[fivre]

Nobody gives a flying fuck whether the terms are legally accurate. This distinction is entirely already covered in the existing terms of service.

People are annoyed that they can pay for something (sometimes an essential identity service), be arbitrarily denied it, and have no recourse other than maybe getting lucky by writing a complaint post that gets traction and read by some human who can tell the abuse department they've fricked it.

Companies shouldn't be able to shift the burden of the negative aspects of running an online service (dealing with abuse) entirely onto society by offering no meaningful appeal process. Regulation isn't an appealing option, but companies have full well demonstrated that they aren't going to handle these cases unless forced to.

[squeaky-clean]

> People are annoyed that they can pay for something (sometimes an essential identity service), be arbitrarily denied it, and have no recourse other than maybe getting lucky by writing a complaint post that gets traction and read by some human who can tell the abuse department they've fricked it.

I think the reasoning for changing the verbiage from "buy" to something more truthful is because most people don't even know this is a thing. Outside of hacker news and gaming subreddits, how many people are actually aware that digital video games they've "bought" can easily be revoked? I don't believe the average person is aware.

[3np]

Words do go a long way and can make the distinction clear for potential customers.

As an example, in Sweden, a country with historically strong consumer-protection regulation, you are not allowed to market something as "gratis" (free) if you need to pay to receive it. You can say something is "included" or "receive X without additional cost when buying Y", but free needs to be truly free of cost. You are also not allowed to say "the [best/fastest/strongest]" etc without pointing to an independent party backing it up. Carlsberg gets around this with "probably the best beer in the world", for example. They would not be allowed to drop the "probably", and it would take more than some random magazine or website to address that.

It does make a real difference in businesses ability to manipulate consumer expectations.

I agree with OP that requiring "buy" to mean actual transfer of ownership without hooks would make a huge difference.

[tdrdt]

I am not saying people give a fuck it is legally accurate. But since nobody ever reads the terms and conditions this could help to give a quick understanding of what you are paying for.

Everybody knows that renting a car is different than buying a car.

[trompetenaccoun]

You're spot on, it might not fix the entire problem but it's a good start and can help waking people up.

This rent economy is horseshit. "You will own nothing and be happy". In reality we keep paying for things we never get to own, then one day have them arbitrarily taken away from us if the company feels like it. Remember how we used to buy things and then they were ours? Like the music we paid for. Now people have a subscription and when it ends your entire library gets deleted. I still don't understand how the majority of people actually signed up for this, it's a horrible deal that doesn't benefit them one bit.

[yunwal]

The music example is more acceptable though, because you don't pay a 1-time fee to own a song anymore.

When you "buy" a game, you pay a 1-time fee with the implicit calculation that you'll own that game for enough time for it to be worth the cost.

When you listen to a song on Spotify, there's no expectation that that song will be available next month, and it doesn't matter, since you didn't pay for the song.