[alwayslikethis]

> digital “purchases” are transferrable and have all of the rights and privileges afforded to physical goods.

I concur. We need to establish a "secondary markets act", which would allow individuals to transact accounts and digital items worth under a certain amount (let's say $10k, as a non-waivable right, so it wouldn't apply to larger B2B contracts). Essentially, these things should be viewed as property of the consumer and be freely sold. Without the freedom to transact, there can't be a free market.

[ethbr1]

The problem with enforcing resellability on digital goods is the technical ability to copy them.

If I have full ownership of a digital good, then I have the ability to copy it.

Any limitation of my ability to copy requiring removing some control from the owner and escrowing it with another party (e.g. DRM).

As much as I hate to say it, allowing digital good resale is a good use for a blockchain: uniquely identifying an instance and then keeping a decentralized ledger of who owns it at any time.

However, there would still need to be a carrot to make this system attractive.

If there isn't, then why wouldn't people just create infinite copies off-ledger and ignore it?

And without any viable digital goods ownership system, who wouldn't companies default to the current model of only offering licenses / subscriptions?

[alwayslikethis]

Piracy has always existed and will always exist. The issue is that it only takes one determined pirate to overcome the DRM and that piece of information is freed from DRM. You can already do all this even without a legally recognized right of ownership.

I assume plenty of people are willing to pay for things they appreciate. Maybe the carrot can be some kind of recognition: you get to make a digital signature from that token that you can display as a part of your digital identity. There could be discussion forums that require you to have such a token to participate in.

[heraldgeezer]

GoG survives selling DRM free games. Unsure if this would work on all markets.

[idiotsecant]

I hate that crypto ever had this big money swell associated with it. If we could divorce the technical protocols from the scams and shilling people associate with it, it actually has some interesting uses that barely anyone is willing to talk about it a non-shill or non-disgust way.

[pbronez]

Yes. This is the killer app for blockchain. I want Movies Anywhere, but for everything and without an industry gatekeeper. If I am subscribed to Netflix, I should be able to watch every video in their catalog through any service that has the bits.

[oneplane]

That secondary markets thing has been an earlier subject (but not really covering app stores etc at that time), there were issues where larger companies didn't want you selling CD Keys or Windows license keys you weren't using, and they didn't want the ones that were bought in one market to be used in another (i.e. grey market import etc). I think they (the EU) ended up telling the corporations to suck it up since whoever owns the thing is free to sell it when they don't want it anymore.

This is of course also a factor in the move to subscriptions since you'd no longer own a persistent license or product and as such there's nothing to sell. Ironically this should also mean the 'product' (subscription) has far less value than the actual product, even if it's technically the same system/software. Yet subscriptions are more costly than a one-off you repeat every couple of years. Sigh.

[madsbuch]

Why shouldn't it apply to larger contracts?

There is a very easy way to get around such a requirement from legislation: Just call it licensing instead of a purchase.

The need for such a legislation is corporations reckless use of the words "purchase" and "buy" for goods that have been licensed.

[Fluorescence]

> very easy way to get around such a requirement from legislation: Just call it licensing instead of a purchase.

Licensing should come with enhanced consumer rights e.g. an explicit license duration and allow the consumer to return the license for pro-rata refund within that duration. The license should be for the IP and honoured for all formats and platforms that meet some regularity threshold. The absurdity of having to rebuy things you "own" because you switch device or format has to end.

Along similar lines, hardware should be called "hire" not "sell" when the manufacturer maintains control over the device e.g. locked bootloaders, encryption keys, online service dependencies, forced updates with no downgrade, remote-access privileges, telemetry, not meeting "right-to-repair", hardware locking preventing component replacement or choice of consumable (e.g. ink) etc.

Similar return rights should apply if hardware is leased. Seller would need to be insured/escrow to meet consumer refunds if they break their side of the lease (e.g. going bust and shutting down required online services).

[alwayslikethis]

This is a part of it, but I don't think it's all there is. Words mean little when there is such a large power and information asymmetry between consumers and sellers.

The law should formalize the concepts of rentals (licenses) and purchases. Purchases create non-waivable rights of transferability and allows the owner to demand compensation when a service closes: for example if I shut down my movie platform, you should get to download a copy of everything you own.

Licenses on the other hand do not confer such rights, but should still be transferable under a certain value and have a set period during which its terms must be fulfilled, otherwise the licensee needs to be compensated. No "we change the terms at our sole discretion at any moment" nonsense.

Vendors can give you extra rights (like prorated returns or exchanges), but they can't take any of the codified rights away. I assume there needs to be some details about companies just setting a license of one day but never revokes access to avoid the regulation, but someone smarter than me can probably figure that out.

For larger licenses I think the customer (usually customers) has a greater negotiating leverage, so it isn't as necessary to codify these terms, but of course this is contingent on there not existing trillion-dollar corporations, which is not the world we live in.

[raron]

Licenses or rights can be sold, too.

If you buy a physical book or DVD, you basically have a perpetual right to read, watch, listen to that copyrighted material. But you can sell that physical item to anyone and with that the right to consume that material.

This is not (or at least should not be) different even if there is no physical item or even if the copyrighted material is software and not audiovisual media.

[kbolino]

But licensing is a very obfuscatory word. What are the terms of the licenses? Consumers don't really know and they vary widely anyway.

Buying may have been a misnomer but it had some useful baggage that is shed with the terminology shift.