- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
If the content is not stored locally and DRM free, then you don’t own it. Don’t pay for content that you can’t own. 🏴☠️
Is there any platform or medium where I can buy locally stored and DRM-free software? Even if I buy a game on disc I am fucked, cause most games need updates. I can only name GOG.
Given the recent controversy, it calls into question the definition of the word ‘buy.’
GOG is the only one that I know of too.
itch.io is fantastic. Mostly indie stuff with some bigger name stuff, but it’s by far the best out there for devs.
It’s hard to find quality games in the sea of single dev weekend projects on itch io…
If you see potential in one and their game is open source then consider contributing in some way (not as in money but honest feedback helps).
Buy the disc, put it on a shelf and download a clean copy.
Humble (the company that sells Bundles) has some games listed as DRM free games in their store. Never bought individual games from them, but I have gotten DRM free games in their bundles.
Also, fuck GOG. They are owned by CD Project Red, the piece of shit lawyers who trademarked the term cyberpunk.
Pretty sure they bought the trademark from the company who owned it previous (for a 1980s era board game if I recall correctly). They bought it to prevent shitty 2077 clones with the same name from popping up. I haven’t heard of them actively pursuing copyright infringement against others who use cyberpunk.
2077 and its spinoffs are literally set in the boardgame universe and an updated rulebook was released at the same time as the game.
2077 and Edgerunners are just stories set in the setting and universe from the boardgame. The Arasaka Tower Heist, Johnny Silverhand, Morgan Blackhand, all the corps, gangs, and cyberware are right from the boardgame. The story had heavy involvement from the creator of the board game as well. For fucks sake he does the voice of Maximum Mike on the in game radio.
Did people not realize that Cyberpunk 2077 is just another Witcher situation, but this time the original author wanted to stay a part of things?
Just because they are not openly pursuing enforcement does not mean that they will not. Just the audacity to trademark a generic term widely used in media discussion makes me think that they are being represented by scumbag lawyers.
The term has been trademarked since 1995 for different uses. This isn’t anything new and there’s no signs they intend to use it aggressively. https://trademarks.justia.com/856/81/cyberpunk-85681741.html
The fuck are you talking about wrt Cyberpunk? It was already the trademarked name of the boardgame that all this new shit draws from, the boardgame that coined the fucking term in the first place.
They purchased the trademark from the old role playing game and then expanded it, if I recall.
The RPG did not invent the term. It was riding the hype of cyberpunk literature. The first use of the term is from 1980 (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cyberpunk). According to Wikipedia, the game did not come out until 1988 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_(role-playing_game) ).
What are you even talking a out, there are plenty of games with cyberpunk in the tittle on steam.
And CD Project Red has the right to sue those publishers.
Of course, if they do and the other side chooses to fight, they will have to explain to a judge why the trademark was granted to them despite a mountain of prior art describing games as cyberpunk.
Muh witcher
Most games don’t need updates
Have you played any new games recently?
Yes, most games are better with patches. Most games do not need patches. And most games come out just fine, the big AAAs that push consoles often have a patch that is worth caring about.
I played through the most recent yakuza game without a patch recently. Was great.
Real quick: how high are you?
How high doesnt matter, we need to know what they are high on
And where to get it
Whatever they’re smoking, don’t do it. You’ll end up drooling gibberish with a blithe grin on like that. ↑
Ok, if you think most games don’t need them, then I hope that you’re enjoying bugs. 10/20 years ago games were unfinished, too - but you were able to download and SAVE an update. This is nearly impossible, now.
I literally gave you an example of a game I played recently, without patches and zero bugs. Please read the whole thing before leaving a comment.
The quality of comments on lemmy has really gone downhill the past few months, it’s about reddit quality now and getting worse
“people disagree with me, it sure feels like reddit around here”
You ever think the place wasnt the common denominator?
one of many
Not much of a gamer lately, huh?
