> The motion says the PlayStation Terms of Service put a binding arbitration agreement and a class action waiver in Section 14, and quotes the opt-out clause: ...
> The clause requires a user who does not wish to be bound to notify Sony in writing within 30 days of accepting the agreement.
Binding arbitration on individuals should be illegal, full stop. The only use case is taking away people's rights as consumers and workers. Or dodging responsibility for deadly mistakes like the Disney+ incident.
This "opt out" mechanism is made to let Sony lawyers argue that accepting it was your choice so it can't be struck down as forced, even if 99% of users have no idea it exists, by design. Evil all the way down.
Binding arbitration when there is a significant power imbalance should be illegal. If it's between two similarly abled parties (e.g. two individuals), it should be fine.
I studied a bit of this in a university course. Between a lot of organizations, binding arbitration is more efficient (i.e. cheaper) than the legal system. If your company wants to make a deal with another company, binding arbitration often makes sense.
Ditto for 2 individuals: If they had to go through the legal system, it could end up being a war of attrition - the one who has more money to pay lawyers wins. Binding arbitration is a way to "level" that field.
The down side (at least in many, if not all, states) is that you have little recourse if the arbiter is totally unfair. With the legal system, you can appeal, etc.
But between an individual and a large company - no way!
In my last job, the (very big) company automatically enrolls new employees into a binding arbitration agreement, but they do give a timeline to opt out. I was surprised I had that option. I even paid a lawyer to review the docs. He said "Yep, you can (and should) opt out. I'm surprised they even gave you that option."
In my country, many laws state that the consumer (or "weak" part) can not sign away their rights, any contract with stipulations regarding that would void that clause. Feel like that should be the norm. Shouldn't be able to lose your consumer rights just by pressing a button, then the rights are worthless if everyone just have a huge TOS / EULA for any service covering their asses.
Similarly to many other countries, the US has a concept of "adhesion contracts" - essentially, contracts where you have no realistic opportunity to negotiate the terms, and your rights are constrained much more than the rights of the party imposing these terms.
Courts often look at these contracts differently, but around the world, they allow them to exist because they are useful. A good example are the "terms of service" for public or private transit. If the carrier can't define some common-sense rules, like that you can be kicked out or fined for not wearing pants and playing bagpipes on the bus, it'd complicate things.
The legal standard is basically that the rules hold unless they're unreasonable or unconscionable. But of course, what's seen as reasonable depends on the country, the state, and the judge.
This is also one of those scenarios similar to subscription or membership cancellation where we should not allow accepting/signing up for something require using an entirely different method of communication to cancel/opt out.
Requiring written notification while the TOS being accepted entirely via digital means should be illegal.
Not to mention I think its insane that we allow companies to be able to dictate how citizens are allowed to utilize their legal system.
> Binding arbitration on individuals should be illegal, full stop. The only use case is taking away people's rights as consumers and workers. Or dodging responsibility for deadly mistakes like the Disney+ incident.
Hijacking to link to another website that has good information about how binding arbitration is stacked against the consumer/employee:
Guest died from allergic reaction despite informing staff multiple times of the risk, but the case was dismissed because they had signed up for Disney+ years prior.
The case wasn't dismissed because of the arbitration clause. Disney dropped the argument after they got severely lambasted in public over the absurdity of the defense. It was dismissed later by the plaintiff (so there was likely some settlement)
I don't think this is the last time we will see this argument. Disney has a lot of value in brand equity to protect so it made sense for them to back away, but a "bad guy" company that's already regarded with distrust will probably go all in on this in the future.
Access to the legal system is a fundamental right. It should not be possible to sign it away, any more than you can sign away your right to life or liberty.
> "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"
That's a very interesting defense. I wonder if it opens up a door maybe Sony would rather keep shut. If I can't own a copy of content because someone else has another copy, how does this play out for piracy? According to Sony's own argument, pirating a copy of the content is fine because others can/do still "buy" or "own" (rent/lease) it.
It's not a great defense if you ask me, unless they're counting on the judge not knowing the difference between owning a copy of something vs. the IP and license to sell the thing.
