| reply to cableties
Re: From the Sounds of it. said by cableties:EULA: End-User License Agreenemt apply to the videogames you play. You don't OWN the content, you are buying the right to use/play. Read the EULA of every game... you don't own it. Once you open the package or box or wrap, you agree.
Try again: As per a federal court ruling against Adobe/Microsoft brought on via class action, "shrink-wrapped EULAs" are null, void, and un-enforceable. This ruling came about because people who bought OEM PCs believed they had the legal right to sell off the pre-installed bloatware they would never use that always came back whenever they re-installed Windows from their restore CDs. Microsoft and Adobe tried to block these sales using the same argument: they don't own the software; just the license, and the EULAs expressly forbid it. They lost their hides as the court ruled that "shrink-wrapped" EULAs are null and void because they're trying to function as amendment to an already closed and finalized sales transaction.
The precedent set by that case means the video gaming industry and all its legal-beagles are lying when they use the "you only own the license" crutch. They know they'd lose their collective asses if their notions were ever legally challenged, yet they take solace in the fact that challenging them is expensive - Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are prepared to use the "bury them in paper" tactic to drag out such a challenge for years, consequently bankrupting any party that so desires to challenge them.
Doesn't change the fact that -- from the Magnavox Odyssey to today -- has always involved relying on snazy box art, logos, and full page ads in magazines and TV pumping and shilling both the console(s) and the game(s) -- NOT THE PAPER LICENSE(S) -- and people in every day conversations say "I bought Mortal Kombat 9" instead of saying "I bought a license to use/play Mortal Kombat 9." Their entire logic flies in the face of the sole justification for purchasing consoles: to foreclose on and liberate one's self (and their wallets) from the old and tired feed-the-machine subscription-based business models of the quarter-muncher.
The divorce from that business model has been very brief - from the PS1 to the PS2. The moment consoles acquired an Ethernet port and morphed into over-glorified STBs, it was the beginning of the end: video game companies in their greed and lust for control were gonna go right back to the subscription-based business models of the arcades only this time, they'd be munching tens and hundreds of dollars instead of quarters, and requiring them to constantly phone home to the mothership. As opposed to Plug-N-Play. Planned obsolescence and killing off the pre-owned software is integral to this business model since they have a vested interested in foisting ported "HD Collections/Compilations" down your gullet in lieu of backward compatibility.
In that regard, I dare them to kill off used-gaming. 
The industry could use another bubble-popping crash to burn off the leeches, and bring it back to the plug-and-play basics -- smacking every fugly branch of attitude adjustment on the way down.  |