Updates are always an option now, so games are no longer released in a very stable state. And by not very stable, I mean “crashes immediately with X company hardware”, “frame rate drops to 1 frame/s in certain areas”, or “quest line is bugged and incompletable”
Day one updates generally aren’t optional… With a publisher who values polish like Nintendo? Generally they’re playable, but a bit rough. On average, they’re literally impossible to play through. It’s a real problem in modern gaming
I played through the most recent yakuza game without a patch recently. Was great.
Ok, but that’s Yakuza. Their team is great and cares a lot about quality. They’re hardly a representative example, but…
I just scanned through their update log. A week after launch, they fixed a crash when you deleted a picture from the photo album. Another couple weeks later, they fixed one where the game would crash intermittently. A few weeks later, they fixed a bug where the game wouldn’t boot if you unlocked all the achievements. And it keeps going, more than a year later they fixed a crash during a quest if you have an inconsistent frame rate
There’s a lot more, but I just scanned through looking for crash fixes - there’re also many issues with graphics that would make the game unplayable with certain setups
Also, I noticed the first patch is 1.02, making me believe the “unpatched” game actually included the day 1 patch
Maybe the release version worked for you, but it didn’t work for everyone (or maybe your version included patches you’re unaware of)
And again, this is an example of a highly polished game - most games are far, far worse
Old games had crasher bugs too, and even had new versions :o. 99% of games release in a state where 99% of people will never notice an issue.
Most games are not “far worse”, you are looking at the high profile exceptions and extrapolating rather than looking at the actual real landscape of releases.
It’s entirely possible that we play very different games, but I’m a gamer programmer, I read patch notes and listen to retrospectives recreationally
I never said games are far worse, I think that’s true for AAA gaming (for different reasons), but modern indie games beat the crap out of the bargain bin games from a couple decades ago
My point is this - OTA updates change how software is developed. It used to cost a lot of money to fix if you release it with breaking bugs, and there were several system builds to test on.
Now? There’s an infinite number of configurations you can support with one engine and minimal porting - hell, Nvidia regularly patches their drivers to support specific games better.
The cost of extensive qa has skyrocketed, and the consequences of bugs at launch has plummeted.
If that doesn’t convince you, go pick 5 random games released this year on steam, and look at their update logs. All 5, maybe 4 if you’re lucky , will have patches around release time for major issues.
It’s not because they’re lazy or bad devs, it’s because QA could take months or years to tell you what user feedback would get you in 48 hours after launch
Correct, most indie and AA games ship complete
Is there any platform or medium where I can buy locally stored and DRM-free software?
Steam, but you’ll have to manually search around the forums to see which games does it and which doesn’t. It’s not exactly a well advertised feature, but integration of Steamworks copy protection is optional. Most of the games that are DRM-free on GOG are DRM-free on Steam too.
I bought DRM-free TV episodes from Google Play (IIRC). Everything was great until codecs got updated a couple of years later and the videos were suddenly jerky to the point of unwatchability.
Even when I own it, there’s no guarantee I get to keep it.
You can probably play it properly on a PC using something like VLC (A pretty powerful video player)
VLC is also available on android, do that might be worth a try!
Including Android TV.
Or transcode it to support your current video player via handbrake
Uh, that’s practically all software and games these days.
In this case Sony is taking away TV shows that people purchased. They can be purchased on physical media that will be playable as long as you have the disc. The DRM on DVD and Bluray discs can be easily removed to make backups that will play on anything forever.
As for games, everything on GOG is DRM free. They have downloads for the installers so you can keep a backup copy to install decades from now even if GOG is long gone by then.
If the content is not stored locally and DRM free, then you don’t own it.
Have fun managing tens of TB of backups. I have given up on that quite a while ago, DRM-free is just not a practical for the amount of digital content you collect over the years. It’s a nice to have thing that comes in really handy sometimes (e.g. watching movies on unsupported device like VR headsets), but it’s not a solution for digital ownership. In some ways it’s actually worse, as you can’t practically resell DRM-free copies, as you don’t have a proof of ownership. You’ll also miss out on updates for new technologies (codecs, OS versions, etc.).
This needs a legislative solution or some NFT-like thing that gives you a certificate like “You own this, feel free to pirate if we go out of business”(digital signed by company).