After all, Sony isn't selling the source code and IP for Resident Evil, they're selling a copy of the packaged software.
> pirating a copy of the content is fine because others can/do still "buy" or "own" (rent/lease) it.
Piracy is not theft. It is an infringement on another's right to distribute intellectual property.
This lawsuit is wasting a lot of time by not simply addressing the long-standing norm of buying a physical object which bundles the content, the license, and it many cases the copyright protection mechanisms.
Selling a used DVD is possible because the DVD contains the license — it is transferable and irrevocable by dint of its format.
Digital goods lack these distinct features but the language looks the same so people are now feeling the rug pull. Hence, the pushback against abandoning disc sales.
> "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
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!
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
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
I have had three mirrorless Sony cameras (albeit two secondhand), and I think they made what is one of the low-key best hobbyist cameras of its class ever [0], and I don't even much mind their current camera software, which I installed somewhat reluctantly.
But back on the distributable content side, this is a company that hacked customers' PCs with a rootkit. They are a big enough and clumsy enough company to make bad decisions regularly.
[0] the NEX-6, a true joy that I would recommend to anyone who wanted an old knockabout camera even now, though even fourteen years since it was released, its used prices hold up almost too well because I am clearly not the only person who thinks it is lovely
I guess it's worth pointing out that Sony (the conglomerate) isn't one company. It's a whole lot of companies. The gaming related part is called Sony Interactive Entertainment (headquartered in San Mateo, California). Movies are done by Sony Pictures Entertainment (headquartered in Culver City, California).
The ones making cameras are Sony Corporation (headquartered in Tokyo).
As far as my understanding goes, the Japanese part is pretty good, while the people in California have lost the plot.
Seems like we need some copyright reform WRT issues like this. We need a true way to have digital ownership; including putting assets in escrow and a way for access to continue after the store is shut down or the item removed from the store.
Your access to a digital product you have "purchased" should not be tied to the continued existence of the store you also bought it from. Similar to physical products.
If I bought a game at GameStop we aren't required to continuously reach back out to them every once in a while to check that they're okay with me playing the game I bought from them. And if GameStop goes out of business they aren't going to come knocking on my door to make sure I never play the game again or take it back from me.
Once a game or any other product is purchased from a digital store, it should not require the stores continued existence or permission.
Yes there are some drawbacks in that maybe they could argue then that they could stop allowing redownloading a game you've already purchased but so be it, they'd just be offering a worse experience and users would move away.
We also need to stop allowing unclear language. When we lease a car at a dealership they never use the term "buy" or "own". That's strictly reserved for ownership. We should require the same for other licensed/leased products.
It's ridiculous to me that trying to play some recent games from Microsoft-affiliated studios requires me to sign in with a Microsoft account even just to play also malone. Paying them for Halo MCC or Gears 5 isn't enough to be able to play the campaign alone; the main menu is literally blocked by a sign-in screen. There's no reason whatsoever this should be allowed.
One fun thing I remember from reading some EULAs for physical games I bought in the past: the EULA for StarCraft at least explicitly said that you are required to obtain prior written permission from Blizzard Entertainment before lending the disk to a friend. Obviously this is not practically enforceable, but it shows that nothing of this kind is new from these companies' perspectives.
The way the law is structured, you are never buying copies of digital goods, regardless of the format in which you obtain them. Instead, you buy a license to use the digital good under the specific terms and conditions of that license. That is why if you get a disk with GNU utils on it from the FSF, you are still bound by the GPL in what you can do with the data on that disk.
I've been posting a similar idea for years. Require that for each piece of commercial software there is a "method" to open it up and use without requiring on-line servers. The method is be registered with a special government agency for that purpose, who first verifies that the method works.
Later when the agency considers the software to be "abandonware", it publishes the method.
Remove DRM laws and make copyright on all media expire after 5 or 10 years off market. Abandoned franchises should get the same treatment. Call it Sackboy's Law. See how quick Sony and EA rush to port their back catalogue.
