California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a bill into law that won’t stop companies from taking away your digitally purchased video games, movies, and TV shows, but it’ll at least force them to be a little more transparent about it.
As spotted by The Verge, the law, AB 2426, will prohibit storefronts from using the words “buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good or alongside an option for a time-limited rental.” The law won’t apply to storefronts which state in “plain language” that you’re actually just licensing the digital content and that license could expire at any time, or to products that can be permanently downloaded.
The law will go into effect next year, and companies who violate the terms could be hit with a false advertising fine. It also applies to e-books, music, and other forms of digital media.
It’s actually true for most things if you think long term enough.
You don’t really own things, you have control over them for a portion of your life.
Would be pretty easy to argue that digital ownership is perpetual access for the rest of your life.
But then they can’t resell you the same thing on different platforms.
That’s just it though. You don’t have perpetual access for life. Movies go missing from my iTunes account all the time(Amazon, VUDU, doesn’t matter). If the studio terminated their contract with iTunes then the movies get pulled from iTunes. Doesn’t matter if you paid for them or not. iTunes stopped hosting the media. If you complain they usually give you like a $2-5 coupon…
That’s exactly my point which I think some downvotes missed.
Digital ownership can just be a guarantee for the company to let you access it until 100 years after purchase.