Comment on Reminder that you do not own digital games

• wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What? That’s explicitly false. Grab nearly any instruction booklet for physical media, at least for any from 1990 or later. There are explicit sections laying out that you have licensed the content. 35 years ago.

  In another comment on this post, someone pointed out that IBM began software licensing in the 50s. So… 75 years ago.

  How far back are you going here?

  For stuff like game carts/discs, VHS, and DVDs they simply had no way of enforcing the license terms, and the terms much more often included clauses for transference (lending, resale).

  By law, it was almost always a license. That was the entire push behind the old attempts to criminalize backup devices and emulation (the bleem! case is good to read up on).

  No arguments about how things worked out in day to day life, but a lot of shit was far more of a legal grey area that no one cared to persue. It wasn’t as much of a difference of legal rights.

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  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Books can’t say “by buying this book, nuh uh, you secretly agreed to blah blah blah.”

    That shit got thrown out a century ago. Fuck off making excuses for corporate bastards in a new medium.

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• BorgDrone@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That’s the difference between license and owning.

  No, when you own a game, you can make copies and sell them. That is because owning the game means you own the copyright to the game.

  If you are not the owner of the IP (which you aren’t, unless you own the company that made the game), then the only way to legally play the game is for the actual owner to provide you with some kind of license. If you don’t have a license then the default copyright rules apply which means you aren’t legally allowed to have or play a copy.

  Your license is also limited and doesn’t allow you to ‘do whatever you want’. Try selling copies and see how quickly you get sued. You can’t even do what you want with your single copy. Go buy a bunch of physical games and start a game rental business. Or buy a bunch of physical games and open a game cafe where people can play ‘your’ games. Your license doesn’t allow you to do that.

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  • Wolf@lemmy.today ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think the confusion comes about from the different meanings of the world “own”. When you buy a book it comes with an implied personal use license to the contents of the book. I think most people are aware that you aren’t allowed to make copies of the book and sell those copies. You do “own” the physical copy though. You can do whatever you want with it besides copy it and sell the copies. Technically you aren’t allowed to even make a physical copy for personal backup purposes, but that does typically fall under fair use. So while it’s still breaking copyright rules, you aren’t likely to be prosecuted for it.

    The same is true with software unless some other license is used (ex GPL) except, with software you are allowed to make 1 copy for the purpose of archiving the software in case it is damaged or lost. You must destroy or transfer your backup copy if you ever decide to sell, transfer or give away your original valid copy. It is not legal to sell a backup copy of software unless you are selling it along with the original.

    The DMCA circumvented this by making it illegal to break encryption in order to make a backup. So while you technically still have the right to make the copy, breaking encryption in order to do so is illegal.

    All that being said, if you buy a DRM free copy of a game, in theory you ‘own’ it in the same way you would own any other piece of non-encrypted software. You could legally make a backup and even sell the game to someone else as long as you deleted your copy and any backups at the same time.

    That’s as close to ‘owning’ a piece of copyrighted material as you are ever going to get. So while you don’t ‘own’ the IP, you do ‘own’ your copy along with the implied license. That is again assuming the game doesn’t come with a license that explicitly states you aren’t allowed to copy or sell it.

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    • BorgDrone@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s as close to ‘owning’ a piece of copyrighted material as you are ever going to get.

      Not true at all. Pretty much all of us own loads of copyrighted material, as in actually own. For example: every single photo you take is your intellectual property.

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      • Wolf@lemmy.today ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Clearly I was referring to copyrighted material you don’t own the copyright to, but sure.

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  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I own every book on my shelf. That copy is not the same as copyright. Grow up.

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    • BorgDrone@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Exactly. You own the physical paper, you don’t own the text on that paper, you only have a license to it.

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      • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        No. I own that copy. It’s not a license to anything. I own it. It’s mine. That’s what the money was for.

        Don’t play corporate word games with concepts as basic as having things.

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  • BrikoX@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There are limitations of what you can do with your copy that you own, but the laws that apply to them are different than those of digital games. By design all the protections phycial goods had were removed for digital goods by the same companies. That’s why ownership is dead.

    By law I can trade or sell my copy of a physical game to anyone I want. Read en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine.

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    • BorgDrone@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      First sale doctrine gives you some rights, but it doesn’t give the all same rights you would have for any other physical object that doesn’t include copyrighted work.

      If I buy 100 chairs, I’m free to start a chair rental business. If I buy 100 copies of a game, I cannot start renting them out without permission from the actual owner of the game.

      The fact that the law entitles you to a slightly broader license doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s still just a license and not ownership. The only thing you own is the physical media (e.g. the plastic disc) not the contents of that disc.

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      • BrikoX@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        It’s false equivalency. Do you own a chair design or just a physical chair? Do you own a physical painting you bought (protected by the same laws as physical games)?

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    • BorgDrone@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      First sale doctrine gives you some rights, but it doesn’t give the all same rights you would have for any other physical object that doesn’t include copyrighted work.

      If I buy 100 chairs, I’m free to start a chair rental business. If I buy 100 copies of a game, I cannot start renting them out without permission from the actual owner of the game.

      The fact that the law entitles you to a slightly broader license doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s still just a license and not ownership. The only thing you own is the physical media (e.g. the plastic disc) not the contents of that disc.

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  • TomAwezome@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The second-hand videogame market will always exist, even if the license when you bought the game doesn’t give you explicit permission to sell your copy. This probably isn’t going to change any time soon either

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    • BorgDrone@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      With physical games the disc or cartridge acts as your license key, which they allow you to sell to another person. Doesn’t mean they couldn’t have sold you a non-transferable license, it only means they chose not to. Probably because it wouldn’t be cost-effective to do so.

      Also, just because you can do something doesn’t make it legal.

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      • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        With books and older non-unique registration code games it is explicitly legal to sell them second, third, etc hand.

        At least in the EU and UK where those overly restrictive licenses have been declared ineffective. Maybe in the US it’s just another personal freedom sacrificed for freedom of capital.

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