[nfw2]

> Anything that you BUY needs to be your property.

This is obviously absurd as a universal rule. If I "buy" a night in a hotel room, I should own the hotel room? If I order a taxi, I should own the taxi? If I ride a bikeshare e-bike across town, I should own the bike?

Whether rent is appropriate or exploitative for a certain product or industry is a fair question, but to say renting should not exist as a concept at all for anything just doesn't work.

[Groxx]

Digital sales overwhelmingly use "buy" as the term in their UI, not "rent". Rental is a separate thing, and I don't think roughly anyone is saying rentals should not exist in any form.

[mkozlows]

These days, they mostly don't. California passed a law that required clarity (good), and now most things accurately say "license" instead of "buy."

(Not universally, but in many cases.)

[meh2frdf]

This I think is fair, consumers generally have a very poor understanding of licensing.

Too many still think in the old days of buying physical goods, you 'buy' a tin of beans, they are now in all sense my beans.

I'm all for helping people distinguish, when something is a straight forward property transaction, or an agreement based on permisions, constraints and obligations ... a license.

[nfw2]

This is just pedantry, and incorrect pedantry at that. BUY does not always mean you gain ownership. You can BUY a license or a haircut and you don't own anything.

Are consumers confused in practice by what happens when they click "Buy" on the playstation store? Does anyone really thing Buy here means they will be able to download the game onto their computer and play it there?

Fine, pass a regulation that makes online stores change the word to license or whatever. Will that relieve your sense of persecution? Or would just you find another way to cast game publishers as the conniving evil empire (market control, collusion to reduce consumer options, etc.) because they aren't giving you what you want?

[PaulRobinson]

Most of the World understands the difference between buying a product and buying a service.

Games (and other digital media), are sold as products, not services, mostly.

TFA is arguing this should persist and not be replaced as games as (subscription/licensed rental), services. It argues the move to digital is being used by businesses to switch to a services model under the hood, and that this should be resisted and it should remain a product model.

> Are consumers confused in practice by what happens when they click "Buy" on the playstation store?

Demonstrably, provably: yes.

> Fine, pass a regulation that makes online stores change the word to license or whatever.

Why not make the store change what they sell from being a license and making it a product as the consumer expected?

[nfw2]

An online server is a service. People don't lose access to offline games, generally speaking.

[nfw2]

> Why not make the store change what they sell from being a license and making it a product as the consumer expected?

Because we have a free market not a command economy? Publishers can sell whatever they want

[Telaneo]

Then they can stop pretending and actually sell it as a service. What they're doing now is doing one thing (selling it as a product), while getting the benefits of the other (selling it as a service).

[nfw2]

That is what I suggested. The other poster said what you are suggesting shouldn't be allowed, not me.

[paulryanrogers]

> Publishers can sell whatever they want.

Indeed. They just can't commit fraud or false advertising.

[nfw2]

Using the word "Buy" to mean buy a license, then having an agreement where the details of the license are explained isn't fraud lol

[meh2frdf]

No not really.

When you bought a VHS of a movie, you purchased the video cassette hardware, but also a license which was bundled with that object.

That license explicitly had some constraints on it, such as not broadcasting the IP in a public setting, even calling out specific locations like oil rigs.

Distinguishing between products and service, isn't great, as neither are well defined, and end up back in the same debates.

[tikkabhuna]

You can pay for services and you may use the term “buy”, but it is clear you’re receiving a service, and a service in its nature is temporary.

Buy a night in a hotel, dinner in a restaurant, haircut, shoe shine. These are all services.

Buying of digital services like games, films, and music is an evolution of buying dvds, cds or records. There is an expectation that you now own something. I can dig out my dad’s old records and play them and pass them onto my children.

If media companies want to sell a license that has an expiry date, that’s fine, but it has to be explicitly communicated. Consumers have to be well informed about what they’re purchasing.

[matwood]

> I can dig out my dad’s old records and play them and pass them onto my children.

What if you lost or otherwise destroyed/damaged the record, should you still have access through some other means or be forced to buy it again?

[tikkabhuna]

I think that's on you. I'd expect it to be on me. If I bought another physical product (a bike, football, scissors, knives), I'd expect to buy a replacement if I couldn't fix it.

That's definitely a perk of digital media.

