California Assembly Bill 2426 (AB 2426), effective 1 January, 2025. Expands the state's false advertising laws to explicitly ban companies from using words like "buy," "purchase," "own," or "keep" if what the customer is actually getting is a revocable digital license governed by shady T&Cs.

▲

ikekkdcjkfke an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Remember that the power is always with the people. We can enact any law we want

▲

inigyou 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Power in numbers is with the people. Power in votes is with whoever has the votes. Power in money is with the billionaires. Power comes in many forms and isn't fungible.

▲

mingus88 21 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

ok but who enforces the law?

If you haven’t been paying attention lately, laws are only as good as they are enforced and it has become obvious that the ruling class is not going to enforce laws against themselves.

The solution here is not something most people are willing to inconvenience themselves over

	▲	user3939382 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Laws are meaningless de jure. Especially where megacorps are concerned, the de facto law (ie the only one that matters) is the text, multiplied by the enforcement mechanism, multiplied by the political will to enforce, multiplied by the 10-15 year process of the megacorps draining their legal warchests into challenges and appeals. Then, after all that, maybe… you get a change to corporate behavior. The laws in this country are primarily written by and for large corporations. They’re not going to meaningfully practically restrain them just because something got passed.

▲

shuwix 17 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

In democracy, power comes from demos. In capitalism, power comes from capital.

Demos doesn't have capital. People never had power. Whenever they've thought they won ... they just damaged position of someone powerful for someone even more powerful without even knowing it.

▲

giancarlostoro 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Effective after most people likely bought their movies.

▲

dataflow an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Is it working/being enforced? Anecdotally I haven't seen or heard of any changes in verbiage, but I haven't been paying that much attention.

▲

galleywest200 an hour ago | parent [-]

Steam/Valve follow the law: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/11/24267864/steam-buy-purch...

▲

inigyou 22 minutes ago | parent [-]

So they avoided having a "rent" button by using the technically correct "add to cart", "continue to payment" instead of "buy this game", "buy all games in cart", and just have a separate sentence in small grey text that is confusing to most people.

Clearly this law needs to be worded harsher, so the button MUST say "rent" if you are renting.

	▲	cptroot a minute ago \| parent [-]
		In my experience it's a pretty clear warning, but I might not be the best person to judge. The thing to remember is "buying" a revocable license is pretty different from "renting" a temporary license, and those words have pretty different connotations.