5 ms·

The fight should never have been about physical vs digital, but about ownership. If I buy a game/movie/book/song, regardless of where or in what format, I shou

by paxys 3mo ago

The fight should never have been about physical vs digital, but about ownership. If I buy a game/movie/book/song, regardless of where or in what format, I should be able to: 1. Keep it forever without the risk of remote deletion. 2. Use it while offline, unless internet connectivity is strictly required for the experience. 3. Move it between my devices. 4. Backup and archive it. 5. Resell it. 6. Pass it on to my children. Beyond that I don't really care what the container for the bytes is. If the game isn't sold on a disc I can easily burn my own. Every publisher can offer all of this today, but they choose not to. And proprietary devices/formats means the free market isn't going to work in the consumer's favor. The only thing that can fix the problem is legislation.

pferde 3mo ago
Didn't you hear? Buying is not owning, according to these corporate criminals.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  In fact they said that buying is stealing. They also said piracy is stealing. So if there's no difference I'll go with the cheaper one, thanks.
  - jbstack 3mo ago
    You know there's something wrong with the system when the version you obtain for free is a superior product to the one you pay for.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      Just plain old artificial scarcity, a.k.a. capitalism.
- ferroman 3mo ago
  because you are not buying software. You buying rent
throwawayffffas 3mo ago
I mean can't you see why 4 and 5 are irreconcilable? I am all for 1-4 and 6. But reselling digital copies is silly.
- paxys 3mo ago
  > I mean can't you see why 4 and 5 are irreconcilable? I really can't. The only argument I see is "we can't allow it because every customer is a potential thief". What will enabling resale cause? Piracy? Well piracy is happening regardless. People who want to illegally download games can do it today in one click. Instead the piracy excuse is being used to restrict legal resale so you have no option but to pay the publisher's inflated sale price.
  - throwawayffffas 3mo ago
    Yeah but there is really no way to enforce a single resale other than extensive DRM measures, which is the whole thing we want to avoid. By allowing resale of digital copies outside of platforms all you get is essentially the complete repeal of intellectual property rights for digital media.
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    - fluffybucktsnek 3mo ago
      But, on the other hand, without IP, DRMs lose a lot of their power. Once the DRM is cracked, the protected data can be freely shared once more. The only usefulness for DRM in most industries would be preventing unauthorized copies in the first days.
  - Ajedi32 3mo ago
    I agree with you in principle, but from a practical perspective if you make piracy that trivial you'll get a lot more pirates, maybe even accidental pirates. I think as a compromise I'd be okay with some kind of license database (maybe blockchain-based, maybe not) that keeps track of who owns a legal copy of what. People reselling digital copies of copyrighted material would have to transfer ownership of that license to prove they're conducting legit business and not just minting new copies out of thin air.
kmeisthax 3mo ago
Yes, we all know it, but good luck finding a jurisdiction that will agree with you on this. One of the more galling aspects of the inevitable US-NATO[0] trade war is the fact that nobody is willing to reevaluate the legal underpinnings of US tech hegemony - namely, copyright and anticircumvention law. All the proposals for sovereign tech are really just "let's build more AI data centers". People like Cory Doctorow who have the actual way to play hardball with Trump - "let's get rid of anticircumvention and declare open season on AppleMobileFileIntegrity.kext" are sidelined as "IP thieves". Hell, even the Stop Killing Games people got brushed off by the European Commission with an excuse almost like "we can't mandate your game purchases work offline, that'd be stealing". The reason for this is pretty straightforward: the moves done in the 90s to ensure digital purchases meant no ownership were as much a product of Europe as it was the US. Actually, the vast majority of international copyright law is actually a European invention, and the US was the last holdout on things like copyright registration and fixed (as opposed to life-plus) terms. Europe spent centuries binding the world to the most extreme version of copyright imaginable, specifically to ensure developing countries would never be able to actually economically develop. Every country that has economically developed itself does so through a subsidy of IP theft. The Industrial Revolution was owned by England but stolen by America; and America itself wound up being stolen from by China, Japan, and South Korea. Economic development is not a game you win by playing by the rules, because the rules are designed to keep the winners on top. The entire debate over games preservation and ownership is downstream of the fact that the big American and European cultural industries are not financially viable without you renting your culture. The reason why the fight has focused on physical vs. digital is that it's the one battle we've been somewhat victorious on. Physical ownership has generally been treated as sacred: Microsoft tried using the Xbox One launch as a way to massively restrict discs, and it created a backlash so large Xbox never actually recovered from it. Sony in contrast had to boil the frog[1], and Nintendo wound up doing so more or less by accident[2]. And when game consoles have problems loading physical discs, it's still treated by console manufacturers as a bug rather than a feature. [0] In practice, the US vs. all of it's allies, including non-NATO ones. [1] They were clearly intending to kill off discs with the PS5, just from the industrial design alone, but didn't actually do it until mid-cycle when everyone's actually bought their consoles and thus the impact would be minimized. [2] It has been Nintendo policy since the 3DS to ban anyone who goes online with a duplicate cartridge ID. I don't think this was intended to poison the used market, but once cheap Switch flashcarts and means to clone cartridges became available, it absolutely did. The people using 3DS homebrew to load pirated games at least had to know what "public headers" meant in order to avoid getting banned.
