California recently became the first state to ban deceptive sales of so-called “disappearing media.”
On Tuesday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2426 into law, protecting consumers of digital goods like books, movies, and video games from being duped into purchasing content without realizing access was only granted through a temporary license.
About god-damned time someone did something about that.
Not great that it had to be California legislating it for the rest of the country but we’d pass out if we held our breath on Congress doing anything useful
From an international perspective it does seem to be the only way you guys get any progressive laws implemented. Perhaps you should move the capital
This is an important first step in the right direction. Given the state of consumer law saying “anything goes if you agree to it” this may be the best initial way to start discouraging the practice of always online everything, helping preservation and being honest with consumers.
without realizing access was only granted through a temporary license.
That phrasing has me concerend. Does this also cover the services being shut down?
“This is a permanent licence until we go bankrupt and you can’t access the content anymore”
Purchase/buy should mean you get a downloadable DRM free file. And thing else is a rental.
Oh no that’s Piracy. That’s what these guys would say. They want to think you own the media but also you are not free to do what you want with it. Weird kind of ownership.
The only games you BUY now are GOG. DRM free.
You can download the installer and archive it. If GOG goes under you can still install and play it.
Weird kind of ownership.
Modern click through agreement: you “buy” a product, but vendor gets to fuck your wife because it says he can right here section 69 🤡
If you don’t like it, try your chance in courts, boy!
Lul good luck in court. Section 69.420 🤡 says you agree to arbitration, fuck you.
No they’re clever they only agree to arbitration if you’re suing them not the other way around. They are very careful to make that explicitly clear
You buy the license to be able to view the media as many times as you wish. If I bought a copy of the Titanic on Google movies, or whatever it’s called, I’ve bought a license to view that movie for however many times I wish for as long as I wish. If Google decides to remove that movie then they need to either pay me back, or give me the right to download the movie.
As long as I don’t share that download or make a torrent of it, then it’s not piracy.
what’s the defense? “people won’t buy it if they know they won’t own it!!! we’re entitled to all the money everywhere!!!”
it’s not enough to have their cake and eat it too–they’re after your cake also
Don’t worry, deceptive sales are still allowed everywhere else…
Having it in Cali is the first step to it eventually being in more of the country. This is a good thing
