When I buy a film on disk, I have a reasonable expectation that I own the film and can play it as long as I wish. Why should it be different just because I bought it in a different format?
I hope consumer right groups and maybe the EU can crack down on this clear abuse of "wording".
They already did, EU has ruled multiple times that you should be allowed to re-sell your digital content. Companies keep being brought to court over it and losing consistently. In spite of that, I don't understand how Steam and other digital stores haven't been forced to implement this yet.
Depending on what limits can be imposed on the re-selling, I've always been afraid that laws like this could potentially be quite dangerous for digital goods markets.
If we would apply the First Sale doctrine in the fullest to digital content, secondary marketplaces would pop-up where people just rented games by the hour instead of purchasing them. With the transaction costs being really low, and the utilisation rate for many games being fairly low, this seems like a no brainer.
There are important differences between physical content and digital content that need to be considered.
First sale in the US already has something to deal with this.
17 USC 109(a) is what most people think of when they talk of the first sale doctrine in the US. That's the part that says that owner of a particular lawfully made copy "is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord".
Renting is included under "otherwise dispose of the possession".
What is less well known is 17 USC 109(b)(1)(A). That carves out an exception for copies of sound recordings of musical works and copies of computer programs ("including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program"). The exception prohibits "for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage" disposing of or authorizing disposal of possession of that copy by "ental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending", unless authorized by the copyright owner.
So for programs, first sale allows selling copies but not renting them (same for musical recording). Hence, the reason you saw back in the CD days many places selling used music CDs and used software CDs, but not many selling rentals of those. (There were software rental stores, but they were not operating legally).
There is also exception to the exception. 17 USC 109(1)(B) says that 109(1)(A) does not apply to:
(1) a computer program which is embodied in a machine or product and which cannot be copied during the ordinary operation or use of the machine or product; or
(2) a computer program embodied in or used in conjunction with a limited purpose computer that is designed for playing video games and may be designed for other purposes.
That's why it is legal to rent console games, such as GameFly does. It's also why rental car companies don't have to get permission from whoever owns the copyright on the engine control unit software or the entertainment system software.
There are other exceptions in 17 USC 109 for things like nonprofit educational institutions and libraries which are not relevant to this discussion. If anyone wants to read the whole thing, here it is: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/109
You don't own the film on disk. You own a license which can be very restrictive, and you own a physical medium (i.e. the disk itself)
You cannot copy that disk, you can't play it in front of large audiences, you can't modify it and redistribute it etc. You don't own it, and the license can be revoked and changed at any point. It's not practical to always enforce this, but you agreed to the license when you purchased it, it's the same with online media, it's just easier to enforce, hence you see more application of licenses with online mediums.
>> but you agreed to the license when you purchased it,
That part specifically isn't true in all of EU. There is no such thing as implicit licences at purchase time - that's why EULA and the likes of it are worth as much as toilet paper here. And in a lot of countries you can absolutely make copies of the discs you own, no legal issue at all. You usually can't show it to large audiences, but that's not because of the licence terms, but because the laws of the country prohibit it without paying a fee to the national association of artists. If I want to show a Blu-Ray I bought to a large group of people I need to pay a nominal fee to my country's national artist's association and then it's completely legal - but I don't even need to tell the distributor of the movie, or the owner of the copyright at all, that's not my problem. Same with playing music at events and such - a fee is paid to a national organisation governing this, the distributor can say whatever they want on the box but it's just irrelevant.
>>, you can't modify it and redistribute it etc
Of course you can in certain ways and formats, "fair use" is even allowed in such restrictive countries as US.
I guess ones feelings about this depends on how you define "ownership". There's obviously something different, in all countries where the concept of intellectual property exists, between say an M8 bolt and a sculpture.
You can do whatever you want with the bolt. Measuring the treads and making 3D printed copies, taking photos off it and selling those. It's yours to the fullest extent.
You can't create and sell copies of the sculpture, in some jurisdictions you can't even sell photos of the sculpture. You can't freely make a derivative work of the sculpture.
Ownership of a copy of IP is different than ownership of other things. And ownership of digital copies of IP is so very different that it's almost not a thing.
Yes, but EU has also ruled that any post-purchase licence is not valid. At this point you already paid for the software, its use cannot be conditional on agreeing to a licence contained within. If it is for technical reasons(the software won't install without clicking agree) then the act of agreeing is meaningless in itself.
Even if you had to agree to the EULA before buying the product, it might still be invalid. There are laws in the EU limiting terms of service and similar non-negotiable pre-purchase contracts to unsurprising, expected-by-the-consumer, fair and equitable terms. Meaning that if there is a "buy" terminology used in the contract process, small-print cannot change that to "obtain a limited license", because that would be surprising and unfair.
It might not be called that, but most countries(this is difficult to generalize, as this is not unified in EU regulations) have at least some provisions for comedy/parody, reviews, previews and discussions use of otherwise copyrighted material.
Not quite. There isn't really a concept of licensing with optical media (nor any media that proceeded it). What you did was buy the copy but not the copyright.
