5 ms·

We need some kind of modern equivalent to the old proposed Digital Media Consumer's Rights Act but which protects people's rights to digital media they buy. The

We need some kind of modern equivalent to the old proposed Digital Media Consumer's Rights Act but which protects people's rights to digital media they buy. These should never be sold and then taken away with no compensation like this. We need a law that forces companies to treat digital files the same as a physical purchase. They can't take it away and have to allow people to resell and loan out as well. And in cases of online games where you can buy something, and then later they can ban you which deprives you of being able to use what you bought, that should come with requirements that the company must provide full compensation of the purchase price. It should also ban EULA's and TOS from defining these things as only licenses even though they are structured as a purchase in a store. I know it'll never happen with the people we have in government these days, and the anti-consumer organizations, like the ESA, that are out there now claiming things like running private servers for Minecraft is illegal and piracy. (Yes, they really said that. Despite the fact that Minecraft has always provided the server and allowed this for 15+ years)

EA-3167 3mo ago
They’ll be begging for it when they recreate the very piracy problem they were fleeing, but far worse.
- dopidopHN2 3mo ago
  Yeah. This time I'm not living the high seas. We seen what licensing ala Netflix and Spotify means artists.
  - wongarsu 3mo ago
    *leaving
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
hodgehog11 3mo ago
Not sure if you know this, but this is literally the Stop Killing Games movement. Despite the recent apparent setback as reported in the news, the organisers are in talks with EU MPs that are writing sweeping legislation to address this sort of thing across all digital mediums. You only need legislation like this to hold in one major market to make a big difference.
- throwaway85825 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - M95D 3mo ago
    Considering the kind of people that get voted into Parliament, I consider that a very good thing. I only consider true democracies those countries where citizens can force new legislation by national referendum, bypassing parliament. There are very very few countries that allow it, and even fewer where the requirements are low enough to actually allow it to happen. Anyway, back to the subject. If Stop Killing Games will ever be law, it will be in EU. We already have very nice things like GDPR, USB charging, and replaceable batteries (soon).
    - hodgehog11 3mo ago
      I think we know from using Athens of Ancient Greece as an example that true democracies of this kind are not a good idea at scale. Enough of the general public can be so easily swayed on a clearly catastrophic idea.
      - M95D 3mo ago
        Responsibility comes with practice. Switzerland is doing okay.
      - palata 3mo ago
        This is wrong. A "true democracy" is the system where you need to "sway" the most people on the catastrophic idea. The worst scenario is a totalitarian system where exactly one person can take the catastrophic decision on their own. Everything else is in-between. It does NOT mean that democracies cannot go wrong. Just that a functioning democracy represents the majority of the people, and we don't have a single system that can steadily represent more people than a democracy (by definition). It also does NOT mean that democracies are not frustrating: when you are in the minority, obviously it is frustrating. And of course you will be in the minority from time to time.
himata4113 3mo ago
We already have a pretty resilient solution called piracy.
acdha 3mo ago
I’d go with a simple proposal: if you use the word “buy” the seller is required to refund buyers if the seller’s action removes access (unlike, say, losing access to a CD or DVD after the disc is scratched). The most likely outcome is that they’d change their storefronts to use the word “rent” but that’s a good outcome (it encourages buyers to accurately understand what they’re paying for) and it would allow other options like releasing an old game without DRM prior to killing servers.
- TheGRS 3mo ago
  I agree, the "buy" on a streamable product implies that as long as the company is solvent and they have the same overall streamable products available, then your "purchase" should always be upheld. In a an ideal world, if you bought the title then you'd have the ability to download it locally. I understand the licensing is a main driver of taking titles down, but these agreements are completely opaque to the customer at the time of purchase.
- bsimpson 3mo ago
  Include "add" and other potential weasel words
- wat10000 3mo ago
  I’d take it farther. If you knew, or a reasonable person should have known, that this sort of thing might happen (for example, because you signed a time-limited licensing agreement), then you’ve lied for financial gain. The legal term for that is “fraud” and it’s a criminal act. Prosecute it.
- qingcharles 3mo ago
  California Assembly Bill 2426 (AB 2426), effective 1 January, 2025. Expands the state's false advertising laws to explicitly ban companies from using words like "buy," "purchase," "own," or "keep" if what the customer is actually getting is a revocable digital license governed by shady T&Cs.
- qingcharles 3mo ago
