The purpose of a factory is not to provide jobs.
It's intended to made widgets that can then be sold at a profit.
It's not a social welfare program.
Those three statements are policy choices, not objective facts. Capitalists like to present them as inevitable, but of course they are not; they are only presented as such because it's in capitalists' interest for people to see them that way.
Adjusted for inflation, the 2TB model is a bit cheaper than a Panasonic 3DO or a Neo Geo was at launch.
Additional context: at the time of their release, both the Neo Geo and the 3DO were considered to be unaffordable, except by the very rich.
the complete lack of any Anti-Trust regulation preventing anyone from making RAM and storage except the existing players
I don't think it's monopoly issues holding anyone back, so much as the fact that setting up a viable fab for RAM or storage takes billions of dollars and a number of years, and everyone is expecting the AI bubble to burst before then anyway.
e.g. why invest $$$ to build a new manufacturing facility, when by the time it comes online be competing with auctioned-off near-new equipment from all the belly-up data centers that didn't make it?
The real problem with C is that it doesn't have any built-in support for strings. Everyone is forced to fake it with char-arrays, which aren't quite the same thing and require very careful handling. The problem with that is, everyone has their off days, and so everyone who does string-handling in C eventually ends up shipping string-related bugs that introduce security problems.
Developers can make the license whatever they want including on consoles.
Not once the console maker shuts down the platform's reactivation servers.
Or say the publisher wants to publish a multiplayer game where players 2 through 4 can download a limited-functionality version of the game without charge so long as player 1 is a paying licensee and on their mutual contacts list. This resembles the model used by StarCraft spawned installations, single-Pak multiplayer on Game Boy Advance, and DS Download Play on Nintendo DS. I don't think all consoles support this sort of game sharing.
Which is not an ownership issue, it's a DRM/license enforcement issue.
Correct. The digital restrictions management regime on paid downloads from PlayStation Store doesn't grant rights to a licensee that are equivalent to those that the law reserves for the owner of a copy. The complaint, as I understand it, is that the required notice of inequivalence is not conspicuous enough.
The plaintiffs can still get the same benefits of the product even if their purchase is just for a license.
The benefits are not the same if the publisher or the platform gatekeeper retains the ability to remotely disable licensed software.
The only thing you really lose is the ability to resell your license easily.
Or, in the case of certain failure modes of PlayStation Store (such as end of support for a particular platform), the ability to restore your license to replacement hardware.
printed books, zines, and newspapers
You are allowed to copy these for your friends (but not for selling or public sharing).
I never heard of that being the case in the United States, where the lawsuit described in the featured article was filed.
That's like saying publishers of printed books, zines, and newspapers never sold books, zines, and newspapers.
Narrowing:
1. The right answer in the case of games with a substantial offline experience is to not make the license for the offline portion revocable.
2. The right answer in the case of games without a substantial offline experience is to describe the license as a rental at all times.
All three major console makers require all customers to "agree[] to let them change the terms when you signed up." If a game developer wants to sell a customer an indefinite license that the console maker can't revoke, the developer has no way to do so. This appears to be evidence of a cartel to me. How is it not?
You don't respect the time and effort that went into creating your enjoyment
Say I buy an indefinite license to use a video game. Then the game's publisher or the platform's owner unilaterally revokes that license. What do I have to show for having "respect[ed] the time and effort that went into creating your enjoyment"?
Title 17, United States Code, reserves specific rights to the owner of a copy. It defines a copy as a physical object in which a work is fixed (17 USC 101).
Licensed for how long?
The owner of a copy of a computer program retains the right to use that copy, including the right to make essential ephemeral copies in RAM, as long as the copy remains readable (17 USC 117).
And how do you obtain a copy of the software to exercise your licensed rights?
As I understand it, ownership of a physical object is defined by the personal property laws of the several states.
You've have never owned a copy of a game
A "copy" under United States copyright law is any physical object in which a work of authorship is fixed, such as a game cartridge or game disc. The owner of a lawfully made copy of a work enjoys two carveouts, or uses deemed noninfringing. One is reselling that copy (17 USC 109). Another is making private copies essential to the use of a computer program (17 USC 117). These carveouts subsist as long as the copy remains readable. A license through PlayStation Store does not.
Even in the time of picking up PS2 discs at GameStop you were only buying a license to run those games on your console
This license consists of uses carved out as noninfringing in the copyright law. For video games distributed in physical copies, two carveouts are most salient: exhaustion of the exclusive distribution right with respect to a particular copy after the first sale, and making private copies required to use a computer program, such as ephemerally reproducing the program in RAM. (Under US law, these are 17 USC 109 and 17 USC 117. Feel free to describe analogous carveouts in other countries' copyright law.)
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.
He's like a function -- he returns a value, in the form of his opinion. It's up to you to cast it into a void or not. -- Phil Lapsley