You do have rights to copy the disc, depending on the content and the country. This is described as a backup. Things get very murky here though because in some countries backing up software discs is seen as different to backing up CD content. And then DVD has a whole other set of problems because circumventing DRM is another legal issue aside from copying the video content (and different countries have different laws for DRM and some even have exemptions specifically for DRM in DVDs).
With regards to redistribution, you're allowed to sell second hand optical media -- irrespective of the content on them. In fact there are entire businesses based around reselling second hand DVDs and CDs (eg Music Magpie in the UK).
As for performance, this is where things get a bit murky again. Audio performances are allowed if you are registered with the PRS (or similar organisation) as they redistribute members license fees with the content owners. The PRS are woefully bad at what they do and in effect they're just a legal payment protection racket, but that's a whole other topic. Performing data content would be subject to copyright too but it would depend on what was played as to which clause of copyright was in effect -- and in fact it could span multiple different clauses (much like music would have a copyright for songs writer as well as the recording artist, games would have copyrights on the music, artwork, etc and that IP might not be owned by the same publisher). I don't know the law (any international laws) regarding performing DVDs aside that some countries have exemptions for schools perform.
Then you have something called "fair use" which grants permissions to use, redistribute and even modify copyrighted content -- albeit with a strict set of caveats.
Needless to say, things were complicated enough even before internet distribution changed the way content was "licensed".
Those restrictions are all just features of copyright law, not of a license. While the DRM associations have made outlandish claims at times, I'm not aware of any serious attempt to say that you don't own a copy of a movie when you buy it on Blu-ray or DVD.
The DRM coupled with the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions combine to make it illegal to do things that would otherwise be fair use, but this isn't because of a license.
One very important right you get by owning a copy is "first sale," that the copyright owner can't restrict you from transferring or selling the copy, and this is unaffected by the DRM. The store down the street that buys and sells CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays is evidence of that.
Even with the limitations of DRM, there's a very real difference between the kind of ownership you have with a disc and the lack of it that you have with pure-digital "buying" from most sources. (Though I believe there's some movement toward increasing consumers' rights to these kinds of digital "copies," in Europe at least.)
While they can revoke purchases, they've only done that for fraud (e.g.: stolen credit card, chargeback, etc.). I have plenty of games from publishers who went off Steam, unsupported titles taken off the store, games no longer sold due to expired music licenses, etc. -- and they're all in my Steam library to this day.
AFAIK most game platforms resort to just delisting and respecting purchases, with the notable exception of P.T. becoming unavailable for redownload even if you already claimed it[1]. (Except it was a free mini-game and not a purchase) The system isn't even meant to remove owned content to the point that P.T. is still in people's redownload lists, but the download itself results in HTTP 404.
And with Steam, there's always the "option" of downloading your entire library and archiving that. IIRC Steam's DRM is notoriously easy to crack (simple DLL replacement) and things like first-time-setup (additional registry keys, redistributables, etc.) are stored per-game in simple JSON-like files. That wouldn't cover game-specific DRM but it at least covers Steam itself.
They can also lock you out for 'fraud' such as starting the game twice on your pc for split-screen multiplay, running some Wine fork or virtualization that they see as anti-theft circumvention, and so on.
No, that's not what I meant and they don't lock you out for fraud either.
By "fraud" I meant: buying a game with a stolen payment method, that's it. If someone does that, the specific game gets removed from their account and this message[1] is shown. The rest of their account remains untouched.
About the rest of your scenarios: They don't look at how many times you launch a game (I launched 2+ copies of a game many, many times). If a game bans you for whatever reason -- like anti-cheat misdetections -- the multiplayer-only ban is only for that game and done by the publisher (not Steam). You're confusing Valve/Steam with EasyAntiCheat, BattlEye, etc.
Steam doesn't even phone home if DRM fails, the game just doesn't launch; DRM meddling doesn't get you banned or anything.
To be slightly fair, when EA pulled all of their games from Steam for a number of years and went strictly to Origin, those licenses were still valid. I don't recall any Steam games that straight up disappeared but that's not to suggest your core idea is incorrect of course
This is still being litigated in Europe, but at the last decision I can find reference to (in France, Sept 2019) it was ruled that what steam does is sell a licensed copy. Therefore you can resell the copy you get from Steam and they cannot revoke the license either (excepting maybe some other violations of terms of service like cheating or harassing other players).
This hinges on the fact that the license is indefinite. So presumably, this would also hold over Amazon and is probably what most consumers assume is the case. The fact that Amazon also chooses to use the word buy probably makes the applicability even stronger.
Edit: where I say "You can resell" it should be understood "You ought to be able to resell" since it is still in appeal.
AFAIk yes. With GOG you get your installers and everything and you run them / install them without any additional client just as any app on your system. It's why I've been buying games there more than on Steam
Downloading a game without DRM (versus one with steam's DRM) doesn't mean you have the right to copy and redistribute that game all you want - with GOG you still only get a license to play the game and can't redistribute or sell it to anyone else.
I know that. But even if GOG goes bankrupt tomorrow I still have all my games and installers on my drive and can play them anytime. I can't say the same thing for Steam.
Yet you 'own' none. All you 'buy' is a licence which can be revoked at any time should Steam, the Publisher or some other entity decide to do so.
I would imagine that if Amazon and Steam changed 'buy' to 'licence' their income would fall off a cliff.