As is usual in the modern world (and probably since the beginning of time since there's nothing new under the sun for the last ~2,000-3,000 years), not enough people will care for it to have any measurable screwing effect.
Not so strange, there is lots of money to be made by people not owning things anymore. Especially getting rid of physical second hand sells/buys will force consumer to buy the games straight from Sony again, who is the only store you will be able to buy Playstation games from.
But yeah, hopefully the community and ecosystem is aligned enough to massively fuck Sony over this, vote with your wallets people.
Xbox already lost one console war over plans to stop the second hand market so they know how important it is to players. Their new disc to digital feature is proof they are looking at Sony's mistakes and slowly moving in the opposite direction. It basically removes the most serious thing that made physical games less convenient.
If the PS6 is digital only and Xbox doubles down on discs it might be a slam dunk victory. Not all players understand or care about it now, but if they explain it well in the launch window and combine that with their back compat history I think they have a good chance to win.
Even Microsoft knows that gaming is a competitive market and pulling customers from PlayStation is better than trying to extract as much as possible from your existing user base. One Game Pass sub is worth more than marketplace fees from 3 extra games you would normally buy used.
> Especially getting rid of physical second hand sells/buys will force consumer to buy the games straight from Sony
That's what lawyers and other corporate drones think, but they are plain wrong.
The only reason why people want to buy a copy from second hand is because they can't afford the price of a new one. In reality these people will never ever buy straight from Sony, simply because it's too expensive for them. Simple as that. They much more likely to turn to free pirate copies instead.
Yeah, okay, I made the same mistake as Sony. I wrote "buy", but what I meant was "spending money" in a general sense (regardless if it's buying ownership or paying a license fee). Second hand customers simply can't afford (or willing to pay) the price of a new copy. Trying to force these people to the Sony shop is a really bad move and won't work.
Otherwise you're right, it's absurd that license fee is the same as the price of an owned copy.
> Just wait until they manage to apply it to physical goods like cars and dishwashers.
This already happened... It's called subscription or mortgage loan.
Most households don't have that kind of money at once, they are already forced into a loan with regular payments. This means not the buyer but the bank owns the car until the last penny is paid.
Cars you've been able to lease since before I was born probably. Dishwashers and other home appliances are possible to finance here too, effectively renting it until you "own it", in comparison with leasing.
Still, not as bad as the "digital licensing" hell we're in when it comes to video games, but there is zero ownership at the end of it.
If 30 years ago someone suggested breaking into your house to take away your Nintendo games or remotely disabling them by sending something over the network to the console, it would have absolutely been beyond the pale.
But 30 years of boiling the frog and now we have a megacorp that has absolutely no qualms about maximizing their profits by doing the moral equivalent. The popular conception of what constitutes a transaction, what constitutes ownership, and what is fair use has swung so far away from what consumers want and expect, that I can't believe they're arguing, stupidly, in court, that ownership is "not possible" because one person can buy a game, and then a second person can!
Whatever happened, I dunno. I hate that consumers have become so powerless in the face of relentless erosion of basic transactional norms.
It just reinforces how much I will not be participating in that economy.
> In the digital age, it is not plausible to allege that reasonable consumers believed they were obtaining "ownership" of a digital game.
So their argument really is that it is unreasonable for anybody to believe they own any of the things they download or purchase digitally? What a leap there.
I mean thats as plain english as you can get to an official rubber stamp on "you will own nothing and you will be happy".
And then they want to have it both ways by interchangeably using the words "revocable license" and "ownership" when it suits their needs. License in small writing/text, but "own" in anything the user might actually reasonably read.
yeah the outcome here is "we're sorry, here's your 0.50 class action settlement payment" and updated terms of service... it's not going to reverse anything, people need to stop buying
This thing where companies can use custom definitions of words in order to intentionally build ambiguity into their agreements is designed to induce just this type of problem. Words have meaning outside these agreements and that outside meaning influences people's interpretation of the agreement. Words are, unfortunately, also ambiguous. So when we make these agreements we allow them to add more detail to definitions in an effort to clear up that ambiguity, but we end up with people trying to argue blatant contradictions like "any reasonable person would understand that own doesn't mean own"
Also, the definition of what a "reasonable person" is capable of understanding varies from case to case, depending on the interests of the companies involved.
