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To buy no longer means anything :(
(youtu.be)
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this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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Piracy is piracy.
But the only one that owns Minecraft is Microsoft, since they bought it for over 2 billion dollars. Everyone else just bought a license to use it. Just like in all the other cases of buying music, video, or software. Unless lots of lawyers were involved, you only bought permission to use it, in a certain way at that. Pretending otherwise or not knowing in the first place has never been a legal excuse.
You're getting downvoted, but you're right. And that is the reason that using proprietary software and SaaS is a problem. If I'm only buying the right to use a copy of something as a company sees fit, then I'm not really buying anything. I'm essentially paying a company a tribute to use their software in their way.
Decades ago, it was the same way, but it felt different. We got physical media, and we could do what we wished with the files: modify them, delete them, etc. Hell, the EULAs for some '90s and early '00s software even said you could use the software in perpetuity, and we could use software in anyway we saw fit. The biggest constraint was on selling copies. Back then, and even now, that seems pretty reasonable. (Though, as an aside, it would have been better to also get access to the source code, but I digress.)
Now, we have to use company's software exactly how they want us to use it. Personally, I refuse to go along with this (as much as I can), so I have migrated most of my digital life to FLOSS.
Then the button shouldn't say "buy now" but "license now"
Joke's on them, my instance doesn't allow downvotes, so my comment is happily at +9 from where I'm standing ;)
Ain't got no time to worry about popular opinions.
Yes, BUT...
There is buying a licence to use.
And there is buying a copy you can use.
This is very much different. Maybe buying a copy of music with a tag attached saying you cannot distribute it further is ok, but saying they can take this copy you bought at any time and make terms how you can use it is another level.
Some video games are open source; you can modify and redistribute it or even sell it. We need more of those and less fat cats playing a trading card game of copyrights while they erode ownership rights.
I'm sure there are exceptions if you'll look hard enough. However, even in the case of most open source software, you'll never become the owner of the intellectual property, you're just free to use, modify and share it.
We don't own the patients to our hardware but we still say we own an item becauee we are in control of it. Users don't need the copyright of software they use to control it - to modify and share software is to own it.
(The only thing they may lack is the option to relicense the software if it's copyleft, but I'd argue that ensures software freedom for 3rd parties).
Yeah, that's where misconceptions like the one in this thread stem from. Repeat a lie enough, and you'll start believing it.
Two people can speak the same language in name and yet the same word can mean something different to them. Words do not have innate definitions, they have usages.
In my possession are many things which I presume have copyright/patent and fewer things which do not. It seems to me we just draw the line of "ownership" around different things.