  The law is changing (very, very slowly): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754782
nradov 3mo ago
We need consumer boycotts, not legislation. I find it hilarious that people would continue to buy (or license) content from a trash company like Sony after they were caught literally installing rootkits on customer computers. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
- ryandrake 3mo ago
  > We need consumer boycotts, not legislation. We need both. 'Buyer Beware' and 'The invisible hand' are necessary but insufficient to correct corporate bad behavior.
- cogman10 3mo ago
  Yes, let's boycott sony and go to... sega? There's only 3 major companies at this point in the home entertainment system market. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Microsoft has indicated they want to get out. When so few companies have so much control over a market boycott becomes pointless as you are basically saying "You need to give up a product you like and there is no real alternative". That means we need regulation, legislation, and enforcement. We need better antitrust enforcement and tweaks to to give it more teeth. We should be seeing more corporate breakups. Memory is in the same boat. There's only 3 major companies producing most of the RAM and they've repeatedly colluded to raise prices.
HiPhish 3mo ago
> I know it'll never happen with the people we have in government these days, and the anti-consumer organizations, like the ESA, that are out there now claiming things like running private servers for Minecraft is illegal and piracy. (Yes, they really said that. Despite the fact that Minecraft has always provided the server and allowed this for 15+ years) I really do not understand how it is not considered treason to give blatantly false testimony to lawmakers. Lawmakers, even the most upstanding and righteous ones, have to rely on the testimony of experts and if those experts can just make up whatever they want then democracy is not worth shit when it can be circumvented like that.
jMyles 3mo ago
Fortunately, we don't need a policy solution or to convince already-bought-and-paid-for-lawmakers to side with justice over profits. Solutions for liberating media of all kinds, from P2P file sharing to DRM-stripping, have roundly and soundly outpaced all this other corporate knowledge control nonsense at every turn since the invention of the printing press. All we need to do is make the simple choice to stop recognizing ownership of ideas (and thus, bytes) as a conceptually coherent phenomenon, and carry on. I'm a full-time professional bluegrass musician, and like most of my peers, I release all of my material DRM-free. I invite you to get my new record from IPFS or Bit Torrent, and to pin/seed/encourage your friends to steal it also: https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/Release:QmUWtV7fG1K9pM5TQSf5c38vmh9MtU6p3VNQuzaxvYr6ep https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/Release:QmUWtV7fG1K9pM5TQSf5c38v...
supertroop 3mo ago
There’s only one party fighting for things like this and they are in the minority. Funny how people that cry about politics on hacker news don’t understand how it directly affects them until their digital media is no longer their property. Sad that’s what it takes.
standardUser 3mo ago
The list of legislation we need is getting very big very fast, but our Congress is dysfunctional and the president only cares about the SAVE act. Even when we've had a functional Congress, most protections like these are written in favor of corporations and/or weakened by the next administration.
rustcleaner 3mo ago
Never buy, never subscribe, obtain by other means, until things change. Starve 'em!
yreg 3mo ago
> and then later they can ban you which deprives you of being able to use what you bought, that should come with requirements that the company must provide full compensation of the purchase price. Wouldn't this incentivize people to buy the game, play it and once they are done with it get banned to get a full refund? Maybe not a major problem since almost no centralised multiplayer games are one-time purchases.
Guvante 3mo ago
> These should never be sold and then taken away with no compensation like this. I don't think it is reasonable to bundle those ideas together. Companies renegading on their promise of perpetual access is not the same thing as a right to resell at all Right to resell is just going to warp game prices in a way that is bad for everyone After all how do new games compete with used games in that setup? Given the way engagement with games works there will basically always be spare copies Key sales already happen at below new game value at nearly all times and that is unused games > they can ban you which deprives you of being able to use what you bought Also not the same thing at all, bad behavior removing access and no refund is normal > that should come with requirements that the company must provide full compensation of the purchase price Ah yes cheating in an MMO results in a full refund of all money paid that wouldn't be abused by anyone
ksec 3mo ago
I quite like the idea of what Nintendo Switch 2 is doing and hopefully could take on with some guarantee. The new Switch 2 cartridge, I am buying the Key to access the media. Storing and transferring media cost is going down every single year. You can pass the physical media to anyone. And they will still be able to access it. And the copy of that data should be legally yours and be protected by law they can't remove it.

