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Comment by voidUpdate | Hacker News Reader

> "Were that the case, then Plaintiff Edward Heycock would not have been able to obtain the game Resident Evil Requiem on February 25, 2026 for $69.99 from the PlayStation Store after Plaintiff Jason Mendoza had obtained Resident Evil Requiem on February 14, 2026, because Mr. Mendoza, not Sony, would have owned it then"

I buy a book. I now own the copy of that book. My friend buys the book. They also own a copy of that book. We do not own the same copy of that book

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Ah, you could not have purchased a bag of Lays potato chips from the store on February 25th because I myself purchased a bag of Lays potato chips from that very same store the day previously!

To be fair, this example doesn't work because those chip bags are two physically different objects that one can consume.

Sony is trying to argue that because they are selling digital copies, that consumers cannot be granted rights to their copy because they can't transfer the intellectual property rights, which is complete nonsense. I have a 1999 DVD copy of The Matrix that I have owned for 27 years, and short of the physical disc-rot, I will be able to play that DVD until the day I die, and Warner Bros can't do anything about it unless I try reselling new copies, or claiming authorship because, despite owning the disc, I do not own the rights to the movie...

A download isn't any different just because it lacks a physical form.

Everyone understand what Sony lawyers are trying to say, and it’s still incredibly stupid. That’s the point.

Yeah I'm not sure what they are trying to argue with that defense. It's also clear that this is not the point that the plaintiffs are trying to make. We don't care if you call it a license or whatever, if we purchase something (like a digital movie), we should be able to at least maintain access to it for an indefinite amount of time. "oh but that's not feasible", that's not really my problem, you are the ones ditching physical

In software [copyright] terms I think this would be like you both have a license to use those books but you don't own the copyright to that book as you are not the author, so you can't change its license and you are somewhat limited in what you can do with it (plagiarism being one thing you can't get away with I guess). Whether something is physical or not seems to change how we think about things, and perhaps which laws/protections apply.

"own" kind of seems buzzwordy and divisive here. I noticed on re-reading my own post I said you "have" a license. I guess I could say you "own" a license, but that seems a bit weird. Do you own it if it can be revoked? Police/TSA can take your possessions legally.

I'm not on Sony's side here but I think fighting over "ownership" of intangible goods may be the wrong fight. It's a shame more games aren't free software and free culture as that seems easier to reason about and a better cause to fight for. When you go from the free software community bubble to the major video game bubble it feels like regressing 100+ years.

I guess the issue is that in Sony's walled garden they have near total control and we have to chip away at that control with legislation until it's closer to what we expect in other contexts.

No reasonable person has ever argued that a consumer buying a (digital) copy of a game obtains the exclusive rights to the game. This is such a cheap embarrassingly stupid attempt to come up with a straw man.

I'll listen to Sony management and lawyers whining about copyright after they paid the damages and fines and get out of jail for every rootkit they deployed. Should be any century now.

Eh “buy” vs “license” is a distraction. The real problem with online stores & licenses is that they charge the same amount of money for a worse product.

If I buy a game on a disc, I can play the game, then resell it and someone else can play it. Or I can lend my copy of the game to a friend. When the online store eventually goes offline, I can still play all the games I have on disc. If I lose access to my online account, I still own the game. I can just get another console and play it.

If digital purchases let you do all that, I’d be all for them. They’re more convenient and better for the environment. But Sony and friends want to take these rights away from us, without choice. And without a corresponding drop in game prices. I want the PlayStation store (and steam and Nintendo and so on) to let me remove a game from my account and give it to someone else. Let me do that and I wouldn’t have a problem with any of it. But the current online store system is too greedy.

It sounds like a pipe dream, but this is how physical copies have worked for decades. My license moves with the game disc or cartridge. Why don’t we have a digital equivalent to this?

If Sony stopped trying to push a worse product on their customers, their customers wouldn’t be mad about it.

> Why don’t we have a digital equivalent to this?

This is the one place where NFTs make some sense. Ideally, such an ownership mechanism would be open and not tied to the lifespan of a particular publisher - something that's hard to achieve in practice without a distributed system like blockchain.

Changing how the ownership of a digital asset is tracked is completely moot when the digital asset is no longer retrievable.

A guid works fine

I wouldn't say NFTs per se, but I do think a blockchain could help here. If you can point to a specific block that documents that you purchased a copy of a piece of media, you should also be able to transfer that block to another person.

