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Plus interest makes no sense and is unnessary. Adjusting for inflation is so the person can buy the same movie at today's prices. At that point, the person is made more than whole already because they got to see the movie for free and they can chose to get it again.

In a thread about movies, it's perhaps more relevant to talk about how those two platforms handle movies.

In a browser, the top category on Google's "Movies & TV" is "New to buy or rent". The buttons on the page for a movie are labeled "$X.XX Buy" and "$X.XX Rent". In the Google TV app on my android phone, the two buttons are "Rent 4K // $X.XX" and "Buy 4K // $X.XX".

The splash images in the Apple TV app iOS say "Buy or rent it now.", and the buttons on the page for an individual movie are labeled "Buy $X.XX" and "Rent $X.XX".

There needs to be a carrot or stick to discourage this kind of practice. Perhaps when companies sue users for piracy, the valuation of what was "stolen" should be dependent on the nature of that company's sales practices. e.g. A company that merely "rents" media in a deceptive way would only be eligible to claim small fractions of a penny on the dollar were stolen when prosecuting a pirate. This way companies would be encouraged to respect user ownership rights if they want their own rights to be respected.

Apple does the same thing as Google, the button is only labeled "Get" for free apps, for paid apps it's labeled with the price.

Paid apps largely failed as a business model though (why would a consumer take a risk on buying a paid app that they can't try before they buy) so most apps that you pay for are free apps with IAP subscriptions... which I guess makes it a little more explicit that you're renting the app, for better or worse.

How about if it doesn't say RENT, it means you own it and first sale doctrine applies. We can't let them weasel and wordsmith their way out of things.

wow, sidestepping like that sucks.

Strangely, some kindle books actually do meet california criteria of "buy" by allowing a download of the book in .pdf or .epub format.

But when you go to buy them, it still seems to say:

  By placing an order, you're purchasing a content license & agreeing to Kindle's Store Terms of Use.

It is only later in your library that it quietly says:

  Download available in additional formats

I think that's a great effect, they are no longer lying. I don't want to see a button that contains all the terms. What else would you want?

Yet another victim of an overspecific law.

the power is not with the people (us) but with the people in power (corpos and politicians). We (they) can enact any laws we (they) want.

Power in numbers is with the people. Power in votes is with whoever has the votes. Power in money is with the billionaires. Power comes in many forms and isn't fungible.

Unless you’re in, say, Ohio, where the government will simply overrule decisive mandates with years of procedural nonsense https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/03/31/ohio-republican-la...

ok but who enforces the law?

If you haven’t been paying attention lately, laws are only as good as they are enforced and it has become obvious that the ruling class is not going to enforce laws against themselves.

The solution here is not something most people are willing to inconvenience themselves over

Laws are great and all. But what we really need is a massive boycott. Stop buying shit manufactured or sold by Sony for a year. That alone will probably force them to backtrack every single anti consumer decision they've made recently.

In democracy, power comes from demos. In capitalism, power comes from capital.

Demos doesn't have capital. People never had power. Whenever they've thought they won ... they just damaged position of someone powerful for someone even more powerful without even knowing it.

What makes you think that this is "as good as" buying when the original post itself demonstrate clearly that it's nowhere close to actually buying something?

Is there something in Apple or Amazon terms which say they can't under any circumstances deprive you of accessing the content you have bought with their "Buy" buttons? I don't see why you are trying to assign a difference between them and Sony here?

We have words like leases, licenses, or renting for a reason and they are not new.

The companies which shifted their business model to renting in the digital age have perpetuated the "buy" buttons to make their customers think the transaction was the same as when they purchased a physical media... but clearly, and it's by far not the first case, these companies will deprive their customers of their "purchase" for many reasons that shouldn't be any concern for someone who actually "bought" something... like the companies suddenly deciding to stop paying for the rights of the thing that they alledgly "sold" to you.

So just as clearly, theses were not actual purchases but just licenses, non-transferable, allegedly "perpetual" but unilaterally revocable at any time with no refund.

I really don't see why you seem to think there is anything hazy about this, or hard to delineate. This law seems to cover the cases in which these companies abuse the language in question, Amazon and Apple are not "selling" you anything digital, you acquire a pretty limited license on all of these services.

Buy only means buy if you can use the product as advertised after breaking all ties with the vendor.

Let's not broaden this definition in favor of the vendor.

Steam/Valve follow the law: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/11/24267864/steam-buy-purch...

I think many made the same assumption that I made: A movie can be withdrawn from iTunes or an eBook from Amazon, but if you already bought it you'll retain access, it's just that no new sales can be made.

Regarding BluRays, and to some extend DVDs, I'm in the same boat. I have season one of a TV show, but season two never made it to DVD and now it's locked away in the vaults of some production company, you can't even stream it. There are so many movies and shows that will just be lost in the future.