EA-3167 3mo ago

They’ll be begging for it when they recreate the very piracy problem they were fleeing, but far worse.

dopidopHN2 3mo ago
Yeah. This time I'm not living the high seas. We seen what licensing ala Netflix and Spotify means artists.
- wongarsu 3mo ago
  *leaving

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

hodgehog11 3mo ago

Not sure if you know this, but this is literally the Stop Killing Games movement. Despite the recent apparent setback as reported in the news, the organisers are in talks with EU MPs that are writing sweeping legislation to address this sort of thing across all digital mediums. You only need legislation like this to hold in one major market to make a big difference.

throwaway85825 3mo ago
[flagged]
- M95D 3mo ago
  Considering the kind of people that get voted into Parliament, I consider that a very good thing. I only consider true democracies those countries where citizens can force new legislation by national referendum, bypassing parliament. There are very very few countries that allow it, and even fewer where the requirements are low enough to actually allow it to happen. Anyway, back to the subject. If Stop Killing Games will ever be law, it will be in EU. We already have very nice things like GDPR, USB charging, and replaceable batteries (soon).
  - hodgehog11 3mo ago
    I think we know from using Athens of Ancient Greece as an example that true democracies of this kind are not a good idea at scale. Enough of the general public can be so easily swayed on a clearly catastrophic idea.
    - M95D 3mo ago
      Responsibility comes with practice. Switzerland is doing okay.
    - palata 3mo ago
      This is wrong. A "true democracy" is the system where you need to "sway" the most people on the catastrophic idea. The worst scenario is a totalitarian system where exactly one person can take the catastrophic decision on their own. Everything else is in-between. It does NOT mean that democracies cannot go wrong. Just that a functioning democracy represents the majority of the people, and we don't have a single system that can steadily represent more people than a democracy (by definition). It also does NOT mean that democracies are not frustrating: when you are in the minority, obviously it is frustrating. And of course you will be in the minority from time to time.

himata4113 3mo ago

We already have a pretty resilient solution called piracy.

acdha 3mo ago

I’d go with a simple proposal: if you use the word “buy” the seller is required to refund buyers if the seller’s action removes access (unlike, say, losing access to a CD or DVD after the disc is scratched). The most likely outcome is that they’d change their storefronts to use the word “rent” but that’s a good outcome (it encourages buyers to accurately understand what they’re paying for) and it would allow other options like releasing an old game without DRM prior to killing servers.

TheGRS 3mo ago
I agree, the "buy" on a streamable product implies that as long as the company is solvent and they have the same overall streamable products available, then your "purchase" should always be upheld. In a an ideal world, if you bought the title then you'd have the ability to download it locally. I understand the licensing is a main driver of taking titles down, but these agreements are completely opaque to the customer at the time of purchase.
bsimpson 3mo ago
Include "add" and other potential weasel words
wat10000 3mo ago
I’d take it farther. If you knew, or a reasonable person should have known, that this sort of thing might happen (for example, because you signed a time-limited licensing agreement), then you’ve lied for financial gain. The legal term for that is “fraud” and it’s a criminal act. Prosecute it.
qingcharles 3mo ago
California Assembly Bill 2426 (AB 2426), effective 1 January, 2025. Expands the state's false advertising laws to explicitly ban companies from using words like "buy," "purchase," "own," or "keep" if what the customer is actually getting is a revocable digital license governed by shady T&Cs.
qingcharles 3mo ago
The law is changing (very, very slowly): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754782

nradov 3mo ago

We need consumer boycotts, not legislation. I find it hilarious that people would continue to buy (or license) content from a trash company like Sony after they were caught literally installing rootkits on customer computers. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

