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Comment Re:Two statutory carveouts: first sale and RAM cop (Score 1) 103

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.

Comment Re:What does someone think "owning" a game would m (Score 1) 103

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.

Comment Re:revocable (Score 1) 103

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.

Comment Re:revocable (Score 1) 103

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?

Comment Re:revocable (Score 1) 103

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"?

Comment Re: What does someone think "owning" a game would (Score 1) 103

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.

Comment Re:What does someone think "owning" a game would m (Score 1) 103

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.

Comment Two statutory carveouts: first sale and RAM copies (Score 2) 103

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.

Comment And if LPCAMM2 is too slow, use it as a swap file (Score 1) 73

And before you complain about LPCAMM2 being much slower than the high-bandwidth RAM on the CPU package: It's perfectly fine to design a system with a non-uniform memory access paradigm, treating the memory behind the LPCAMM2 interface as a RAM disk. That way you have 8 GB of high-bandwidth DRAM swapping to 16+ GB of somewhat lower-bandwidth DRAM, and the soldered-in SSD lasts longer because it doesn't have to (ab)use its intake buffer to hold the swap file.

Comment Re:20 years experience for new tech (Score 1) 174

I always wonder though what recruiters and HR folks think when all their applicants all seem to fall well short of their requirements/

Probably to the effect "We failed to poach the people who developed this framework in the first place. Can we import some immigrants, pretty please?"

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