IANAL but I bet that:

- If the license terms include a section on termination, and termination is done in accordance with the license terms, it's fine legally.

- Licenses can be transferable but that doesn't make them non-terminable.

I could be wrong, though.

It's pretty crappy that we got to the point that overly simple actions (like clicking on buttons or breaking stickers on packages) can be considered accepting license terms. Is that really a "meeting of the minds"?

That is false. It is legal to copy materials that you own, provided you don't redistribute the copy, like for protection against loss. A notable exception of this is the USA DMCA. If, to make a copy, you have to break a copy protection scheme, then you are violating the DMCA.

The license isn't what takes away your permission to redistribute copies; copyright law does that by default. The license is only reminding you that it's not lifting that default, not granting you that permission.

Copying is neither here or there. There is an understanding that when you buy a book, you own the physical thing.

If I sell you a toaster and then remotely cause it to self-destruct, I owe you a new toaster.

Grandparent referenced "if buying isn't owning then copying isn't stealing". I would say that "if buying isn't owning, then stealing isn't stealing".

If a toaster is offered to sale to the public which the seller can remotely destroy at any time, and not pay anyone a cent, and the law upholds that, then it's morally fine to just walk out of their store with that toaster without paying.

yes, but it was (is?) in many places legal to copy Filmes and Musik albums as backup, and iff the original is lost you can very much sell the backup alongside with the license you did buy (kinda, it gets messy practically).

It only mattered that if you sell it you lose it, i.e. you can't buy 1 sell (or gift) 10.

Similarly in analog times this where not unilaterally cancelled licenses. Which are effectively nothing more then time limited licenses where you just don't know how long. (1: un

In law areas outside of copyright this kind of license cancellation terms are often seen as predatory, fraudulent and abusive practices. And _sometimes outright illegal no matter how well you communicated what the license/contract does_ before it was acquired (in some countries).

(1: unilateral cancellable without a brach of license/contract from you side and some other special edge cases to be more precise)

Which is the crux of the problem, not that it isn't attached to physical media, but that it can be cancelled in a mostly despotic manner and you (often) can't make (relevant) backups or similar to protect the availability of the medium either.

It’s not about transfer, it’s about being practically irrevocable.

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yes digital piracy was never stealing, but a mixture of contractual breach, copyright infringement and (illegally) causing financial damages through (illegally) causing lost sales.

Hence why you don't get tried for theft when you commit digital piracy. Which, as absurd as it might sound, sometimes (/in some cases) would be better to be tried for due to very unbalanced laws.

But also it should be pretty obvious that this isn't what people mean when they say "if buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing" and a intentionally misinterpretation of statements based by nitpicking formulations is neither contributing anything meaningful nor is it appreciated (in most situations).

I’m just collecting training data for my AI.

"you wouldn't copyright infringe a car" doesn't have the same ring to it

You wouldn't steal a baby

The proliferation of copies economically devalues the originals.

It really should be fines plus ALL money gained through the illegal activity. If you steal a car you don't get to pawn the stereo, give back the money gained and then drive off into the sunset.

> The fines need to be a standard percentage of income or the personal assets / freedom of officers needs to be on the line

This is the obvious solution to most problems but of course they're the ones writing the laws so it'd never happen in a trillion years.

I get it, but your advertising to it what you want it to be, not what it is.

When I was a PS3 guy I remember the prices in Playstation Store typically being $10 or more higher than what you could get physical copies for, and things never went on sale. Having one storefront for all game sales seems like an absolutely terrible deal for consumers.

Part of what I've always hated about consoles is the inevitable push toward an entirely new generation of hardware when the current hardware is more than capable.

The best games I've played in the last year would run on a PS4 and probably even a PS3 with a little optimization, yet we're already at the "end" of the PS5. It's so disingenuous. We should be squeezing everything we can out of the wonderful hardware we have today instead of chucking it for the new shiny thing, but instead we're force fed a new box, with a new exclusive title, with graphics you can barely distinguish from what we already have and more restrictions on what you can do.

That's one thing. The other is price. Consoles can be sold at a loss, particularly early in their 10-year cycle, when early on the loss is high, but close to the end of the cycle the loss is minimal, and so they appear much cheaper.

During college, before I switched to linux, the DRM packaged with Spore bricked my computer in the middle of a semester. That's what turned me off of PC gaming.

This is also why Steam hardware matters.

If something runs on a Steam Deck, you can be sure it will run on your >= Steam Deck-equivalent device.

> It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world.

It used to be a selling point of console indeed, however nowadays console are separated by Pro/Non-pro, different revisions and you aren't really guaranteed on how well your game is going to run unless you watch a Youtube let's play of the game you want.

"Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world"

Let me tell you, as someone that repairs a TON of XBox 360s, this comment is very, VERY wrong. The GPU isn't even the same revision between the same batch runs. Did you get Xenos? Zeus? Jupiter? That determined one set of things needed for install/refurbish. Is that a Valhalla motherboard in your hands? That just limited you to a very narrow and specific set of hardware you could utilize.