And for the record, I'm not against digital media. There are a ton of benefits. I think there just needs to be better communication of the expectations between producer and consumers. Reading this thread and seeing that California requires the use of "License" instead of "Buy" is a good example of emphasising the difference between paying for digital media and physical media.

[smelendez]

Yeah, I can’t actually think of any contracts besides media licenses that are fixed payment for access to a resource for an indeterminate length of time. It doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it.

[nfw2]

Access to an online server is clearly a service, hence the word "server"

[fizwidget]

The discussion is not just about online multiplayer games though, it’s about games in general. There is no good reason why buying a singleplayer offline game need be a “service”.

[nfw2]

There IS a reason they don't make it possible to download the game copies directly, which is it becomes trivially easy to perfectly replicate and distribute new copies online, which is not true of any physical good.

People who aren't overly-online forum denizens only care about this issue insofar as it affects them, and the only way it affects people in the real world is when they lose access to online games when the server shuts down. Offline games don't get access revoked in practice.

[_carbyau_]

> This is just pedantry, and incorrect pedantry at that. BUY does not always mean you gain ownership. You can BUY a license or a haircut and you don't own anything.

At the end of the day words have to mean something. It is not pedantry to simply discuss what a word or phrase means. There are false advertising laws for a reason.

To that end, I would argue you've never bought a haircut, you've paid for a service.

The issue at hand here is exactly that the word "buy" is used when discussing the appropriation of a licence for content that in practical terms, is still controlled by someone else.

Maybe there are technical reasons for this to be the case, but then maybe the word "buy" should not be used in this instance.

[meh2frdf]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)

[LocalH]

Words like "buy" "own" and "purchase" have a specific connotation. These licenses upend that.

I am part of the Rock Band video game community. That scene is covered in the use of "buy" "own" "purchase" terminology. Now, granted, Harmonix went above and beyond when it came to ensure they had solid licenses, so even though today they've been delisting DLC because their original license to distribute the songs to new customers has begun lapsing, they also went way above and beyond to ensure that people who bought content in the Rock Band 1 days would still be able to play them across the whole same-console library, so much so that anyone who bought RB1/2/3 content on either Xbox 360 or PS3 were able to also play those songs on Rock Band 4 on Xbone and PS4. I think there might have been a small fee in some instances, like when exporting disc content to newer games, but outside of that they went far beyond what most companies do when handling licensing (and this is music licensing, one of the most notoriously hairy forms of licensing that one can do).

These licenses are also re-downloadable by anyone who "bought" them, at least until the platforms entirely shut down the legacy console access for re-download of content that was paid for. Fortunately, we as a community also have all of it preserved without the DRM in preparation for the day when you can no longer even re-download content you paid for. There are also tools that let you copy the content files directly from your console (where possible with or without mods) and convert or decrypt them yourself.

[MyMemoryfails]

I think you misunderstood, the major issue is that companies are actually "renting", it's just at 100k words long terms of services where they redefine "purchase" as rental.

California has actually done something about this, you can longer claim that customers are "buying" when they're actually just renting.

If i claimed i sell a house for 500K but the in terms of sale redefine sale as rent the house for 500K and i can claim the property back anytime, that'd be crime yet it's somehow legal with digital goods.

[ForHackernews]

>i claimed i sell a house for 500K but the in terms of sale redefine sale as rent the house for 500K

Ironically this is almost how it works in England: https://homemove.com/content/what-is-leasehold-property-comp...

[ralferoo]

"almost" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here...

While the majority of flats are leasehold, by far the vast majority of property in England is freehold. Only a fifth is leasehold.

While technically a leasehold has a fixed term and at the end of the lease (usually starts at 99 years) the land owner technically owns the property, in reality this scares most people so usually when someone sells the property (usually while there's still at least 80 years left on the lease) you try to extend the lease again back to 90 years. So while it is possible for the lease to run out and people lose their property, it's usually something you'd be expecting when you took over the lease (and so you'd pay a correspondingly lower price for the property). While the lease is active, there's usually an annual fee from between 100 and 10000 pounds. Obviously, the higher this is, the lower the sale price of the property is likely to be.

Personally, I wouldn't touch leasehold with a bargepole, and unless you want to live in the centre of a city there's usually plenty of freehold property available so you don't need to go down the leasehold route.

[tikkabhuna]

Lots of leaseholds now start at 999 years.

It’s a weird system. The previous and current governments have been looking to modernise it.

