PlayStation lawyers have argued that "reasonable" players aren't being deceived by Sony's small print, which says digital game purchases don't grant ownership.
I’ll probably be jumped on for this but I think that’s a fair presentation of the transaction. When you buy software on physical media in stores the mechanisms are identical to purchasing non-licensed items, yet you’ve never owned those either. They have always been licenses.
Not true at all. I grew up in the age of dial up internet. When you bought software, you owned it. That media was yours to run on your hardware as you saw fit barring certain public/commercial uses, much like you’re not allowed to buy a DVD to make copies and distribute it on your own.
However, the expectation of exchanging money for ownership is about as old as money itself. If we were talking about, say, a blacksmith and their craft that you paid solid gold for, you would therefore be okay with the blacksmith showing up one day to reclaim their iron because you only purchased a license to his materials and not the ownership of the product? I don’t see that being acceptable to you. What makes software different, especially when it doesn’t require internet connectivity to actually function? I don’t need connectivity to access locally stored media, and fuck Sony for reaching into anyone’s account and deleting access to something they bought, full stop.
This is on the first page of the manual for Blizzard’s 1994 video game “Warcraft: Orcs & Humans” Does this sound like you own the game? Games have always had licences, they’re much more restrictive now, but they’ve always had licences.
A) That was physical media and so by default falls into the ownership system wherein possession is nine-tenths of the law. Neither Blizzard nor anyone else particularly cares about your Warcraft CD these days.
B) There is zero indication in that document that Blizzard has any plans or designs to walk into your house and rummage through your drawers to take away the game you bought from them. Additionally, all you did was reinforce what I said in my first post - barring reproducing the product for personal profit, do whatever the fuck you want with it is what they effectively said in legalese.
I completely agree it’s not a restrictive licence and people basically did whatever. The next page of the manual talks about the installation CD being used as a form of DRM. The game requires the installation CD be in your computer to launch the game. No-CD patches were very common at the time because of that and there was nothing Blizzard could really do about them. Licences and DRM have always existed, they just weren’t as restrictive in 1994.
The difference between “you used to own your games” and “games used to have less restrictive licences that were difficult to enforce” is trivial in everyday discussion. I only point it out because it explains the statements by Sony’s lawyers. Legally speaking, nobody has ever owned their games. Even SuperTuxKart has a licence.
It’s unfortunate that anything less than demanding CEOs be shot in the head gets downvoted, but that’s just online discussion today. I don’t like restrictive licences either. It’s why I use Linux and not Windows. Thankfully, people have a choice in the software they use and the games they play. I’m just not going to buy from Sony again. Problem solved.
Nobody is demanding Microsoft have a less restrictive licence for Windows. I don’t understand why the games Microsoft publishes are treated differently than the rest of their software.
I’ll probably be jumped on for this but I think that’s a fair presentation of the transaction. When you buy software on physical media in stores the mechanisms are identical to purchasing non-licensed items, yet you’ve never owned those either. They have always been licenses.
Not true at all. I grew up in the age of dial up internet. When you bought software, you owned it. That media was yours to run on your hardware as you saw fit barring certain public/commercial uses, much like you’re not allowed to buy a DVD to make copies and distribute it on your own.
However, the expectation of exchanging money for ownership is about as old as money itself. If we were talking about, say, a blacksmith and their craft that you paid solid gold for, you would therefore be okay with the blacksmith showing up one day to reclaim their iron because you only purchased a license to his materials and not the ownership of the product? I don’t see that being acceptable to you. What makes software different, especially when it doesn’t require internet connectivity to actually function? I don’t need connectivity to access locally stored media, and fuck Sony for reaching into anyone’s account and deleting access to something they bought, full stop.
No, it’s always been buying a license to use a copy of the software. Even before the internet.
If you had actually bought the software you’d have the source code and distribution rights.
This is on the first page of the manual for Blizzard’s 1994 video game “Warcraft: Orcs & Humans” Does this sound like you own the game? Games have always had licences, they’re much more restrictive now, but they’ve always had licences.
A) That was physical media and so by default falls into the ownership system wherein possession is nine-tenths of the law. Neither Blizzard nor anyone else particularly cares about your Warcraft CD these days.
B) There is zero indication in that document that Blizzard has any plans or designs to walk into your house and rummage through your drawers to take away the game you bought from them. Additionally, all you did was reinforce what I said in my first post - barring reproducing the product for personal profit, do whatever the fuck you want with it is what they effectively said in legalese.
You owned the licence for that physical copy of the game.
They just didn’t have a real way to revoke that license back then.
I completely agree it’s not a restrictive licence and people basically did whatever. The next page of the manual talks about the installation CD being used as a form of DRM. The game requires the installation CD be in your computer to launch the game. No-CD patches were very common at the time because of that and there was nothing Blizzard could really do about them. Licences and DRM have always existed, they just weren’t as restrictive in 1994.
The difference between “you used to own your games” and “games used to have less restrictive licences that were difficult to enforce” is trivial in everyday discussion. I only point it out because it explains the statements by Sony’s lawyers. Legally speaking, nobody has ever owned their games. Even SuperTuxKart has a licence.
It’s unfortunate that anything less than demanding CEOs be shot in the head gets downvoted, but that’s just online discussion today. I don’t like restrictive licences either. It’s why I use Linux and not Windows. Thankfully, people have a choice in the software they use and the games they play. I’m just not going to buy from Sony again. Problem solved.
Nobody is demanding Microsoft have a less restrictive licence for Windows. I don’t understand why the games Microsoft publishes are treated differently than the rest of their software.