andrewla 3mo ago
The problem is that the technology [1] to do this simply doesn't exist. I'd say the core of the problem is that copying a digital artifact is easy, is a solved problem. You simply copy the data that represents the artifact, and now you have another copy. *Deleting* data (and its cousin, *moving* data) is a nearly intractable problem. How can you verify that someone no longer has access to data that you gave them? The best we have is to have some sort of ownership token that is maintained in a shared store, and build a requirement that possession of that token is required to use the data. Even this is practically nearly intractable; you have to have some sort of "trusted" hardware or software that is responsible for validating the current possession of the ownership token before using the data. Physical media is another way of trying to solve this problem, especially if the physical media can somehow be verified and is exfiltration-proof. [1] I say "technology" here but really I strongly suspect that this is actually impossible given reasonable theoretical assumptions around what data means.
- Spivak 3mo ago
  You're trying to solve with technology a problem that lives in the abstract human world. Even the simplest possible case, you make a physical unique object that you define as conferring ownership to the person who possesses or controls it. Someone steals the object, now the person in possession of the object isn't the owner. There's this allure of trying to tie this abstract notion of ownership to a physical thing but it's breaks down immediately. It doesn't even work for physical objects. Automated enforcement of ownership rules is completely tangential to the actual problem you're running into. You own a physical book, you make a copy then sell the book. That's a copyright violation, no "verification" or whatever nonsense needed. What happened in regards to ownership in this case is already clear. Companies sure do like DRM but it's as much a pale imitation of ownership as anything else.
  - andrewla 2mo ago
    In all fairness, *I'm* not trying to solve anything with technology. I'm arguing that it *can't* be solved with technology.
- pessimizer 3mo ago
gozucito 3mo ago
Nintendo Gamekeys check all of these boxes save one. Namely 1,2,3,5 and 6. 1. Keep it forever without the risk of remote deletion. 2. Use it while offline, unless internet connectivity is strictly required for the experience. 3. Move it between my devices. 5. Resell it. 6. Pass it on to my children. No backup and archive is the exception. I can live with that. We'll see if Sony and Microsoft follow Nintendo or not.
- frollogaston 3mo ago
  It's a decent compromise, but it does still rely on Nintendo holding up their end, including providing the game files for download.
- choo-t 3mo ago
  You need to be online and Nintendo servers to still probide you the file tied to the uID of the cartridge for that. And Nintendo can remote delete your files, ban your uID or even disable your device. And GameKey are tied to a specific hardware that will be discontinued in the future.
frollogaston 3mo ago
It is basically about physical vs digital because these ownership problems are tied to the copy being digital, including on Steam. In theory you could have a digital copy that guarantees transferability like with Nintendo, but even then it'd be a promise they have to keep along with more technical complexity that could break it. Edit: Or there are DRM-free copies, but there are good reasons that's only ever done for very old games like on GOG.
gameshot911 3mo ago
If I buy a game/movie/book/song, regardless of where or in what format, I should be able to: If I produce a game/movie/book/song, regardless of where or in what format, I should be able to... dictate all the terms upon which I agree to sell it. You have the right to agree to those terms, or not.
- vanderZwan 3mo ago
  So where do either of you lie on the "human rights vs property rights" spectrum? Because that's the real discussion to be had here. To quote Cory Doctorow: > But when it comes to a "post-politics that is neither right nor left," the definition I turn to most often comes from science fiction writer Steven Brust, who once told me: > "Left" and "right" have had the same meaning since the French Revolution. If you want to know if someone is on the left or the right, ask them, "What is more important: human rights or property rights?" If they say "Property rights are a human right," then they are on the right. > That's it. That's the crux. If you think that property rights are a tool for achieving human rights, then you're on the left. You might support the right of farmers to block attempts to expropriate them via eminent domain in order to build a data center, or the right of people to not have their homes or devices searched by cops, or a library's right to own and archive digital books, even if the publishers insist that ebooks are never "sold," merely "licensed." https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/08/wilhoitian/#human-rights-v-property-rights https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/08/wilhoitian/#human-rights-...
- greiskul 3mo ago
  Copyright is not a natural right. So in your ancap ideal, producers are not getting anything, why would I sign a contract with them if I can just copy it?