[ralferoo]

Interesting. Do the longer ones have some provision for increasing in line with inflation? AFAIK the 99 year leases are usually for a fixed amount every year, which obviously shrinks in real terms over time, but given that you'd want to renew it every 10 years or so anyway, would probably be renegotiated to a fair market rate at that time.

[doctorpangloss]

players have options. they are welcome to wait for releases on GOG.

[MyMemoryfails]

Personally i only purchase DRM free games, but it doesn't still change that fact that major digital storefronts use misleading terms. Maybe physical disks would maintain popularity if customers knew they'd be renting the product for unknown period time instead of owning it.

It's easy to forget that average joe doesn't understand the consequences when we're on our own bubbles.

Edit: The media outrage when Sony removed 550 movies, indicates the customers don't still understand the terms of the sale. It wouldnt make any noises if customers knew they were renting it.

[nfw2]

As yes, the poor, ignorant average joe, who doesn't realize the game they buy on the PLAYSTATION store needs PLAYSTATION to work in order to play it. If only enough bloggers wrote enough articles to enlighten them, then they would join the mob and demand forever access to the games they play for 3 weeks then never play again.

[paulryanrogers]

Why carry water for billion dollar companies?

I can still play my brother's old PlayStation games on his OG PlayStation. They cannot be revoked arbitrarily, nor their music dropped or swapped out. This a feature, and we'd feel quite cheated if that happened. In fact we still go back to old games from time to time.

[nfw2]

I can still play the games I bought on the nintendo switch 8 years ago.

> Why carry water for billion companies?

All companies at a certain scale are billion dollar companies. Also, how much money a company has is unrelated to whether they violated consumer rights or not. But, tangentially, I do generally respect entities that fund creative endeavors moreso than I respect gamers who go online to bemoan how persecuted they are

[Telaneo]

Even if I only read a book once after buying it, it shouldn't turn into a rock just because I never intend to read it again.

[nfw2]

Have any of the books bought on Kindle turned into rocks or can their buyers read them again if they want to?

[wsve]

All your examples make clear to the customer that their access is temporary and conditional on their continued and ongoing payment, and that ownership of the good/service is retained by the seller.

On the other hand, "buying a game" is given the guise of ownership, despite true ownership still being retained by the seller, obscured by the fact you're making a one-time payment. It'd be reasonable if the terminology used was "rent" or "subscribe" to a game with a periodic payment, but that's not what's advertised.

It is deceiving, unnecessary, and anti-consumer.

[Ferret7446]

It is now in California, as they passed more "useless" regulation requiring digital "sales" to use different terminology than "buy", yet what people are asking for is clearly not what they want because as predicted this terminology enforcement doesn't change a thing.

Clearly, more thoughtless regulation will solve the problem this time.

[wsve]

Don't blame "regulation" on this, as if politicians do this because they're dogmatically "pro-regulation". That is not a real political stance, and it's childish to frame these bills in that manner.

California AB 2426 is a very deliberate and well considered bill, because it does exactly what it was designed to do: feign consumer protections, while leaving easy loopholes for those companies the bill protects. Those legislators who signed it did not have consumer protections in mind. Gavin Newsom is not interested in rocking the boat of corporate power, and neither are the lobbyists who pushed for that bill.

Don't blame "regulations". Blame, and vote out, the authors and signers, because they clearly do not have your interests in mind.

[nfw2]

Rent and Subscribe would NOT be clear because they imply ongoing payment. Consumers care mostly about if they are paying money once or on an ongoing basis, not abstract things like DRM.

[wsve]

> Rent and Subscribe would NOT be clear because they imply ongoing payment.

Yes, exactly. Video game distributors should be forced to choose a pricing model: "Sell", or "Rent". No more "License, until we or the DRM service decides to revoke access for any reason/we go out of business/the DRM service goes out of business".

[j1elo]

What is becoming absurd is the inability of so many people to extrapolate the most obvious conclusions instead of reaching the most obtuse and unhelpful ones, which arguably takes more effort to do.

In all your examples you are buying a service, isn't it obvious? the counterpart of "products" in the phrase "products and services". And yes, you are buying the right of being entitled to receive it. Ideally, you should be able to sell and transfer that right, or gift it to someone else. And if the service is eventually cancelled before being delivered, a full refund for the price should be issued.

[inigyou]

It's a Reddit effect. Short, quippy dismissals using a technicality attract upvotes, which reinforces the behavior, and the trained behavior carries over to other websites.