Sony understands only one language… MONEY. I stopped buying their products since they installed a root kit decades ago in my computer to prevent it from ripping my legally bought CDs to my computer. I had to reinstall windows to get rid of that virus. Never again! And all my electronics were Sony back then
Hey, just wanted to say I’m glad a few of us remember the rootkit fiasco. I still won’t buy Sony products today.
Same here. This was such a hostile move I never bought anything “Sony” after that.
Don’t forget the “fix” Sony offered after they were initally caught was an even MORE invasive rootkit. 🫠
Yeah, fuck those rootkits. Despicable.
They do something similar on their smart TVs - it’s not possible to run Kodi with torrent streaming plugins, they block it on purpose.
How is it blocked? Could you work around it with a debrid service? i.e no torrent protocol
I didn’t further investigated it, however I remember that the Kodi remote app port worked, but the torrent streaming port (Elementum specifically) didn’t.
While on the Xiaomi Mi Box S it worked.
A) which CD did you buy that had the Sony rootkit? B) decades ago? No. It’s only been 18 years.
Sarah McLachlan, Surfacing. Shout out to Mark Russinovich for exposing it.
deleted by creator
What I love about this whole thing is that it’s not just Sony’s fault but they’re getting all the blame because WB would pull all their future content if Sony bad-mouthed them.
Sony choose to not offer refunds. Sony knew the contract when they agreed to sell the content. When something gets pulled from steam I can still download and install it.
How much of that money is theirs to refund? A portion of that sale went to WB? Why is WB not being asked to give a refund?
Sony entered in a contractual relationship with their customers and by Law the responsability ends there.
If you pay somebody to build you a garden shed and after 5 months of nothing happenning you complain and the builder can just say “sorry, the fly-by-night wood supliers whe paid for the wood just took of with our money, so you’re not going to get a shed and we’ll keep your money”, is that’s alright?!
Imagine what would it do to Trade and Business in general if any supplier could legally screw a customer over because they themselves chose to to engage a fishy entity as their own supplier who screwed them, so they just passed on that loss legally to all their costumers.
No, the way things work is that each contractual relationship is isolated from all others, so Sony got full freedom to chose what kind of contract they signed with WB and what contract they “signed” with their retail customers (note that retail sales are implied Contracts and there are legally mandatory implied clauses in any contracts with retail customers, covering for example legally mandated guarantees periods) - likely profiting a lot by chosing the short-term commitment with WB rather than one that tied WB for, say, 20 years - and any mismatch of obligations that might arise from that is entirelly the responsability of Sony.
Sony got to keep the profits from their own choices of licensing contracts and now it’s up to them to make up for the losses derived from the consequences that choice, on other contracts were they themselves were acting as the supplier.
You should go read the licensing agreement. For all the companies, not just Sony because like I said before they all have done this. WB would sue Sony into the ground for breech of contract if they didn’t remove those shows. They’re doing what they are legally obligated to do. I’m not advocating for letting sony off the hook here. I’m saying this will continue to happen every time a license holder decides to cut out the middleman and make their own streaming service, and unless you hold those license holders accountable it will keep happening because it is legal.
This has happened to date with Sony at least once before, Apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon, and at least half a dozen other streaming services. Nobody ever wants to hold the supplier liable. And your
apologyanalogy doesn’t work. The people got their streamed media. The product was delivered. The license to enjoy that media was for an unspecified time, which has now come to an end because the license holder of that media has decided they don’t want you to have it in that form anymore. They’re the bad guy here. In the event that you say bought physical discs, and they were never delivered because shortly after you made your order, the company you bought from lost the right to sell them they would refund you because they themselves would be refunded when they sent all that physical media back to the supplier. But in this case that’s not what’s happening. So it’s not a one for one analog.Ultimatelly it depends on the local laws of each country.
In plenty of countries, in Agreements with Retail Customers, there are by Law various things which if present in the Agreement are considered invalid hence null and void. Also there are mandatory “clarity” and “upfront” criteria for certain kinds of Agreements terms.
