Mr. Tact wrote on Aug 1, 2012, 11:01:
nin wrote on Aug 1, 2012, 10:33:
You own a license. One that can be revoked at any time.
I do not understand this position. It is a stupid lawyer/corporate position. It has no place in common sense. It's like saying I can't own a book. That at any time the author can take the book back from me. Or are you claiming that owning a digital copy of a game on Steam is fundamentally different than owning a physical DVD with the game on it at my house?
Actually, you paid ONLY for the license.
The game's DVD and packaging were FREE.
The DVD is just a medium to convey the licensed game to you, and it is 100% irrelevant.
The license is commonly a single user permission to use the game.
So long as you have a license, how you get the game or how you store it is irrelevant.
You have a right of access to the program.
It's the difference between buying a product (eg. a music CD, where 'the physical item' is what you're paying for), or buying a license (eg. software, where 'permission to use' is what you are paying for).
This actually gets to some legally contentious ground, as publishers would like to enforce both copyright and license agreement, for stronger control over software - both the data, and the disk it's on. But so long as they are selling only licenses, then they don't have control over the disk.
But soon as they start selling the disk to you, then they can claim copyright if you copy it, but then they also have to pay different tax rates - which they want to avoid.
Some years ago, it wasn't uncommon to call the publisher and get replacement disks.
I suspect that nowadays they don't want to bother...
In any case, steam is a method to convey the software, just like a game DVD purchased from a brick&mortar.
For all intents and purposes, they serve the same purpose, and are the same. Simply a medium.
Albeit steam has built in DRM, which is a separate issue.
But getting to the class action stuff...
I personally dislike class actions.
Because :
If there is a class action lawsuit about X, then you are personally precluded from suing about X.
The theory is that the class action represented you already, and so you can't sue twice.
A) It's insulting and presumptuous for a 3rd party to think that they can speak in my name without my permission.
B) If you were to sue individually, you'd get a lot more in damages. The class action really just blocks you from being able to sue as an individual.
If you happen to know about the class action, you can write a letter asking to be excluded from it. Then you can preserve your right to sue as an individual.
But if you don't know about it, and you go to sue later, you find that your hands are tied.
-scheherazade
This comment was edited on Aug 1, 2012, 12:50.