All digital purchases will always be licensed. Otherwise you could create infinite copies and give they away/sell them yourselves. Video DVDs were licenses. Audio CDs were licenses. They were just licenses associated physical media, so 99% of people were ignorant that it was a license.
That is false for the same reason you cannot infinitely print a book you bought. You don't need an EULA for a hardback, software licensing doesn't need to exist either.
You own the book: the physical item. You don't own the organization of the words on the page: the data. You didn't need a SW license for a Tamagotchi because the software was fixed in the physical good. Meanwhile, any digital book you buy is licensed because the IP is not fixed in a physical good.
Movie industry did similar shit the videogames industry is doing.
Want to watch your movie on the DVD you bought. 30 seconds anti-piracy warnings. Advertisements.
None of this shit if you download a clean copy.
Start your game. Always Online DRM on single player mode. Company server's down? No game. Your Internet is down? No game. Power outrage but you want to play on your laptop's batery? No game.
Company decomissions authentification servers? Game lost forever.
None of this shit if you download a patch version.
It's annoying as a user, but a product that can be losslessly duplicated and distributed with no effort isn't really viable under any other model. We could stick with the standard disc/carts and DRM arms race, but I don't see how you do better than that. I wouldn't mind a return to that world, but even then all you've really done is turn a single-user license into a single-seat transferable license. But that's still an improvement.
IMHO, the EU ruling that said Steam had to allow transfer of licenses was a step in the right direction. Embedding the same consumer rights into the licenses. I think SKG's got the right idea in concept: requiring a support plan as part of the license and making it a less one-sided agreement. I'm just pessimistic about what the actual outcome will be.
That is false for the same reason you cannot infinitely print a book you bought. You don't need an EULA for a hardback, software licensing doesn't need to exist either.
You own the book: the physical item. You don't own the organization of the words on the page: the data. You didn't need a SW license for a Tamagotchi because the software was fixed in the physical good. Meanwhile, any digital book you buy is licensed because the IP is not fixed in a physical good.
This is the problem. Digital good are not treated the same as physical goods, which is a legacy of the horrifically evil music industry.
Movie industry did similar shit the videogames industry is doing.
Want to watch your movie on the DVD you bought. 30 seconds anti-piracy warnings. Advertisements.
None of this shit if you download a clean copy.
Start your game. Always Online DRM on single player mode. Company server's down? No game. Your Internet is down? No game. Power outrage but you want to play on your laptop's batery? No game.
Company decomissions authentification servers? Game lost forever.
None of this shit if you download a patch version.
It's annoying as a user, but a product that can be losslessly duplicated and distributed with no effort isn't really viable under any other model. We could stick with the standard disc/carts and DRM arms race, but I don't see how you do better than that. I wouldn't mind a return to that world, but even then all you've really done is turn a single-user license into a single-seat transferable license. But that's still an improvement.
IMHO, the EU ruling that said Steam had to allow transfer of licenses was a step in the right direction. Embedding the same consumer rights into the licenses. I think SKG's got the right idea in concept: requiring a support plan as part of the license and making it a less one-sided agreement. I'm just pessimistic about what the actual outcome will be.
I love watching IP tards spin themselves in circles.
Its only rivaled by black women justifying their public behavior.