But consumers still pay it. No one has to play video games.

I am in no way defending Sony here but I think it’s beside to the point to chastise them for selling a worse product (I mean revocable license) for the same price because consumers continue to choose to pay that price. And this is not a purchase made out of necessity or duress such as food or housing.

> If I buy a game on a disc, I can play the game, then resell it and someone else can play it. Or I can lend my copy of the game to a friend.

Don't forget that retail is cheaper than online for consoles from day one!

> same amount of money for a worse product.

I like physical media, but this is not objectively true. Digital purchases come with benefits consumers want like quicker access, less materials waste, and (in general) more longevity since a digital product cannot rot or be damaged. Obviously that last one is lessened because the seller is able to yank your "license" at any time, but it generally holds that you're in less danger of a little brother snapping a disc in half or a roommate borrowing and losing it.

> It sounds like a pipe dream, but this is how physical copies have worked for decades. My license moves with the game disc or cartridge. Why don’t we have a digital equivalent to this?

FWIW, everything I ever bought digitally in the Nintendo E-Shop for my 3DS (gone since March 2023) still works, can't be disabled remotely, sits on a MicroSD card that I can freely remove and back up, etc. Although Nintendo did implement a system that's supposed to prevent it from working on another 3DS.

Define or clarify the use of the word 'copy' please

> We do not own the same copy of that book

Why not? If you hash the book, it’ll match. It’s word for word the same book (editions not withstanding). It’s not the same if you tie in account permissions, of course. Or is this on a philosophical level?

Edit: the downvotes make no sense, aren’t we talking about digital copies here?

games are actual physical bits stored somewhere.

I’m not denying that? What is the argument here?

that even if they form the same pattern, one pile of bits on one storage medium and another pile of bits on a different storage medium are two separate things and it's possible for one person to own one of the piles and another person to own the other one.

It is a distinct physical object. Whether anyone stored digital information about it in a bit-wise manner, does not change that fact of a physical object being unique. The same book can not co-exist at the very same place and location and time in this universe. That makes no sense.

I thought we were talking about digital copies.

we may have been. the idea that two copies of the same thing are not the same object still applies. you can tell because if you own a PDF and I own a copy of that PDF, and I destroy mine, you still have yours.

Physical objects do not exist in a digital format. When I type the letter "a" is it not the exact same letter that you are using in your text? Even all the "a"s in this comment are identical, are they not?

In the physical world, no two letters "a" are exactly the same, not even printed ones.

Or do you suggest that all those letters "a" here are completely distinct from each other?

I don't think ownership works conceptually for digital stuff. There's no owning a letter "a" and there are no two letters "a" that are distinct from each other, unless you count the Cyrillic "а" which is completely different from "a".

Each of these letters "a" might be a different instance, but they are the same letter: "a". Similarly, two copies of a file are still the same exact copy. Just different instances of it.

Your comment is unique. Nobody before you has ever written a comment phrased exactly like that.

I saved a copy of your unique comment on my pocket supercomputer, including the letter "a". I didn't ask first; I just did it. It's fine because it doesn't really exist.

Now it's my comment.

exactly. delete all of the "a"s from your comment. what happens to theirs? nothing. because they're not the same thing.

are identical twins the same person?

Since when are people digital?

It's about how copyright law was originally conceived. It did not particularly care about what you did with the information, apart from when you copied it. Copyright is only about the right to make more copies of a work (hence the name!), it doesn't give you any particular rights on its own to what anyone does with any given copy of a work, such as reselling it. This has changed more recently with (first with software) the concept of buying a license to a work as the primary means of purchasing it, which is far more restrictive.

Because property law is not defined in terms of hashes. Why would you expect that property law operates on a mathematical construct that was discovered centuries after it?

If I buy a game, and my friend buys a game, we can both own a copy of the game, without owning the same copy. My disc of Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 is not the same as my friend's disc of Rollercoaster Tycoon 2

Two copies means two copies. I have a copy, my house burns down, your copy is fine.

Hashes have nothing to do with it.

If I buy a Billy book case from IKEA, is it not the same as your Billy book case?

Hashing said book case is left as an exercise for the reader.

I can sell my copy of the book to a third person without interfering with your copy. And I can do so without the involvement or permission of the publisher or book store.

This is a bad faith argument and the commenter knows it

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