It’s the digital age. My digital items are my possessions. This dichotomy in your head between the “real” and the “digital” doesn’t exist for the younger generation. There are few alternatives to these large tech companies. As I’ve gotten older I’ve wisened up and I buy DRM-free digital goods where possible (because of people who think like you, that big corporations need to be protected from the little people and not the other way around)… but before I got wise, I built up quite a large steam, Apple Books, and Kindle library (all of which call what we are doing “purchasing”… heads they win tails we lose).
I understand that you may value digital goods. I have some I value too. You just need to understand that just as with physical goods, even more with digital ones - if you don't control it, you haven't bought it. If somebody could just come and take your car, any time for any reason, you haven't bought a car. If somebody can just come and take your game anytime for any reason - you haven't bought a game. You bought a ticket to play it, maybe, but that's wholly other business.
I understand this well enough to at least keep offline backups of my paid content libraries (because I’m older and can afford the expense). Yeah, because of DRM it may be troublesome to access the content if my account was banned… but it gives me more ground to stand on (with our current unjust laws, both in court and in the court of public opinion) if I only claim that the content I already downloaded should still be accessible.
Your car analogy is interesting… If your car was paid off but got repossessed later because you said something nasty about the dealership on a forum, that would be a gross miscarriage of justice, even if they buried a clause deep in their sale terms granting themselves such an unconscionable right.
That's a weird way to put it. It may not exist "for" someone, but as you seem to acknowledge, it exists "for" numerous corporations and legal systems which even those someones are subject to. I thought this was the primary purpose of NFTs. An NFT physically cannot be revoked without the permission (coerced or otherwise) of the holder, or a fundamental problem in encryption.
And just so other people don't get confused by this pretty misleading hyperbole:
" The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. "
source: https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/
No judge is going to weigh what the "buy" button omits over what the EULA actually states. If anyone has an example of a digital content service with an EULA that DOESN'T contain this kind of verbiage I would be fascinated to see it.
Right, but that's my point (as the original poster). 100%, a judge should say "terms are terms, company is in the right"; we need new laws to protect consumers. By and large, consumers don't understand how digital is different; that it isn't ownership (in fact, arguably, consumers don't even understand that when they buy a bluray, that also isn't ownership in a legal sense; but it is ownership in common parlance). Whether these service providers would still see such success, if they did, is an unknown quantity; they probably would, but it can't be known. What is known is that consumers are (rarely) being shafted, with no recourse, because they agreed to something they didn't understand; it doesn't occur to most people that Apple even has the power to ban accounts, and take all their content with it.
Counter-argument: "Well, people should read the EULAs and understand it". Oof. First: the EULA may say "we have the right to revoke access" but that means nothing without the context of how, why, and how often it happens. These companies have not demonstrated even the BASIC DECENCY to EXPLAIN THEMSELVES when they ban users, let alone publish reasonable information about how often it happens. The statements in the EULA are useless without this context, because it enables savvy consumers to compare their statements with their own risk profile to make informed decisions. But, second: arguing this point is basically saying "dumb people deserve to be preyed on by international gigacorporations". Most people don't understand what this language means; in many cases, it seems to be written specifically so it can't be understood without a law degree.
Counter-argument: "Account termination & content revocation is rare, so whatever." Well, this point defeats itself, but think about it this way: If its so rare, then why not protect consumers? Companies will oppose it, of course, but they're arguing from the ground that its so rare that enforcement of this law wouldn't hurt them. If they hurt consumers, it'll hurt them. If they don't, it won't.
The narrative is getting twisted here; its not that consumers should have "irrevocable ownership" over a digital good you buy on, for example, Steam. Well, the NFT crowd would say you should, but let's ignore them. The assertion is: there should be fair and equitable recourse for when a service provider decides to revoke your access to the service which distributes the content you purchased. That recourse would ideally be met by simply unshackling the content from the service provider; the ability to play Steam games without being connected to Steam, for example. However, short of that, reimbursement is fair. It would absolutely hurt companies in this day and age of "terminate accounts for any reason, sometimes no reason, whatever the system decides" but THAT'S THE POINT. Companies only speak money. The point is to make termination hurt them, so they're forced to think more critically about how & why they terminate.