E.g. meat and milk industry want us to believe that a "reasonable person" is dumb enough to be confused by labels like "soy milk" or "vegan burger".
everyone believes something different, everyone knows a different set of facts, everyone thinks of themselves as reasonable, and the law depends on what a reasonable person might believe. absent some objective standard of reasonability it's all just places where you can inject ambiguity and then leverage that ambiguity to make the law shift like sands in the wind while still thinking of it as absolute and immutable. "Reasonable people understand that words don't always mean what their common definition would imply and it's on the consumer to know the difference" for Sony immediately followed "reasonable people assume words mean what is implied by their common definition and it's on the producer to account for that" for the California Dairy Council, then when we accuse them of crafting separate laws for separate clients they can say "well we just applied the reasonable person standard here the same way we would for anyone else".
I've noticed something interesting here. Sony claims it does
not disown people because even when they purchased a physical
hard copy, Sony still would own it. Naturally this is wrong -
people could re-sell it if they want to and Sony could not
remote-control anything else. But it is interesting that Sony
TRIES to go that route now. I think the courts will have to
make a very simple decision as to what ownership constitutes.
IMO when there is a physical hardcopy, things have to stay as
they are for decades - this is the only logical conclusion.
So, Sony trying to prevent physical hardcopies, as means to
dis"own" future sales, should be closed down by the court
system. I'd even think legislation should change so that
Sony would be required to make these as a copy. That could
be as simple as on a USB stick for instance (does not even
have to be provided by Sony, could be purchased elsewhere by
the buyer). Sony's way to try to argue here makes no sense
to me. We need better right to ownershiper by customers
laws, in addition to right to repair laws in favour of the
customers. These corporations bribed legislation to their
favour - that must stop.
As a society we need to sort out this simple scenario:
* 16 years old Joe buys a $70 cartridge/disc game, already assuming and counting on the $35 that he'll get back on second-hand sell.
That's it. A simple idea that should never cease to be possible, regardless of the medium.
This particular example made games affordable, and it also inadvertently put a concrete price on several other factors like how much it costs to be a first owner vs. wait for a second-hand purchase, and how much it costs to keep it for your collection vs. allowing the product to flow back into the community.
Steam trained a whole generation of gamers not to expect real ownership with resale rights. It's sad. The population old enough to even know this is how it used to be is shrinking.
PC gamers know piracy is always an option. There's even a reliable Denuvo bypass now if you're willing to play on Linux. The real power Steam has over its customers is a lot less than console makers, even if it's legally the same.
> how much it costs to be a first owner vs. wait for a second-hand purchase
Nitpick, but in your example, they would cost exactly the same eventually (other than the effort it takes to sell it secondhand), so no reason to wait.
> The motion says the PlayStation Terms of Service put a binding arbitration agreement and a class action waiver in Section 14, and quotes the opt-out clause: ... > The clause requires a user who does not wish to be bound to notify Sony in writing within 30 days of accepting the agreement.
Binding arbitration on individuals should be illegal, full stop. The only use case is taking away people's rights as consumers and workers. Or dodging responsibility for deadly mistakes like the Disney+ incident.
This "opt out" mechanism is made to let Sony lawyers argue that accepting it was your choice so it can't be struck down as forced, even if 99% of users have no idea it exists, by design. Evil all the way down.
Binding arbitration when there is a significant power imbalance should be illegal. If it's between two similarly abled parties (e.g. two individuals), it should be fine.
I studied a bit of this in a university course. Between a lot of organizations, binding arbitration is more efficient (i.e. cheaper) than the legal system. If your company wants to make a deal with another company, binding arbitration often makes sense.
Ditto for 2 individuals: If they had to go through the legal system, it could end up being a war of attrition - the one who has more money to pay lawyers wins. Binding arbitration is a way to "level" that field.
The down side (at least in many, if not all, states) is that you have little recourse if the arbiter is totally unfair. With the legal system, you can appeal, etc.