So not only would Sony have to have in the User Agreement a clause or clauses covering the possibility that purchased viewing rights might be unilaterally withdrawn at any time by Sony, it would have to be in a form considered legally valid in a Legal Jurisdiction (i.e. such clause has to be valid and it has to obbey local regulations on clarity and proeminence and in an User Agreement which is actually valid (EULAs are not valid in most of the World because they are only presented post-sale).
Of course in the “Fuck You Plebes” United States, pretty much everything goes - unless proven otherwise after somebody spent millions in a court case - so an obscure clause in an EULA de facto suffices in pretty much all but the State were Sony America has its HQ.
There is. That’s what I’m telling you. The agreement between the customer and Sony stipulates that the license can be revoked by the license holder at any time and in that case their purchases will not be reimbursed. That language is there specifically to protect them.
But either way you’re failing to take the main point into account which is that WB is not facing backlash for this, but Sony is. Both of them should face this backlash together.
“SONY grants you a limited, non-exclusive, personal, non-transferable license to use the SOFTWARE solely in connection with your compatible device (including, but not limited to, SONY’s products which the SOFTWARE is embedded in or bundled with) (“DEVICE”) solely in accordance with this EULA and the usage instructions as may be made available to you by SONY or the THIRD-PARTY SUPPLIERS. SONY and the THIRD-PARTY SUPPLIERS expressly reserve all rights, title and interest (including, but not limited to, all intellectual property rights) in and to the SOFTWARE that this EULA does not specifically grant to you.”
The license is revoked and is not transferable. Believe me when I say that none of the companies that have had this issue previously have reimbursed their customers in any countries that I can find due to riders like this.
This is an article from the last time this happened with Sony.
TL;DR summary: WB had a contract with Sony, both of which have expensive legal teams and knew exactly what they were getting themselves into, so Sony knowingly chose the cheaper option (a shorter lock-in of the right to make that content available). Sony had contracts (implied and possibly with an agreement, part or all of which might not even be valid in various legal jurisdictions due to Consumer Protection Legislation) between legally-well-armed Sony and zero-legal-knowledge retail customers which, at minimum was portrayed by Sony in so unclear terms (at worse, purposefully to deceive) that said zero-legal-knowledge retail customers thought they were buying something when contractually it was a rental. How exactly would WB - who negotiated with a legal expert counterparty who knew exactly what they were doing - to blame rather than Sony - who took advantage of the legal naivity of retail customers and quite possibly is leveraging the high costs of legal action against them so as not to have to refund said customers? The legally expert and very well funded counterparty - Sony - taking advantage of a non-expert and much less well funded counterparty - retail customers - seems a vastly most likely place for shennennigans than the one between two well funded companies with their own legal experts, Sony and WB.
Sony chose to sign a contract with WB where it did not lock-in WB to certain responsabilities for a large time period - say 20 years - and instead chose a shorter time period (which both Business 101 and Asset Pricing Theory indicate as a cheaper option - locking-in certain rights contractually tends to cost more the longer the lock-in period) and per what you say, covered its liability on the client side with clausules in the user licence agreement that essentially meant they could take away any content their customer purchased.
Even putting aside the legality of those clauses and of the EULA itself (if* it was presented to the client after the client paid, it’s legally deemed is void and null per the legislation in most of the World because it’s considered an attempt at changing the terms of a contract after it has been closed), I don’t see which WB is to blame for Sony having chosen a contract length in their agreement with WB that did not guarantee that Sony’s own clients would not be removed access to the digital media they had been led to believe they bought.
It seems to me that WB had a contractual arrangement with Sony (NOT with Sony’s client’s) with which Sony agreeded (and, having lots of expensive lawyers, it can hardly be claimed that Sony did not fully understood the implications of that contract) and they fullfilled their end of the contract, whilsy Sony on the other hand had a contractual relation with retail customers (which are not expected to be anywhere as good in understanding the ins and outs of that contract as Sony’s Lawyers) and which led many if not most of the retail clients to believe they had purchased something which was not in fact sold and if the EULA was only presented to said retail clients after they paid, it wasn’t even backed by a valid contract.
