alt Hacker NewsThis is just pedantry, and incorrect pedantry at that. BUY does not always mean you gain ownership. You can BUY a license or a haircut and you don't own anything.
Are consumers confused in practice by what happens when they click "Buy" on the playstation store? Does anyone really thing Buy here means they will be able to download the game onto their computer and play it there?
Fine, pass a regulation that makes online stores change the word to license or whatever. Will that relieve your sense of persecution? Or would just you find another way to cast game publishers as the conniving evil empire (market control, collusion to reduce consumer options, etc.) because they aren't giving you what you want?
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You can pay for services and you may use the term “buy”, but it is clear you’re receiving a service, and a service in its nature is temporary.
Buy a night in a hotel, dinner in a restaurant, haircut, shoe shine. These are all services.
Buying of digital services like games, films, and music is an evolution of buying dvds, cds or records. There is an expectation that you now own something. I can dig out my dad’s old records and play them and pass them onto my children.
If media companies want to sell a license that has an expiry date, that’s fine, but it has to be explicitly communicated. Consumers have to be well informed about what they’re purchasing.
> This is just pedantry, and incorrect pedantry at that. BUY does not always mean you gain ownership. You can BUY a license or a haircut and you don't own anything.
At the end of the day words have to mean something. It is not pedantry to simply discuss what a word or phrase means. There are false advertising laws for a reason.
To that end, I would argue you've never bought a haircut, you've paid for a service.
The issue at hand here is exactly that the word "buy" is used when discussing the appropriation of a licence for content that in practical terms, is still controlled by someone else.
Maybe there are technical reasons for this to be the case, but then maybe the word "buy" should not be used in this instance.
Most of the World understands the difference between buying a product and buying a service.
Games (and other digital media), are sold as products, not services, mostly.
TFA is arguing this should persist and not be replaced as games as (subscription/licensed rental), services. It argues the move to digital is being used by businesses to switch to a services model under the hood, and that this should be resisted and it should remain a product model.
> Are consumers confused in practice by what happens when they click "Buy" on the playstation store?
Demonstrably, provably: yes.
> Fine, pass a regulation that makes online stores change the word to license or whatever.
Why not make the store change what they sell from being a license and making it a product as the consumer expected?