by paxys 3mo ago

pferde 3mo ago

Didn't you hear? Buying is not owning, according to these corporate criminals.

inigyou 3mo ago
In fact they said that buying is stealing. They also said piracy is stealing. So if there's no difference I'll go with the cheaper one, thanks.
- jbstack 3mo ago
  You know there's something wrong with the system when the version you obtain for free is a superior product to the one you pay for.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    Just plain old artificial scarcity, a.k.a. capitalism.
ferroman 3mo ago
because you are not buying software. You buying rent

throwawayffffas 3mo ago

I mean can't you see why 4 and 5 are irreconcilable? I am all for 1-4 and 6. But reselling digital copies is silly.

paxys 3mo ago
> I mean can't you see why 4 and 5 are irreconcilable? I really can't. The only argument I see is "we can't allow it because every customer is a potential thief". What will enabling resale cause? Piracy? Well piracy is happening regardless. People who want to illegally download games can do it today in one click. Instead the piracy excuse is being used to restrict legal resale so you have no option but to pay the publisher's inflated sale price.
- throwawayffffas 3mo ago
  Yeah but there is really no way to enforce a single resale other than extensive DRM measures, which is the whole thing we want to avoid. By allowing resale of digital copies outside of platforms all you get is essentially the complete repeal of intellectual property rights for digital media.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - fluffybucktsnek 3mo ago
    But, on the other hand, without IP, DRMs lose a lot of their power. Once the DRM is cracked, the protected data can be freely shared once more. The only usefulness for DRM in most industries would be preventing unauthorized copies in the first days.
- Ajedi32 3mo ago
  I agree with you in principle, but from a practical perspective if you make piracy that trivial you'll get a lot more pirates, maybe even accidental pirates. I think as a compromise I'd be okay with some kind of license database (maybe blockchain-based, maybe not) that keeps track of who owns a legal copy of what. People reselling digital copies of copyrighted material would have to transfer ownership of that license to prove they're conducting legit business and not just minting new copies out of thin air.

kmeisthax 3mo ago

Yes, we all know it, but good luck finding a jurisdiction that will agree with you on this. One of the more galling aspects of the inevitable US-NATO[0] trade war is the fact that nobody is willing to reevaluate the legal underpinnings of US tech hegemony - namely, copyright and anticircumvention law. All the proposals for sovereign tech are really just "let's build more AI data centers". People like Cory Doctorow who have the actual way to play hardball with Trump - "let's get rid of anticircumvention and declare open season on AppleMobileFileIntegrity.kext" are sidelined as "IP thieves". Hell, even the Stop Killing Games people got brushed off by the European Commission with an excuse almost like "we can't mandate your game purchases work offline, that'd be stealing". The reason for this is pretty straightforward: the moves done in the 90s to ensure digital purchases meant no ownership were as much a product of Europe as it was the US. Actually, the vast majority of international copyright law is actually a European invention, and the US was the last holdout on things like copyright registration and fixed (as opposed to life-plus) terms. Europe spent centuries binding the world to the most extreme version of copyright imaginable, specifically to ensure developing countries would never be able to actually economically develop. Every country that has economically developed itself does so through a subsidy of IP theft. The Industrial Revolution was owned by England but stolen by America; and America itself wound up being stolen from by China, Japan, and South Korea. Economic development is not a game you win by playing by the rules, because the rules are designed to keep the winners on top. The entire debate over games preservation and ownership is downstream of the fact that the big American and European cultural industries are not financially viable without you renting your culture. The reason why the fight has focused on physical vs. digital is that it's the one battle we've been somewhat victorious on. Physical ownership has generally been treated as sacred: Microsoft tried using the Xbox One launch as a way to massively restrict discs, and it created a backlash so large Xbox never actually recovered from it. Sony in contrast had to boil the frog[1], and Nintendo wound up doing so more or less by accident[2]. And when game consoles have problems loading physical discs, it's still treated by console manufacturers as a bug rather than a feature. [0] In practice, the US vs. all of it's allies, including non-NATO ones. [1] They were clearly intending to kill off discs with the PS5, just from the industrial design alone, but didn't actually do it until mid-cycle when everyone's actually bought their consoles and thus the impact would be minimized. [2] It has been Nintendo policy since the 3DS to ban anyone who goes online with a duplicate cartridge ID. I don't think this was intended to poison the used market, but once cheap Switch flashcarts and means to clone cartridges became available, it absolutely did. The people using 3DS homebrew to load pirated games at least had to know what "public headers" meant in order to avoid getting banned.

