News

23014 readers

2 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

858

California's New Law Will Force Storefronts to Disclose That Buyers Don't Actually Own Their Digitally Purchased Media - IGN (www.ign.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

113 comments fedilink hide all child comments

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a bill into law that won't stop companies from taking away your digitally purchased video games, movies, and TV shows, but it'll at least force them to be a little more transparent about it.

As spotted by The Verge, the law, AB 2426, will prohibit storefronts from using the words "buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good or alongside an option for a time-limited rental." The law won't apply to storefronts which state in "plain language" that you're actually just licensing the digital content and that license could expire at any time, or to products that can be permanently downloaded.

The law will go into effect next year, and companies who violate the terms could be hit with a false advertising fine. It also applies to e-books, music, and other forms of digital media.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I wish this were true, but unless companies were forced to stop licensing then they'll never do that. And even then, if the company decided to not sell smth anymore or stop supporting it or they went out of business you still wouldn't be able to get things legally a lot of the time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

And even then, if the company decided to not sell smth anymore or stop supporting it or they went out of business you still wouldn't be able to get things legally a lot of the time.

I don't think that's an issue unless it's an online service that they host the servers on, but for something like a book, even if they decided to stop selling it (aka minting new NFT tokens to access it) all the existing tokens would still work and trading would work.

We can't really do anything about online services though unless a law requires a company to allow self hosting if they close down, which would be a great law to have.

Edit: just to clarify further, the token is the ownership at this point. Having the protected content anywhere on the internet and downloading it without a token isn't theft, it's just there and legal, inaccessible without the token. It could just be on a public torrent for download from day 1 for anyone to download with or without a token. Also the content could even link to the smart contract to purchase a token to unlock it. So a movie player would see a unauthorized movie with a buy now button. It could even be a token that unlocks it for a 24h rental. Unless the media owner kills the contract intentionally, it'll be purchasable as long as the blockchain it's on exists.

I wish this were true, but unless companies were forced to stop licensing then they'll never do that

I think we'll see someone experiment with this eventually even without a law. There's a lot of upset out there about not being able to resell digital content and it suddenly being taken away.