It seems to me that it was Sony that deceived their clients and (if having done so purposefully, it might amount to Fraud, something a Court Of Law would have to rule on), possibly using clauses which are invalid when used with retail clients or not making it sufficiently clear to said retail clients that the nature of the transaction was not a sale but a rental for an indetermined period (both of these depending very much on the legislation of country that retail client is based) and possibly using means that are not even a valid contract in most jurisdiction (i.e. an EULA which is presented post-payment).
In summary, the WB-Sony contract was between two sets of legal experts of big companies, hence both knew perfectly well what they were getting themselves into, whilst the Sony-Retail_Customer contract was between one set of legal experts and individuals most of which with no legal expertise at all and no access to cheap enough legal expertise to analyse all such contract, and which further, had clauses going against several consumer protection laws in several countrues and possibly (if they did it by that order, which I don’t really know) using an EULA presented to the customer after the sale, something which is null and void in contract terms in most of the World because it’s an unilateral attempt at forcing a change in contract terms after the implied contract of the sale has been closed.
How exactly does it make sense to conclude that its WB - the guys that entered into a clear contract with a legally well advised counterparty - who are to blame, rather than Sony who seem to at the very least misportrayed the nature of the sale they were making to retail costumers (who are not legal experts) possibly using means which aren’t even valid under contract law or due to customer protections?
I mean, I can see how you can claim that Sony’s actions were within their contractual terms with the Retail Customers (especially in the Fuck-You-Pleb US with its nearly non-existent consumer protections) so maybe it is all legal, but blaming WB who had a contractual relationship with Sony, who most definitelly have the lawyers to make sure that contract was exactly as they wanted to is ridiculous - Sony absolutelly had the power to pay more and get a contract with WB which, say, would guaranteed that media sold to consumers by Sony would remain available forever and only new sales would stop at the end of a certain period if WB did not renew the contract, they just chose not to pay more and rely on the expectation that they could screw their own retail customers who would be de facto unable to be compensated because of the cost of pursuing a legal case against Sony to get that compensated.
It’s not the responsability of Customers to make sure what Sony’s chosen contractual relationships elsewhere are - Sony can engage in whatever contractual relationships it wants in whichever way it wants (and thus maximize their profits), but if it breaks their side of contract it has to pay the penalties for it, quite independently of why.
This is how Contract Law is designed exactly because otherwised it would make it impossible to Trade: if a purchaser had to track all contractual relationships of each supplier, then as those too were linked to the contracts of their own suppliers, of the supplier of the supplier and so on. So Contract Law neatly isolates each Contract relationship from all the rest and legal responsability starts and stops at that Contract (including the implied Contract in a Retail Sale) and only betwee the parties of that Contract unless very explicitly stated otherwise in the Contract.
So, have customers in this case entered into a Contractual Relationship where Sony gets to pull the plug whenever it feels like for any reason (which are probably invalid contractual conditions for retails customers in plenty of countries, though probably not the US which has near-zero consumer protections) in which case the problem is of the customers, or have they not in which case Sony is the one with the responsability (probably of refunding their customers) and it’s up to Sony to exercise whatever contract clauses they had with WB and claim compensation from them for their own breach of contract, if Sony had such clauses in their contract (if not, it was their own choice, so tough luck)?
They’ve done this to me. When it first came out,I bought the fallout 4 DLCs. I cleared my email one time and deleted all those old purchase receipts.
One day last year, I pop in fallout 4 and go to my file, and it says that I don’t have the dlc that corresponds to this save file. I know I bought them, so I go to the psn to redownload, but it’s asking me to pay. Long story short, I call Sony, my dlc purchase vanished at some point, and since I deleted the receipt, Sony refused to give me the content or money. They say I can’t prove I owned it, even though my files say so.
Anecdotal, I had the same with EA. When Origin first launched, the two games I had in my EA account disappeared. Do amount of battling with their support got me anywhere, even though I had the retail copies and the serial keys.
Got to the point where I gave up. Rather play games I actually wanted to play, to than Spore and The Sims 3.