Oh and performance between all of those models varied WILDLY. Silicon lottery is a fucking JOKE on the XBox 360.

> GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64.

Video cards existed, but 3D accelerators didn't really catch on until the 3dfx Voodoo, which came out about the same time as the N64. Even Quake II which came out a year later still offered software rendering.

> Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't.

I'm only a single point of data, but I was a console gamer that transitioned to PC gaming, but that transition happened during the N64/PSX era. It was near the end of the PS2 cycle that I was full PC.

> Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows

Because prices are at all-time highs. I have a monster PC that I probably spent around $6,000 building, but with prices skyrocketing, it'd run me $10,000 to build it today. A few months ago, it would have been $11,000.

> Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base.

In the AAA world, this is true. So many gamers that only play Call of Duty, Fortnite, Minecraft, or a sports game. For CoD and the sports games, they reliably buy the latest release every year despite the lack of anything really being different.

But the Indie world is huge and full of innovation. Balatro, Stardew Valley, Disco Elysium, Slay the Spire, Cuphead, I could go on.

> People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.

I don't think that's true at all. Maybe for high-level play, or if the streamer has highly entertaining commentary, but otherwise definitely not true.

But back then you had to have a PC and experience with it to install drivers, install games, mess with configs etc.

The draw of consoles was the ease of use. N64 problem solving was just off/on

What PC GPU was in mainstream consumer use before the N64?

You'll likely see a lot more Steam Machine-like PCs because of this. SteamOS fixes most of the problems you mention. Price is the new normal and you should expect next gen consoles to come closer to it. It's not a bad deal anyway when you consider the bigger library, cheaper games, and no subscription required.

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine

Also isn't a huge (maybe the largest?) audience for gaming these days children playing games like Roblox and Minecraft and Fortnite etc? For whom it's parents buying the equipment, so unless you have a tech-savvy parent they're likely to just buy a console.

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The question is, when does the market that does have that access start to completely crowd out the market that doesn't have that access?

In a lot of the metro area where I live cloud gaming over 5G wireless is actually very feasible. I do it from time to time. I've tried it in a few other cities as well, with generally positive results.

There are some games that just don't work well over cloud streaming though.

Well Sony is actively working on that problem- the plebs in these internet-starved countries won’t be playing anyway, as with no optical drive in the future ps6 users are going to be tied to PSN which isn’t available on half the planet.

Jokes aside I do agree that streaming doesn’t work reliably for all game genres and client geographies, mostly due to latency

Retro gaming is an increasingly popular option, too. These days I have more fun messing with Amigas, C64s, and cheap emulation handhelds than big modern games.

Retro hardware prices have been going up fairly significantly though, especially for Amiga stuff.

Phone gaming with a USC-C display or simply cast to the TV, and Bluetooth remotes. It might not be as bad as it sounds. My phone has 12GB RAM, 256GB NVME SSD, a decent GPU and a dedicated AI chipset as well.

Sure, it won’t beat a tricked out gaming PC with some $4000 GPU in it, but it will probably be competitive with console gaming. Granted, the PS5 is 5-6 years old by now, but my phone has more power in every measure.

My “dream” everyday device is still a phone that docks with a display, keyboard and mouse, and magically transforms into a desktop OS. On the to mobile apps would allow access to the same data, but touch optimized instead.

These are basically different markets that only compete with each other because there are finite hours in the day to engage with media, not because they’re offering variations on the same thing.

It’s similar to comparing Netflix to the Criterion Streaming platform. Technically you’re doing the same thing, sitting on the couch watching a big screen, but the experience being pitched is a totally different one and the target customer doesn’t really overlap.

If cloud means AWS then probably, but I think the serious cloud gaming people are generally trying to get you connected by fiber to a data center in the same city.

Nvidia GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud Gaming, PlayStation Plus Premium, Boosteroid are modern options among others.

Boom! Big and tough enforcement, I like it.

Similarly, we should put in a law to force consumers who post bad reviews to prove they actually transacted with the business. If they can't, they have to go to every person who saw the review and personally retract it.

Can't figure out who saw it? Tough. It's up to you to figure out, or else it's illegal and they get 5000 years in prison for every view it got.

Has Sony yanked a game? I know they have delisted some but I have not heard of one ever being removed from a user’s library and couldn’t find a reported instance of that happening. Sony’s agreement with game publishers does not leave them the right to do this.

I do not think there is any online platform that can make such guarantees for movies.

Each disc contains the latest revocation list at the time of its creation. If you put in a disc with a newer revocation list, your player updates. Same thing was done on the Nintendo Wii.

The first one was 8 years ago, in the pre-Covid world.

My daughter went to watch that and walked out. To compare, she managed to make it through Cats.