New California law reminds us we don't own games and movies.
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
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.
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.
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.