Comment on Wiki Documents at Least 44 Instances in Which Sony Says You Own Your Games

• tyler@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  You completely misunderstand the first sale doctrine. The doctrine is that copyrighted works are only controllable on the first sale. The copyright holder can’t do anything past that.

  The entirety of sales of things for all of humanity wouldn’t function if it was any other way.

  You aren’t licensing anything. You are buying an item.

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  • AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Please show me where it says that purchasing a copyrighted work grants ownership of it.

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    • M0oP0o@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      The very concept of purchasing? The very base of all contract law?

      With people like this who needs to even work keeping people down? Do they put a boot on their own neck every night?

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    • tyler@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      The first-sale doctrine (also sometimes referred to as the “right of first sale” or the “first sale rule”) is a legal concept that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property.

      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

      The first sale doctrine literally has NOTHING TO DO with ownership. It has to do with resale restrictions of the copyright holder. You have completely misunderstood the law and its purpose.

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      • AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Here, since you avoided my question, I’ll just spell it out for you.

        What You Actually Bought: A License

        In most transactions, you buy a license, not the copyright. A license is formal permission to use the work under specific conditions. It defines where, how, and for how long you can use the content.

        Many people assume payment equals ownership because that logic applies to physical goods. But copyright law works differently. Under U.S. law, copyright ownership automatically belongs to the original creator, regardless of who paid for the project.

        Sorry, but you do NOT own any of the copyrighted works that have ever been given to you or purchased. They are all licensed with limited usage rights. I pointed out the first sale doctrine to highlight it as a very narrow exception to the norm of licensing. That exception was born of the necessity to balance the reasonable needs of individuals (and of course the used market as a whole), with the purported needs of media rightsholders. Even if that supreme court decision (which was later codified into law) grants one additional right for a person to make a resale of the finite copies of physical goods they purchased legally, even then you still do not own that product, because a plethora of other restrictions still apply.

        Copyright law is in need of serious reform. Pretending it is whatever you want it to be doesn’t magically put it on your side. That’s exactly why scammy companies like Microsoft, Nintendo, EA, and Sony can keep getting away with all their bullshit - the law tends to be on their side whether you like it or not, cause guess who it was written for.

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• Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  It won’t radicalize me against copyright because I believe people are entitled to profit from their creations, and until we live in a society beyond the need of money corporations would fuck everyone in the ass (even more so than what they do now) if there were no copyright laws. Or do you any of the mega corporations in Hollywood would give a cent in the direction of a good story of they weren’t legally required to?

  In any case, that is different from what Sony is doing now. Like I said before:

  • the author can’t go into your house and take the book back
  • they can’t force a new version of the book onto you
  • they can’t require you to proof you own the book before they allow you to read it
  • they can’t stop you from reselling the book.

  Those are not covered by copyright law, you have a right to do that with your books but not with your Sony games.

  This steamed from the way digital downloads came about, and we agreed to trade some rights for ease of access, but companies like GoG show that it’s possible to have digital downloads while preserving some of those rights.

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  • AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    It won’t radicalize me against copyright because I believe people are entitled to profit from their creations

    One, in a capitalist society, the only thing that entitles you to profit from your work is the completion of a sale. I can draw a crude picture of a turd right now, and despite suddenly becoming an artist, I am not automatically entitled to profit. Two, copyright does not help artists profit. It allows the biggest corporations to consolidate media ownership in their names. By contrast, the internet, which has allowed the free sharing of media on a scale that completely eclipses any other time in history, has allowed more artists than ever to profit from their work. If you care about artists making a living, then you should support information freedom. If you prefer concentrating wealth and media control into one small racket, then yeah I guess copyright is your thing.

    You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either you want to reform the legal framework into something equitable, or you can keep bitching about the excesses of the evil corporations for doing the same bullshit they’ve always been doing, while still wanting the same laws that make them what they are to begin with.

    And meanwhile, you’re having this argument on a free and open-source platform… why?

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    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      First of all, you’re the only one talking about copyright, none of the things we’re talking relate to copyright. Copyright has been a thing for a long time and we’ve never had these issues with anything from books to kitchen utensils.

      Also you’re purposefully ignoring the points I keep making every answer, I keep giving you examples of rights you have on a book that you don’t on a digitally downloaded game and you keep ignoring that as if it was the same thing. It’s not, the issue at hand is with that difference, if you can’t spot it maybe you should read more on the subject.

      But just to give you an answer since you seem hell bent in making this about copyright, what do you think would happen in the society we live in if tomorrow all copyright laws were to vanish? People already do derivative work as long as they’re not profiting from it, fanfics and fan drawings have never been an issue, but now they can charge for it. Big whoop, nothing much changes there. But on the other hand, a starving writer who wrote his first good novel and wants to publish it takes it to a book publisher and his name gets erased and it’s published by the company instead, because no copyright means the author has no claim over it. An artist creates a cool character that becomes viral, now Hollywood is making a movie, but does not have to give 1 cent to the artist. You’re only looking at the ugly side of copyright, you’re forgetting that companies will abuse anything , and you’re failing to see that the lack of rights will be more abused, and if you remove copyright laws that’s in THEIR best interest, you won’t be able to make a new God of War that can compete with theirs, but they can take any idea you might have and make a million dollars product out of it that you won’t see a cent.

      Finally, I never said I don’t believe in free and open platforms, or copyleft or creative Commons licenses, but that’s not the same as removing licenses. First of all, that is optional, you’re not forced to make your project free and open source, if there were no copyright laws you would still not be able to reproduce closed source programs, but they could simply copy open source ones. GNU license is very restrictive and contagious exactly for this reason, which has stopped corporations from doing nasty things, without those copyright protections GNU and Linux would not be where they are now because corporations would have stolen it. Copyleft and CC licenses follow similar patterns, you’re free to modify and redistribute but only if your product keeps that license, that discourages companies from stealing it as it would poison the well and their product would not be copyrightable, but if nothing is copyrightable then everything is fair game and the companies would not think for a second before stealing content. Think for one second on how companies operate and you’ll understand why copyright is needed to protect indie artists from them.

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