alt Hacker News> You're not in favor of adding regulation, except when it comes to issues you understand and care about.
That's not really it.
The main case against regulation is that it shouldn't be used when competition would do it better, which is most of the time. The trouble in this case is that copyright is a government-granted monopoly, which means this isn't one of those times, because competition is being foreclosed by statute. It can't be the thing that saves you in the case where the government is prohibiting it.
To put it another way, the thing that would really reduce regulations is to get rid of copyright, but maybe we want to be pragmatic here and instead of demanding that it be abolished entirely, we just want the prohibition the government is imposing on the users to not be extended through an unconscionable power grab and destroy the rights of First Sale and Fair Use that have always belonged to the customer.
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> The main case against regulation is that it shouldn't be used when competition would do it better, which is most of the time. The trouble in this case is that copyright is a government-granted monopoly, which means this isn't one of those times, because competition is being foreclosed by statute.
Microsoft may have a monopoly on Minecraft, but they still have competition from other games (Roblox, Fortnite) and other forms of entertainment (social media, youtube, books, IRL friends).
To me, the problem is more one of the terms of the deal changing; if a person brought minecraft with a 'mojang' account and loses their purchase when those accounts disappear in favour of 'microsoft' accounts, for example.
I genuinely can't understand why this comment was downvoted.
I wouldn't say competition is "most of the time", any market that saturates just turns to shit, incumbents can kill off any upstart competition while squeezing customers dry, not to mention fields that should have a baseline (e.i. healthcare), because squeezing customers dry there literally kills people