If it can be revoked, then it should be labeled “rent”, with the appropriate time frame. Even if it means businesses have to label it “rent - until an unknown time in the future when we go out of business or drop the license or decide to ban you”.
Eventually prices would have to drop to reflect that you are merely temporarily licensed things. A digital game is not going to be perceived as a $60 value when it is more obviously a temporary license regardless of the length. If a physical copy of a game is valued at $60 that can be sold then a digital temporary license is going to have to be less. In my opinion a lot less.
Right now companies gives us all the disadvantages of both a product and a license.
This is one thing that bugs the hell outta me for some game publishers. They used to sell a given ("AAA" or whatever) game for like $60, and you got a disc you could use "forever" (as long as the disc lasted, and compatibility with system updates held out), a fancy manual, slick packaging, and sometimes even a poster or other extra goodie. These days, some (many?) of those companies sell a digital download, hosted by Steam's delivery servers, and often nothing else at all, for the same or sometimes even higher price as physical media. For many of these games, reliance on remote DRM services mean that game can disappear any random time in the future for <reasons>. I generally refuse to support them in doing that, so those companies will only ever see my purchase during a sale that brings the price more in line with the reality. I'd rather spend my money with the publishers / developers that value their customers a bit more than as a "fleshy cash machine".
It would be very user-friendly and am quite happy to have also gotten some mobile versions on Humble bundle
Eh, I don't think that's fair to the companies paying for the bandwidth and storage costs for those games. They typically take a cut for purchasing on their respective storefronts that cover those costs, so either you pay per MB downloaded or a monthly subscription for access to the library (but not the licenses themselves)
(Same for other digital products)
I understand that you think that would be fair. I also agree that that would be fair, but I’m not so optimistic about it happening.
The cost of digital content has much more to do with how much faff it is to pirate said content and how desireable the content is preceived to be.
Sorr if this is too depressing, but the whole thing is a bit of “I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.” from the content producers as far as I can see. But! Hope you will be right.
The relevant consumer rights laws should simply assert that if you sell a license, then it's irrevocable, no matter what your fine print says.
And also there's nothing inherently wrong with temporarily licensed things as long as you make it clear up front. If you're offering a three-year license, that's just as valid as a monthly subscription, but you shouldn't be permitted to sell a license for the period of "as long as I wish".
Buy = forever (can download and use offline)
License = Implied forever, but streaming only and revokable
Rent = Streaming only, time period made explicit (day, week, whatever)
I'm sort of mostly ok with paying $15 for a semi-permanent license to a movie. I'm not ok with paying $40 for a true permanent purchase. Big guess on those prices, as I mostly just stream whatever is available today, so I'm not the target audience either way, I suppose.
Everyone is until the content goes away.
If they don't want to issue such deals at all then that's fine too, but they just can't use the words "buy" or "purchase" at all and can only say "rent".
Perhaps the "buy" option should have an implied lifetime of ownership, and anything less they have to pay you back (keeping all those sales $ in escrow would sure be a pain)
Anything other than rent is an unnecessary complication.
There's already regulation we can use to combat what digital "ownership" is: bait and switch.
Bait and switch: a scam to mislead buyers, whereby a seller advertises an appealing but ingenuine offer to sell a product or service that the seller does not actually intend to sell (emphasis mine)
The "digital good" is the bait. It makes you think you are purchasing ownership like you would with a physical book, or dvd, or game. The bait is effective because it tries to tie itself to the legitimate form and tries to create a false equivalency of buying a physical copy (in some cases, claiming to be "superior" because its greener or whatnot).
The solution would be for companies to be explicit in what is actually happening: you are purchasing an indefinite lease on the content subject to terms and exceptions. But I imagine they don't want to do that because it would cause a dent in their business.
Such transactions would now mean different things to different people. That's not an improvement, and it is unlikely that the federal judiciary would agree that the federal government has the authority to force corporations to make such a change.
I posted in a sibling, but I'd do something like "buy" (actually buy, can download, use offline), license (implied forever, but streaming and revokable), and "rent" (streaming, explicit time period). Not set on those phrases, but something like that framework makes more sense that what we have today.
It may not have 100% fidelity, but people understand what renting means instinctively.
A different term, even "licensing", loses that impact (which is precisely why different language is preferred by the contract holders, to hide the true intent).