I think you misunderstood, the major issue is that companies are actually "renting", it's just at 100k words long terms of services where they redefine "purchase" as rental.

California has actually done something about this, you can longer claim that customers are "buying" when they're actually just renting.

If i claimed i sell a house for 500K but the in terms of sale redefine sale as rent the house for 500K and i can claim the property back anytime, that'd be crime yet it's somehow legal with digital goods.

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ForHackernews 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>i claimed i sell a house for 500K but the in terms of sale redefine sale as rent the house for 500K

Ironically this is almost how it works in England: https://homemove.com/content/what-is-leasehold-property-comp...

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ralferoo 3 hours ago | parent [-]

"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.

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tikkabhuna 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Lots of leaseholds now start at 999 years.

It’s a weird system. The previous and current governments have been looking to modernise it.

	▲	ralferoo 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Interesting. Do the longer ones have some provision for increasing in line with inflation? AFAIK the 99 year leases are usually for a fixed amount every year, which obviously shrinks in real terms over time, but given that you'd want to renew it every 10 years or so anyway, would probably be renegotiated to a fair market rate at that time.

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doctorpangloss 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

players have options. they are welcome to wait for releases on GOG.

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MyMemoryfails 4 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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nfw2 4 hours ago | parent [-]

As yes, the poor, ignorant average joe, who doesn't realize the game they buy on the PLAYSTATION store needs PLAYSTATION to work in order to play it. If only enough bloggers wrote enough articles to enlighten them, then they would join the mob and demand forever access to the games they play for 3 weeks then never play again.

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paulryanrogers 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why carry water for billion dollar companies?

I can still play my brother's old PlayStation games on his OG PlayStation. They cannot be revoked arbitrarily, nor their music dropped or swapped out. This a feature, and we'd feel quite cheated if that happened. In fact we still go back to old games from time to time.

	▲	nfw2 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I can still play the games I bought on the nintendo switch 8 years ago. > Why carry water for billion companies? All companies at a certain scale are billion dollar companies. Also, how much money a company has is unrelated to whether they violated consumer rights or not. But, tangentially, I do generally respect entities that fund creative endeavors moreso than I respect gamers who go online to bemoan how persecuted they are

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Telaneo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Even if I only read a book once after buying it, it shouldn't turn into a rock just because I never intend to read it again.

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nfw2 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Have any of the books bought on Kindle turned into rocks or can their buyers read them again if they want to?

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Telaneo 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Pretty sure the answer to that is no, they haven't turned to rocks. I believe Amazon keeps a record of your book purchases, and Amazon isn't going away tomorrow, so you should be able to redownload your books (and probably even back them up). If so, all is good there (relatively speaking).

Sony also keeps records, but good luck redownloading your PSP game. Or your PS3 game for that matter. But at least in that case, if you already have it downloaded, you can still play your game. Sony couldn't come down from above and turn your game into a rock.

The Crew for PS4 on the other hand. You can (probably?) still redownload that, but that doesn't actually do you any good. Ubisoft did come down from above and turn that into a rock (there is no good reason to make a single-player gamemode online-only).

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Uvix 33 minutes ago | parent [-]

Amazon may not be going away tomorrow, but they have form for disallowing redownloads of old ebook purchases. If you dared to buy ebooks from them pre-Kindle, you can't access them anymore. If you hold onto your Kindle devices for too long instead of replacing them with a newer model, you can't access your old books that aren't already downloaded until you buy a new device.

For now, Sony has no issues with people redownloading PS3 games. Or PSP games onto a Vita - not sure if you can still download onto an original PSP. They'll probably jump on the Amazon revoke-download train eventually, though.

	▲	Telaneo 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> but they have form for disallowing redownloads of old ebook purchases. If you dared to buy ebooks from them pre-Kindle, you can't access them anymore. Well that's bad and also shouldn't happen. They should not be able to come down from heaven and turn your books into rocks. > If you hold onto your Kindle devices for too long instead of replacing them with a newer model, you can't access your old books that aren't already downloaded until you buy a new device. This is functionally the same as the situation on consoles. You can play the game, but only if you've already downloaded it and kept it around. Not ideal, but at least it's possible to keep it around. > For now, Sony has no issues with people redownloading PS3 games. Or PSP games onto a Vita Not for long.[1] > not sure if you can still download onto an original PSP You can't.[2] [1] https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/an-update-on-playsta... [2] https://www.techspot.com/news/90316-psp-store-officially-clo...