It’s called renting. A thing for over thousands of years.
Comment on Valve Engineering
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 10 hours agotech feudalism
I use Steam but Gabe was one of the original tech feudalists.
Valve ignores the First Sale Doctrine, a law for over a hundred years. So now instead of being able to resell your games for whatever amount you want, your games are forever under the control of Valve.
tomiant@piefed.social 4 hours ago
lordnikon@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Yeah I agree but that maybe more to the publishers not allowing that that to me would be achieved through regulation just like with the refunds. First sale was not something publishers wanted just a feature of having physical media. Also there is a myth that all steam games are DRMed. There are may games that run without steam being open but that is up to the publisher. Stuff like family sharing they added is them bring value to customers while walking a fine line with the publishers.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
It’s not up to publishers. Publishers tried to put a disclaimer on books preventing cheap resale. The Supreme Court struck it down and it was written into law over 100 years ago.
Natanael@slrpnk.net 7 hours ago
The problem is first sale doctrine applies to the physical media which carries the license of its own content.
grue@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
No, the problem is that people believe “[concept] on a computer” is somehow magically different from “[concept] IRL” when it’s not.
When you buy a game from Steam, you buy a game, not a license, and the First Sale Doctrine applies just as much as it does if you buy a board game from Walmart. Any claims to the contrary are simply lies, and any government support for such lies is simply tyranny.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
The physical media is whatever is playing the content. The law doesn’t specify the media.
1909, one year after the Supreme Court ruling: “Your honor, I know that the Supreme Court ruled that publishers can’t add a shrink wrap license that prohibits cheap resale of copyrighted work but you see, I delivered the content on llamas where it was printed onto scrolls at the customer’s home so the law doesn’t apply. You wrote the laws thinking about trains and ships transporting books and I use neither.”