Most of the World understands the difference between buying a product and buying a service.

Games (and other digital media), are sold as products, not services, mostly.

TFA is arguing this should persist and not be replaced as games as (subscription/licensed rental), services. It argues the move to digital is being used by businesses to switch to a services model under the hood, and that this should be resisted and it should remain a product model.

> Are consumers confused in practice by what happens when they click "Buy" on the playstation store?

Demonstrably, provably: yes.

> Fine, pass a regulation that makes online stores change the word to license or whatever.

Why not make the store change what they sell from being a license and making it a product as the consumer expected?

You can pay for services and you may use the term “buy”, but it is clear you’re receiving a service, and a service in its nature is temporary.

Buy a night in a hotel, dinner in a restaurant, haircut, shoe shine. These are all services.

Buying of digital services like games, films, and music is an evolution of buying dvds, cds or records. There is an expectation that you now own something. I can dig out my dad’s old records and play them and pass them onto my children.

If media companies want to sell a license that has an expiry date, that’s fine, but it has to be explicitly communicated. Consumers have to be well informed about what they’re purchasing.

> This is just pedantry, and incorrect pedantry at that. BUY does not always mean you gain ownership. You can BUY a license or a haircut and you don't own anything.

At the end of the day words have to mean something. It is not pedantry to simply discuss what a word or phrase means. There are false advertising laws for a reason.

To that end, I would argue you've never bought a haircut, you've paid for a service.

The issue at hand here is exactly that the word "buy" is used when discussing the appropriation of a licence for content that in practical terms, is still controlled by someone else.

Maybe there are technical reasons for this to be the case, but then maybe the word "buy" should not be used in this instance.

"almost" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here...

While the majority of flats are leasehold, by far the vast majority of property in England is freehold. Only a fifth is leasehold.

While technically a leasehold has a fixed term and at the end of the lease (usually starts at 99 years) the land owner technically owns the property, in reality this scares most people so usually when someone sells the property (usually while there's still at least 80 years left on the lease) you try to extend the lease again back to 90 years. So while it is possible for the lease to run out and people lose their property, it's usually something you'd be expecting when you took over the lease (and so you'd pay a correspondingly lower price for the property). While the lease is active, there's usually an annual fee from between 100 and 10000 pounds. Obviously, the higher this is, the lower the sale price of the property is likely to be.

Personally, I wouldn't touch leasehold with a bargepole, and unless you want to live in the centre of a city there's usually plenty of freehold property available so you don't need to go down the leasehold route.

Personally i only purchase DRM free games, but it doesn't still change that fact that major digital storefronts use misleading terms. Maybe physical disks would maintain popularity if customers knew they'd be renting the product for unknown period time instead of owning it.

It's easy to forget that average joe doesn't understand the consequences when we're on our own bubbles.

Edit: The media outrage when Sony removed 550 movies, indicates the customers don't still understand the terms of the sale. It wouldnt make any noises if customers knew they were renting it.