But between an individual and a large company - no way!
In my last job, the (very big) company automatically enrolls new employees into a binding arbitration agreement, but they do give a timeline to opt out. I was surprised I had that option. I even paid a lawyer to review the docs. He said "Yep, you can (and should) opt out. I'm surprised they even gave you that option."
In my country, many laws state that the consumer (or "weak" part) can not sign away their rights, any contract with stipulations regarding that would void that clause. Feel like that should be the norm. Shouldn't be able to lose your consumer rights just by pressing a button, then the rights are worthless if everyone just have a huge TOS / EULA for any service covering their asses.
Similarly to many other countries, the US has a concept of "adhesion contracts" - essentially, contracts where you have no realistic opportunity to negotiate the terms, and your rights are constrained much more than the rights of the party imposing these terms.
Courts often look at these contracts differently, but around the world, they allow them to exist because they are useful. A good example are the "terms of service" for public or private transit. If the carrier can't define some common-sense rules, like that you can be kicked out or fined for not wearing pants and playing bagpipes on the bus, it'd complicate things.
The legal standard is basically that the rules hold unless they're unreasonable or unconscionable. But of course, what's seen as reasonable depends on the country, the state, and the judge.
This is also one of those scenarios similar to subscription or membership cancellation where we should not allow accepting/signing up for something require using an entirely different method of communication to cancel/opt out.
Requiring written notification while the TOS being accepted entirely via digital means should be illegal.
Not to mention I think its insane that we allow companies to be able to dictate how citizens are allowed to utilize their legal system.
> Binding arbitration on individuals should be illegal, full stop. The only use case is taking away people's rights as consumers and workers. Or dodging responsibility for deadly mistakes like the Disney+ incident.
Hijacking to link to another website that has good information about how binding arbitration is stacked against the consumer/employee:
https://arbitrationinformation.org/
Binding arbitration as an abstract concept seems fair (really, the entire court system is a complicated system for binding arbitration)
However, in practice it isn’t fair at all.
what was the disney+ incident? /gen
Disney argued that the family of a man who died at one of their parks couldn't sue because he had signed up for Disney+, which has binding arbitration terms: https://fortune.com/2024/08/15/disney-wrongful-death-lawsuit...
This pretty much flies in the face of what any reasonable person would think the law should allow IMO
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/disney-says-man-cant-su...
Guest died from allergic reaction despite informing staff multiple times of the risk, but the case was dismissed because they had signed up for Disney+ years prior.
The case wasn't dismissed because of the arbitration clause. Disney dropped the argument after they got severely lambasted in public over the absurdity of the defense. It was dismissed later by the plaintiff (so there was likely some settlement)
I don't think this is the last time we will see this argument. Disney has a lot of value in brand equity to protect so it made sense for them to back away, but a "bad guy" company that's already regarded with distrust will probably go all in on this in the future.
> deadly mistakes like the Disney+ incident
Well, that led me down a wild rabbithole.
Access to the legal system is a fundamental right. It should not be possible to sign it away, any more than you can sign away your right to life or liberty.
> "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"
That's a very interesting defense. I wonder if it opens up a door maybe Sony would rather keep shut. If I can't own a copy of content because someone else has another copy, how does this play out for piracy? According to Sony's own argument, pirating a copy of the content is fine because others can/do still "buy" or "own" (rent/lease) it.
It's not a great defense if you ask me, unless they're counting on the judge not knowing the difference between owning a copy of something vs. the IP and license to sell the thing.
After all, Sony isn't selling the source code and IP for Resident Evil, they're selling a copy of the packaged software.
> pirating a copy of the content is fine because others can/do still "buy" or "own" (rent/lease) it.
Piracy is not theft. It is an infringement on another's right to distribute intellectual property.
This lawsuit is wasting a lot of time by not simply addressing the long-standing norm of buying a physical object which bundles the content, the license, and it many cases the copyright protection mechanisms.
Selling a used DVD is possible because the DVD contains the license — it is transferable and irrevocable by dint of its format.
