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Comment by jfoster | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it silly that there needs to be laws written to ensure consumers simply get what they paid for?

The whole reason laws exist is because we recognise not everyone can be trusted to act in a decent manner. The law gives us a way to codify what "decent" means and to explain to folks what we expect of them (as well as consequences for when folks step outside those boundaries).

What I'm trying to say is that no, it is not silly. In fact the entire civilised world is built on the premise that laws are required.

Fundamentally businesses have no morals, and everything is just an equation based on profits. If it makes economical sense to do this, many a business would be inclined to do it.

Not saying that it’s right, but it’s definitely completely understandable why we need laws to protect consumers.

I mean a company like this can always deny you the things you've paid for by going out of business and closing the platform.

You should just assume that if you buy a digital license to something that it's never really yours

True. We probably need a law for that too.

The movie still exists. The license should just be transferred to another platform, or DRM should be removed so you don't need the platform to see it anymore.

If companies fail to comply with this, maybe we'll need laws forbidding "selling" with DRM or something like that.

The companies should write "rent" or "lend" instead of "buy" if they want to be able to remove access to a movie.

Otherwise it should just be considered theft or fraud.

If you torrent it, it is yours forever. Copyright is a fiction.

That's why (big) business usually do a cost analysis of breaking the law. Profit is the goal. It seems that a lot of people forget about that.

> it’s definitely completely understandable why we need laws to protect consumers.

Do we really? Rutracker has everything that was mentioned as removed. And much more. These “consumer protecting” laws are actually a patch on business protecting laws, increasing a bit their survivability.

Humans have no morals too, and everything they do is for personal profit.

If I sell you a car, and decide I want it back, without a refund (if I even want to sell it back to you), and if take it back - that it's called stealing your car. Same should be done with Sony and courts should punish them enough, so that they won't even think about doing that again, and neither will the other companies.

It's silly that anyone buys from Sony with their track record.

Auto installing rootkit on music CDs, Dropping the promised Linux support for PS3, putting out bad marvel movies, I'm sure there's others but those three are enough for me.

The Sony Marvel movies from the 00s are better than anything Marvel since. Change my mind.

Having just been to the cinema, and seen the latest Marvel trailer, agreed.

Judging movies based solely on trailers seems pretty poor form. Hell, the people who make the trailers often have no relationship to the people making the movie.

Their exclusive games (The Last of Us, God of War, Returnal, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Bloodborne, etc) are pretty incredible. This is pretty concerning, but few remember the 17 year old rootkit scandal or that they discontinued PS3 support for Linux 12 years ago.

Not more silly than there are laws against theft and murder

IP is silly as fuck, as is your comparison in legitimacy to punishing murder

When it comes to theft or murder there are broad laws. There isn't one law to say that you can't murder using a gun, another to say that you can't murder using a knife, and so on.

In this case, it seems there's a less broad law that applies, where it feels as though a much broader law should apply.

Consumers rarely don't get what they paid for. In these situations it's just often that the merchants bury the fact that they can revoke access to your purchases at any point, and if you don't like it, you can go pound sand. Hence the need to write laws that don't fuck over consumers.

The right to get what you paid for is explicitly granted by law. Before that you’d need to have a bigger stick than the seller to make sure they don’t just run with your money.

Also, money is only valuable because we all agree to pretend it is, because pretending makes it useful.

IP is the root of the silliness

That's a large part of what the entire legal system is for.

It's as old as law itself, isn't it? From the Code of Hammurabi (translation from wikipedia):

> If a merchant should give silver to a trading agent for an investment venture, and he [the trading agent] incurs a loss on his journeys, he shall return silver to the merchant in the amount of the capital sum.

Not quite applicable, but kind of? If I give silver to Sony for a movie and Sony loses the rights to that movie, I want my damn silver back.

You are powerless to accomplish anything in an adverserial situation unless you can mobilize men with weapons to do your bidding. These days it is the court systems that authorize and compel the restoration of your property with the threat of depravation of liberty or purchasing power of the defendant.

This can be summarized as appealing to a higher power — your example is the courts, an alternative is the public reputation / free market. Without a 3rd party institution to appeal to, the parties must reconcile between themselves in a conflict e.g. violence. Same principle applies often in macro/micro contexts.

Even the public reputation and free market system reduces ultimately to threat of violence, due to the fact that bank balances are maintained by state-licensed entities. It's just one more level of abstraction from state violence, but it is still always there.

Whether it’s bank balances or pitchforks, the result is a conflict. Whether both parties are able to delegate judgement to a higher power determines the type of resolution. In the case where parties recognize a higher power it can be resolved without true violence (bloodshed)

Digital sales are license agreements not transfers of ownership

There's no technical or legal reason that the word "purchase" doesn't imply an irrevocable, transferable license (for one person at a time), as well as the requirement that the "seller" makes the licensed good indefinitely available to license holders (for a fee appropriate to cost of doing so).

If they don't like that, don't call it a purchase. Anything less is just eroding the meaning of the word.

I agree. I’m just telling you what the terms of service say.

In such case calling them purchase should be illegal or result in mandatory refund.

Maybe refund should be indexed by inflation.

Then remove the "buy" button and replace it with "lease for some time, until we decide otherwise"

You are being downvoted because your sentence is self-contradictory.

One does not “sell” a license agreement, one “enters into it with a third party”. Wether it is digital or not.

> One does not “sell” a license agreement

Factually, yes, one does sell licenses.

> one “enters into it with a third party”.

One also does that. When one offers to do so, in exchange for money, it is also selling the license. You are simply setting up a false dichotomy.

I suppose I could have put ‘sales’ in quotes. And it’s not how I think things should be. It’s how they are. Read the terms next time you ‘buy’ a digital product.

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