So they stole from you and experienced no repercussions. Great story. I hope that you’ve at least stopped buying other titles from them.
I couldn’t care less about the two games, and fighting on principle seemed like too much effort at the time.
But yes, I’ve not bought an EA game since.
Spore had itself a 3 or 5 installs limit before not allowing you to install it anymore.
No credit card receipt? It might help.
Banks will charge for record searched, FYI.
I’m just shocked how many commenters here somehow seem to think that Sony can choose for their own profit to engage in contracts with mismatched responsabilities - i.e. a short-term contract with WB right next to a much longer term responsability towards retail customer - and not be financially responsible towards their retail customers at one end for the losses that arose from the termination of the very Contract Sony chose to sign at the opposite end.
Imagine if you hire somebody to build you a garden shed and they paid some fly-by-night company for the wood because they were cheaper and that company just to took off with the money. You think they could just legally turn to you, their customer, and say “sorry, we chose some fishy guys for the wood for your shed and they took the money and didnt gave us the wood, so now we’ll keep your money and you’re not going to get your shed. Bye bye!”.
Contract Law isolates Contractual responsabilities in any one contract (including the implied contract of a Retail Sale) to the parties in that contract alone exactly because long term contractual commitments would be de facto impossible in a world were every purchaser also ran risks on every one of their supplier’s own contracts as purchasers, in turn having the risks of their suppliers’ suppliers’ and so on as deep as the chain went.
I think most rational people hate the game rather than Sony directly. We don’t care if that’s the rules Sony or anyone else has to play by. It’s time for the industry to evolve or die.
In-fact I reckon if we see digital retailers reject “selling” digital content because it’s not profitable due to end customers rejecting the terms, the studios licensing the content would evolve overnight.
I’ve been boycotting Sony since the late 90s exactly because they not only played the game in the most anti-consumer way possible, but they very activelly lobbyied for the kind of legislation like the DMCA.
This is maybe one of the companies who spent the most money to make “the game” the incredibly rigged mess it is today.
Your naive “blame the game” reaction is exactly what companies like Sony want: blame the puppets not the puppeteers.
Ever since their Media Production Division took over the management of the company in the 90s (before it was mostly the Engineering side that led it, hence why they were once famous for the exceptional quality of their eletronics) they’ve very much been reliably acting in the most corrupt, abusive, evil ways possible.
I’m not defending Sony. Though I am also trying to discuss the industry standard practices that they operate in. That said how come Valve lets you keep any purchased game after the license is revoked but nearly every other digital store doesn’t or is hit and miss. It’s clearly something in the contract/licensing deal.
In other words Sony could choose to play hard ball and only sign contracts that permit continuous use of content after purchasing it. Thereby allowing something closer to actual ownership. Though the question is whether Sony and other digital marketplaces can convince rights holders to agree to such terms in the movie/tv industry.
Reminder that the largest brands regularly and shamelessly steal from small independent artists to sell for profit, knowing that the artists don’t have the resources to do anything about it: https://web.archive.org/web/20230726050616/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/arts/design/digital-art-copyright-marvel-panini-wizards.html
And these are the companies trying to convince you that pirating big name media for your own personal use is theft.
Artistes must be between a rock and a hard place when even “legal” Spotify openly admits to screwing on royalties.
It’s an open secret that musicians get totally screwed by record labels.
Kinda slightly sensationalist title but yep…
We are having a good discussion about this in AskLemmy: https://lemmy.nz/post/3983363
“What is the legal difference between owning digital and physical media?”
As a side note, how are we going with instance agnostic post IDs? I can only post a link that uses my home instance, but obviously most of you won’t be on lemmy.nz and will have to do some fuckery to open that in your home instance if you want to be able to comment.
Fortunately Sync just redirects to a link on my home instance. I know I saw a GH issue on what you mentioned but I haven’t checked it in a couple of months.
Edit: found it. Still in discussion phase. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2987
Ah thanks, we’re still waiting.
Reminds me I should check in on the merged communities process. Federation at the community level instead of/also at the instance level would be awesome.