Digital goods lack these distinct features but the language looks the same so people are now feeling the rug pull. Hence, the pushback against abandoning disc sales.
> "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
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!
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
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.
> 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?
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?
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.
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 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
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.
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.
I am deeply ambivalent about Sony.
I have had three mirrorless Sony cameras (albeit two secondhand), and I think they made what is one of the low-key best hobbyist cameras of its class ever [0], and I don't even much mind their current camera software, which I installed somewhat reluctantly.
But back on the distributable content side, this is a company that hacked customers' PCs with a rootkit. They are a big enough and clumsy enough company to make bad decisions regularly.
[0] the NEX-6, a true joy that I would recommend to anyone who wanted an old knockabout camera even now, though even fourteen years since it was released, its used prices hold up almost too well because I am clearly not the only person who thinks it is lovely
I guess it's worth pointing out that Sony (the conglomerate) isn't one company. It's a whole lot of companies. The gaming related part is called Sony Interactive Entertainment (headquartered in San Mateo, California). Movies are done by Sony Pictures Entertainment (headquartered in Culver City, California).
The ones making cameras are Sony Corporation (headquartered in Tokyo).
As far as my understanding goes, the Japanese part is pretty good, while the people in California have lost the plot.
> the people in California have lost the plot
I say this constantly about many topics.
Californians are a super different breed
Don't cut off your nose to spite your face. Buy and enjoy their cameras while avoiding their software as much as humanly possible.
Oh, I do. I mean part of what is so great about these cameras is their everyman quality — plus secondhand availability.
There is a Sony mirrorless camera at essentially every secondhand price point you can imagine.
At heart, I am a Nikon guy. My wallet, though, is a proper little Sony fanboi.
Seems like we need some copyright reform WRT issues like this. We need a true way to have digital ownership; including putting assets in escrow and a way for access to continue after the store is shut down or the item removed from the store.
Your access to a digital product you have "purchased" should not be tied to the continued existence of the store you also bought it from. Similar to physical products.
If I bought a game at GameStop we aren't required to continuously reach back out to them every once in a while to check that they're okay with me playing the game I bought from them. And if GameStop goes out of business they aren't going to come knocking on my door to make sure I never play the game again or take it back from me.
Once a game or any other product is purchased from a digital store, it should not require the stores continued existence or permission.
Yes there are some drawbacks in that maybe they could argue then that they could stop allowing redownloading a game you've already purchased but so be it, they'd just be offering a worse experience and users would move away.
We also need to stop allowing unclear language. When we lease a car at a dealership they never use the term "buy" or "own". That's strictly reserved for ownership. We should require the same for other licensed/leased products.
It's ridiculous to me that trying to play some recent games from Microsoft-affiliated studios requires me to sign in with a Microsoft account even just to play also malone. Paying them for Halo MCC or Gears 5 isn't enough to be able to play the campaign alone; the main menu is literally blocked by a sign-in screen. There's no reason whatsoever this should be allowed.
One fun thing I remember from reading some EULAs for physical games I bought in the past: the EULA for StarCraft at least explicitly said that you are required to obtain prior written permission from Blizzard Entertainment before lending the disk to a friend. Obviously this is not practically enforceable, but it shows that nothing of this kind is new from these companies' perspectives.
The way the law is structured, you are never buying copies of digital goods, regardless of the format in which you obtain them. Instead, you buy a license to use the digital good under the specific terms and conditions of that license. That is why if you get a disk with GNU utils on it from the FSF, you are still bound by the GPL in what you can do with the data on that disk.
I've been posting a similar idea for years. Require that for each piece of commercial software there is a "method" to open it up and use without requiring on-line servers. The method is be registered with a special government agency for that purpose, who first verifies that the method works.
Later when the agency considers the software to be "abandonware", it publishes the method.
Remove DRM laws and make copyright on all media expire after 5 or 10 years off market. Abandoned franchises should get the same treatment. Call it Sackboy's Law. See how quick Sony and EA rush to port their back catalogue.
We do but it'll never happen. Estates would accumulate huge libraries of digital goods and never need to buy anything new.
