Apparently "boffin" is a British slang term for a scientist/engineer. I had never heard the term, and with the word being at the beginning of the headline I thought it was a person's name. Then was confused when TFS and the Register article failed to tell me who they were.
Users would not wager money, and the app would probably rely on a video game-like points system instead, one person said, though the company had not ruled out the eventual use of real money betting.
... The effort, which insiders characterized as experimental but a top priority...
If it's a "top priority" the end goal is 100% to make this a real-money betting business to leverage the Facebook/Instagram userbase to create a racket the same as Kalshi. They will just develop a way to buy points the same way many video games have transactions for in-game currency.
That's OK but the only reason many people buy American cars and trucks is to support American jobs.
Those people are morons. Plenty of "foreign" (Toyota, Honda) vehicles are made is factories in the Midwest and southern U.S. where Americans are put to work, while many models of "domestic" brands (Ford, Chevy) are actually made in Mexico and imported to the U.S. (Thanks, NAFTA!) The idea an "American brand" is putting Americans to work and foreign brands do not is a falsehood the U.S. automakers are happy to encourage to help their businesses.
Yes....
So why isn't the lawsuit about that, instead of what "buying software" vs "buying a license" is?
Think of books. You buy a physical book and you think you own it even though strictly speaking you bought a license.
I think we're in agreement here. The concept of buying a license isn't lost on me. The problem is this lawsuit is only complaining about wording on a website. The plaintiffs aren't saying they want it to be like a book they can read even if the store burns down, or can give to someone else. As I mentioned in another comment that got voted down, this is just an attempt to extort some money out of Sony instead of fixing the system that gives the vendor too much power.
Well, in the really old days this was it. You could "copy that floppy" and have your own pirate version of the software.
In the later times you received a unique serial number/registration code in the software package that would unlock the software. This was not verified with a remote server or policed for the number of active installs. But then developed keygens to generate registration codes that software would accept as valid, and things turned to needing online activation.
A logical solution would be that if software is no longer deemed valuable enough to justify keeping an activation server online then it is being abandoned as a commercial product, and a patch should be made available to removes the online-activation. That's not what this lawsuit is about. It's just arguing over a definition of "buy".
The benefits are not the same if the publisher or the platform gatekeeper retains the ability to remotely disable licensed software.
No, you're misunderstanding my reply here. I'm saying the users can have the same benefits of access/use without the remote enforcement and delivery mechanism even if their purchase is only for a license (because that's how things were back in earlier times). Their suit is flawed in that it is focusing on legalese of what "ownership" is, instead of suing for the publisher's ability to unilaterally remove their access to something they paid for. That's why this is all dumb. They will never truly "own" the software unless they are asking for the source code. The results of this legal action will have no meaningful change on how these stores operate. They will just use a bigger font.
What these carveouts have in common is that neither the copyright owner nor a platform gatekeeper can remotely make copies unusable. PlayStation Store doesn't give licensees even this assurance.
Which is not an ownership issue, it's a DRM/license enforcement issue. The plaintiffs can still get the same benefits of the product even if their purchase is just for a license. The plaintiff's problem isn't because they don't "own" the software.
But, that PS2 disc will just work, even after Sony goes bankrupt and their servers are sold for scrap and we had to shut the internet down to stop AI.
That's not an issue with the "ownership" of the software, as the plaintiffs here are suing for. That's my point from the first post I made on this topic. They are suing claiming they thought they were buying the software and they are only buying a license. There's nothing wrong with buying only a license, it's the fact the software can only be obtained and used at the blessing of the third-party servers they have no control over, which is not necessary. They can buy "only a license" and still be given access to the product in a way that does not require a limited distribution method and phone-home authentication, because that's how things were done with retail software long ago. Their suit is for the wrong reason.
The 1990s are irrelevant, because a new law was passed in 2025 (California, where this lawsuit was filed).
It's relevant because it's how things have been for decades. This isn't some new-hotness enshitification strat where suddenly buying software only means you're buying a license. It's how things have been since (I bet) before the plaintiffs were born. Even in the time of picking up PS2 discs at GameStop you were only buying a license to run those games on your console, not actually owning the code on them.
I don't understand why they worded the headline like that. Who refers to scoring on an assessment by the percentage you got wrong? if their point is to say the models weren't very good, surely saying they scored 36.1% would have a better audience impact than using the opposite figure.
Yeah, this just sounds like an attempt to extort some money from Sony at the end of the day. And Sony will likely settle, pay out, and everything will continue as it has been, just with some new font sizes and an extra click-through dialog stating the obvious -- you are not buying a digital product.
If the plaintiffs really cared so much about the "ownership" aspect they would be suing for the ability to back up and locally upload purchases to hardware, so they can play even if the PlayStation store stops working on their console model.
Even if I go back to the 1990s and boxed retail software, you were never actually buying the software, your purchase was for the license to use it.
The real issue here is the gamers being sold software whose functionality is tied to third-party servers and denied first sale doctrine (the ability to transfer/resell their license if they want to someone else).
Sir, they are clearly listing two distinct outcomes.
Mergers lead to:
1) Layoffs -- due to workload being focused on one labor pool and removing redundant positions.
2) Less choice for consumers -- because you now have fewer independent companies for a product or service.
They aren't saying the layoffs are the cause of the lower choice for consumers. But arguably that's true, too. Off all the people laid off some will not find work at another company in the same function. Some may end up leaving the industry completely for a different career. Fewer people in the entertainment industry means less variety in programming because talent and the decisions on what gets made are now from a smaller pool of people.
Ignoring the quality loss from a smartphone taking a picture of a screen, was this even a "work" smartphone? Why is the officer needing to use a secondhand image? Surely they had proper legal authority to just get a copy of the original footage.
Sounds like the cop just whipped out his personal device and snapped a pic. How does that pass muster with collection of evidence, Chain of Custody... you know, that stuff that serves to prove the evidence wasn't tampered with in some way on the way to the D.A.?
"If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem." -- C. Durance, Computer Science 234
