difference to argue that ownership was no longer financially possible and usher us into the realm of rent-only. PS: Valve maintains sufficient control of Steam-distributed apps that's a defensible position. A better case would have been GoG.

ethbr1 2y ago

It's incorrect to look at the concept of ownership from solely legal or solely technical perspectives, because reality is a joint application of both simultaneously. What point is legal prohibition if technical implementation is trivial? And what of legal requirements if technical implementation is impossible? The unwritten assumption girding physical ownership was "... and it's non-trivial and expensive to physically copy a book." With digital copying, that's no longer the case. Consequently, simply to maintain the same system the law would still need to change. Unfortunately, in the back and forth between extreme positions, publishers used this difference to argue that ownership was no longer financially possible and usher us into the realm of rent-only. PS: Valve maintains sufficient control of Steam-distributed apps that's a defensible position. A better case would have been GoG.