Which would be awesome which is why it won't happen.
HN trunks the url
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Sony_PlayStation_digital_game_...
Sony's lawyers really picked a strange hill to die on here... even if they win, the precedence will screw over Sony, at least in marketing.
> the precedence will screw over Sony
As is usual in the modern world (and probably since the beginning of time since there's nothing new under the sun for the last ~2,000-3,000 years), not enough people will care for it to have any measurable screwing effect.
Not so strange, there is lots of money to be made by people not owning things anymore. Especially getting rid of physical second hand sells/buys will force consumer to buy the games straight from Sony again, who is the only store you will be able to buy Playstation games from.
But yeah, hopefully the community and ecosystem is aligned enough to massively fuck Sony over this, vote with your wallets people.
Xbox already lost one console war over plans to stop the second hand market so they know how important it is to players. Their new disc to digital feature is proof they are looking at Sony's mistakes and slowly moving in the opposite direction. It basically removes the most serious thing that made physical games less convenient.
If the PS6 is digital only and Xbox doubles down on discs it might be a slam dunk victory. Not all players understand or care about it now, but if they explain it well in the launch window and combine that with their back compat history I think they have a good chance to win.
Even Microsoft knows that gaming is a competitive market and pulling customers from PlayStation is better than trying to extract as much as possible from your existing user base. One Game Pass sub is worth more than marketplace fees from 3 extra games you would normally buy used.
> Especially getting rid of physical second hand sells/buys will force consumer to buy the games straight from Sony
That's what lawyers and other corporate drones think, but they are plain wrong.
The only reason why people want to buy a copy from second hand is because they can't afford the price of a new one. In reality these people will never ever buy straight from Sony, simply because it's too expensive for them. Simple as that. They much more likely to turn to free pirate copies instead.
Especially not full price. The value of buying a license for a digital download can't be $60 if the value of owning the physical version is also $60.
Personally to me the value of a temporary license to a game is at best $10. Why would I rent a game for $60?
Yeah, okay, I made the same mistake as Sony. I wrote "buy", but what I meant was "spending money" in a general sense (regardless if it's buying ownership or paying a license fee). Second hand customers simply can't afford (or willing to pay) the price of a new copy. Trying to force these people to the Sony shop is a really bad move and won't work.
Otherwise you're right, it's absurd that license fee is the same as the price of an owned copy.
Just wait until they manage to apply it to physical goods like cars and dishwashers.
> Just wait until they manage to apply it to physical goods like cars and dishwashers.
This already happened... It's called subscription or mortgage loan.
Most households don't have that kind of money at once, they are already forced into a loan with regular payments. This means not the buyer but the bank owns the car until the last penny is paid.
And in some cases your car's on-board software needs a constant connection with the vendor's servers (meaning it must be up and you must pay for a license too). https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/02/what-happens-to-a-car-w...
Brave new world.
Cars you've been able to lease since before I was born probably. Dishwashers and other home appliances are possible to finance here too, effectively renting it until you "own it", in comparison with leasing.
Still, not as bad as the "digital licensing" hell we're in when it comes to video games, but there is zero ownership at the end of it.
I'm talking about removing the ability to own it, not leasing it. You can lease a toothbrush if you want to.
If 30 years ago someone suggested breaking into your house to take away your Nintendo games or remotely disabling them by sending something over the network to the console, it would have absolutely been beyond the pale.
But 30 years of boiling the frog and now we have a megacorp that has absolutely no qualms about maximizing their profits by doing the moral equivalent. The popular conception of what constitutes a transaction, what constitutes ownership, and what is fair use has swung so far away from what consumers want and expect, that I can't believe they're arguing, stupidly, in court, that ownership is "not possible" because one person can buy a game, and then a second person can!
Whatever happened, I dunno. I hate that consumers have become so powerless in the face of relentless erosion of basic transactional norms.
It just reinforces how much I will not be participating in that economy.
> In the digital age, it is not plausible to allege that reasonable consumers believed they were obtaining "ownership" of a digital game.