andrewla 3mo ago

The problem is that the technology [1] to do this simply doesn't exist. I'd say the core of the problem is that copying a digital artifact is easy, is a solved problem. You simply copy the data that represents the artifact, and now you have another copy. *Deleting* data (and its cousin, *moving* data) is a nearly intractable problem. How can you verify that someone no longer has access to data that you gave them? The best we have is to have some sort of ownership token that is maintained in a shared store, and build a requirement that possession of that token is required to use the data. Even this is practically nearly intractable; you have to have some sort of "trusted" hardware or software that is responsible for validating the current possession of the ownership token before using the data. Physical media is another way of trying to solve this problem, especially if the physical media can somehow be verified and is exfiltration-proof. [1] I say "technology" here but really I strongly suspect that this is actually impossible given reasonable theoretical assumptions around what data means.

Spivak 3mo ago
You're trying to solve with technology a problem that lives in the abstract human world. Even the simplest possible case, you make a physical unique object that you define as conferring ownership to the person who possesses or controls it. Someone steals the object, now the person in possession of the object isn't the owner. There's this allure of trying to tie this abstract notion of ownership to a physical thing but it's breaks down immediately. It doesn't even work for physical objects. Automated enforcement of ownership rules is completely tangential to the actual problem you're running into. You own a physical book, you make a copy then sell the book. That's a copyright violation, no "verification" or whatever nonsense needed. What happened in regards to ownership in this case is already clear. Companies sure do like DRM but it's as much a pale imitation of ownership as anything else.
- andrewla 2mo ago
  In all fairness, *I'm* not trying to solve anything with technology. I'm arguing that it *can't* be solved with technology.
pessimizer 3mo ago

gozucito 3mo ago

Nintendo Gamekeys check all of these boxes save one. Namely 1,2,3,5 and 6. 1. Keep it forever without the risk of remote deletion. 2. Use it while offline, unless internet connectivity is strictly required for the experience. 3. Move it between my devices. 5. Resell it. 6. Pass it on to my children. No backup and archive is the exception. I can live with that. We'll see if Sony and Microsoft follow Nintendo or not.

frollogaston 3mo ago
It's a decent compromise, but it does still rely on Nintendo holding up their end, including providing the game files for download.
choo-t 3mo ago
You need to be online and Nintendo servers to still probide you the file tied to the uID of the cartridge for that. And Nintendo can remote delete your files, ban your uID or even disable your device. And GameKey are tied to a specific hardware that will be discontinued in the future.

frollogaston 3mo ago

It is basically about physical vs digital because these ownership problems are tied to the copy being digital, including on Steam. In theory you could have a digital copy that guarantees transferability like with Nintendo, but even then it'd be a promise they have to keep along with more technical complexity that could break it. Edit: Or there are DRM-free copies, but there are good reasons that's only ever done for very old games like on GOG.

gameshot911 3mo ago

If I buy a game/movie/book/song, regardless of where or in what format, I should be able to: If I produce a game/movie/book/song, regardless of where or in what format, I should be able to... dictate all the terms upon which I agree to sell it. You have the right to agree to those terms, or not.

vanderZwan 3mo ago
So where do either of you lie on the "human rights vs property rights" spectrum? Because that's the real discussion to be had here. To quote Cory Doctorow: > But when it comes to a "post-politics that is neither right nor left," the definition I turn to most often comes from science fiction writer Steven Brust, who once told me: > "Left" and "right" have had the same meaning since the French Revolution. If you want to know if someone is on the left or the right, ask them, "What is more important: human rights or property rights?" If they say "Property rights are a human right," then they are on the right. > That's it. That's the crux. If you think that property rights are a tool for achieving human rights, then you're on the left. You might support the right of farmers to block attempts to expropriate them via eminent domain in order to build a data center, or the right of people to not have their homes or devices searched by cops, or a library's right to own and archive digital books, even if the publishers insist that ebooks are never "sold," merely "licensed." https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/08/wilhoitian/#human-rights-v-property-rights https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/08/wilhoitian/#human-rights-...
greiskul 3mo ago
Copyright is not a natural right. So in your ancap ideal, producers are not getting anything, why would I sign a contract with them if I can just copy it?