Well, aren't regulations supposed to come with consequences for not following them? Whoever is supposed to be enforcing the regulations needs to hit the companies making these products with fines, or block them from importing the items to the EU.

Well, like most upper-managers. they are hoodwinked by slick corporate Power Points. They were told the Flock cameras will help with public safety, which will in turn make them appear "tough on crime". As far as the data centers, that is a my$tery why they approve those.

I don't have much faith in the safety of the apps being vetted by Meta before they get posted. Can't wait for the malware Gizmos to start appearing and getting shared in the social like some new STD getting passed around at parties.

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.

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?

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.