ryandrake 3mo ago
> We need consumer boycotts, not legislation. We need both. 'Buyer Beware' and 'The invisible hand' are necessary but insufficient to correct corporate bad behavior.
cogman10 3mo ago
Yes, let's boycott sony and go to... sega? There's only 3 major companies at this point in the home entertainment system market. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Microsoft has indicated they want to get out. When so few companies have so much control over a market boycott becomes pointless as you are basically saying "You need to give up a product you like and there is no real alternative". That means we need regulation, legislation, and enforcement. We need better antitrust enforcement and tweaks to to give it more teeth. We should be seeing more corporate breakups. Memory is in the same boat. There's only 3 major companies producing most of the RAM and they've repeatedly colluded to raise prices.

HiPhish 3mo ago

> I know it'll never happen with the people we have in government these days, and the anti-consumer organizations, like the ESA, that are out there now claiming things like running private servers for Minecraft is illegal and piracy. (Yes, they really said that. Despite the fact that Minecraft has always provided the server and allowed this for 15+ years) I really do not understand how it is not considered treason to give blatantly false testimony to lawmakers. Lawmakers, even the most upstanding and righteous ones, have to rely on the testimony of experts and if those experts can just make up whatever they want then democracy is not worth shit when it can be circumvented like that.

jMyles 3mo ago

Fortunately, we don't need a policy solution or to convince already-bought-and-paid-for-lawmakers to side with justice over profits. Solutions for liberating media of all kinds, from P2P file sharing to DRM-stripping, have roundly and soundly outpaced all this other corporate knowledge control nonsense at every turn since the invention of the printing press. All we need to do is make the simple choice to stop recognizing ownership of ideas (and thus, bytes) as a conceptually coherent phenomenon, and carry on. I'm a full-time professional bluegrass musician, and like most of my peers, I release all of my material DRM-free. I invite you to get my new record from IPFS or Bit Torrent, and to pin/seed/encourage your friends to steal it also: https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/Release:QmUWtV7fG1K9pM5TQSf5c38vmh9MtU6p3VNQuzaxvYr6ep https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/Release:QmUWtV7fG1K9pM5TQSf5c38v...

supertroop 3mo ago

There’s only one party fighting for things like this and they are in the minority. Funny how people that cry about politics on hacker news don’t understand how it directly affects them until their digital media is no longer their property. Sad that’s what it takes.

standardUser 3mo ago

The list of legislation we need is getting very big very fast, but our Congress is dysfunctional and the president only cares about the SAVE act. Even when we've had a functional Congress, most protections like these are written in favor of corporations and/or weakened by the next administration.

rustcleaner 3mo ago

Never buy, never subscribe, obtain by other means, until things change. Starve 'em!

yreg 3mo ago

> and then later they can ban you which deprives you of being able to use what you bought, that should come with requirements that the company must provide full compensation of the purchase price. Wouldn't this incentivize people to buy the game, play it and once they are done with it get banned to get a full refund? Maybe not a major problem since almost no centralised multiplayer games are one-time purchases.

Guvante 3mo ago

> These should never be sold and then taken away with no compensation like this. I don't think it is reasonable to bundle those ideas together. Companies renegading on their promise of perpetual access is not the same thing as a right to resell at all Right to resell is just going to warp game prices in a way that is bad for everyone After all how do new games compete with used games in that setup? Given the way engagement with games works there will basically always be spare copies Key sales already happen at below new game value at nearly all times and that is unused games > they can ban you which deprives you of being able to use what you bought Also not the same thing at all, bad behavior removing access and no refund is normal > that should come with requirements that the company must provide full compensation of the purchase price Ah yes cheating in an MMO results in a full refund of all money paid that wouldn't be abused by anyone

ksec 3mo ago

I quite like the idea of what Nintendo Switch 2 is doing and hopefully could take on with some guarantee. The new Switch 2 cartridge, I am buying the Key to access the media. Storing and transferring media cost is going down every single year. You can pass the physical media to anyone. And they will still be able to access it. And the copy of that data should be legally yours and be protected by law they can't remove it.