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by HeuristicsCG 629 days ago
But you bought a license to use the game. If you had truly bought the game you would be within your legal right to resell it (via copying to 100 people), which you are not.
8 comments

>If you had truly bought the game

I think this is the point. We want to truly buy with a Buy action, and license or subscribe with License and Subscribe actions. I'm sure people would be mad even if a Licensed or Subscribed item would cease to work, but it's more honest, than saying that someone Bought something.

If I buy a book, that does not give me the right to print 100 copies of the book and sell them. Indeed if I buy a lawnmower, that does not give me the right to make 100 identical copies and sell them. The right to manufacture something is not a fundamental part of purchasing an individual item.
If I can't make copies I don't own it, is it my book or not?
You bought one license to the game which should be resellable exactly once by the purchaser.
I like the distinction - pirating isn't stealing, licensing isn't buying. Clear and concise.
In the physical world you buy physical copies of things. Certainly in the digital world, you could buy digital copies.
I challenge you to find me a major online store where a game's page says you are only buying a license. I just went to https://store.steampowered.com/app/582010/Monster_Hunter_Wor... and the first link says "Buy Monster Hunter: World". By every indication, I'm buying it in the same sense I buy a physical book from an online bookseller.

Now, fortunately, it's illegal to mislead customers that way.

Just like when you buy a book you’re allowed to photocopy it and sell the copies?
No, like when you buy a book and the vendor isn't allowed to come into your house and take it away from you with no refund and no recourse.

Creating a copy is violation of copyright. Owning a book, reading it, then reselling the copy you own is not.

'Buying' digital goods nowadays means the vendor can take the goods away from you at any time, for any reason, with zero compensation, and absolutely no possible way to recover said goods.

> Creating a copy is violation of copyright

Correction: creating a copy that doesn't follow fair use requirements, is a violation of copyright.

Buying a book means buying the paper the book is printed on, the intellectual content (text) is not bought. You are allowed to resell the paper. And you are in fact not buying a license to use a book when you buy a book, you are literally buying the actual physical book.
If you were buying the paper, then two books of the same page count (even if those pages were blank) would be the same price and interchangeable. They are not. Likewise if you were paying for the paper, then a book with no paper, such as an audiobook, would be free. Again it is not. You are buying some form of media that contains the intellectual content.
that's like saying if you bought a title to a bridge you would be within your legal right to resell it (via copying the title 100 times with a photo copier).

it's all just whatever people agree upon is the correct thing to do, and people don't agree that what you're saying is the correct thing to do.

>people don't agree that what you're saying is the correct thing to do.

Other than the current written law (which is very, very, influenced by corporate lobbyists), how are you coming to this conclusion?

i wasn't talking about written law, i was talking about what people agree with. the law is something separate from that.