So their argument really is that it is unreasonable for anybody to believe they own any of the things they download or purchase digitally? What a leap there.
I mean thats as plain english as you can get to an official rubber stamp on "you will own nothing and you will be happy".
And then they want to have it both ways by interchangeably using the words "revocable license" and "ownership" when it suits their needs. License in small writing/text, but "own" in anything the user might actually reasonably read.
Does Sony believe in ownership of digital money?
No of course not, they merely license it from the government /s (or not /s? this whole thing is confusing)
All ownership is temporary. Even Earth's ownership of its atoms is really a lease granted temporarily by the Solar system.
You own the license. The license can be revoked. Don’t look for ways to prove them wrong. Just don’t buy it.
> own
> revoked
I think the dispute is right here.
yeah the outcome here is "we're sorry, here's your 0.50 class action settlement payment" and updated terms of service... it's not going to reverse anything, people need to stop buying
This thing where companies can use custom definitions of words in order to intentionally build ambiguity into their agreements is designed to induce just this type of problem. Words have meaning outside these agreements and that outside meaning influences people's interpretation of the agreement. Words are, unfortunately, also ambiguous. So when we make these agreements we allow them to add more detail to definitions in an effort to clear up that ambiguity, but we end up with people trying to argue blatant contradictions like "any reasonable person would understand that own doesn't mean own"
Also, the definition of what a "reasonable person" is capable of understanding varies from case to case, depending on the interests of the companies involved.
E.g. meat and milk industry want us to believe that a "reasonable person" is dumb enough to be confused by labels like "soy milk" or "vegan burger".
everyone believes something different, everyone knows a different set of facts, everyone thinks of themselves as reasonable, and the law depends on what a reasonable person might believe. absent some objective standard of reasonability it's all just places where you can inject ambiguity and then leverage that ambiguity to make the law shift like sands in the wind while still thinking of it as absolute and immutable. "Reasonable people understand that words don't always mean what their common definition would imply and it's on the consumer to know the difference" for Sony immediately followed "reasonable people assume words mean what is implied by their common definition and it's on the producer to account for that" for the California Dairy Council, then when we accuse them of crafting separate laws for separate clients they can say "well we just applied the reasonable person standard here the same way we would for anyone else".
I've noticed something interesting here. Sony claims it does not disown people because even when they purchased a physical hard copy, Sony still would own it. Naturally this is wrong - people could re-sell it if they want to and Sony could not remote-control anything else. But it is interesting that Sony TRIES to go that route now. I think the courts will have to make a very simple decision as to what ownership constitutes. IMO when there is a physical hardcopy, things have to stay as they are for decades - this is the only logical conclusion. So, Sony trying to prevent physical hardcopies, as means to dis"own" future sales, should be closed down by the court system. I'd even think legislation should change so that Sony would be required to make these as a copy. That could be as simple as on a USB stick for instance (does not even have to be provided by Sony, could be purchased elsewhere by the buyer). Sony's way to try to argue here makes no sense to me. We need better right to ownershiper by customers laws, in addition to right to repair laws in favour of the customers. These corporations bribed legislation to their favour - that must stop.
As a society we need to sort out this simple scenario:
* 16 years old Joe buys a $70 cartridge/disc game, already assuming and counting on the $35 that he'll get back on second-hand sell.
That's it. A simple idea that should never cease to be possible, regardless of the medium.
This particular example made games affordable, and it also inadvertently put a concrete price on several other factors like how much it costs to be a first owner vs. wait for a second-hand purchase, and how much it costs to keep it for your collection vs. allowing the product to flow back into the community.
Steam trained a whole generation of gamers not to expect real ownership with resale rights. It's sad. The population old enough to even know this is how it used to be is shrinking.
PC gamers know piracy is always an option. There's even a reliable Denuvo bypass now if you're willing to play on Linux. The real power Steam has over its customers is a lot less than console makers, even if it's legally the same.
> how much it costs to be a first owner vs. wait for a second-hand purchase
Nitpick, but in your example, they would cost exactly the same eventually (other than the effort it takes to sell it secondhand), so no reason to wait.