Once you purchase a game, do you own the contents?

[portabello | 99]

1 hour ago, Sumez said:

Obviously not if you didn't buy the 4K version. You own the data on your disc, not the property or the source material.
Even then, where would you download it from legally if the people who own the rights to distribute it aren't making it available for you?
(some 4K movies do give you the option of an online download with a code in the cover, though)

That’s my point. People act like because they bought a copy of something once, they are entitled to the IP indefinitely. If given multiple versions such as a digital download code then it’s a bonus. To the OPs question, I only think you own a rom if you purchased said rom from the original licensed seller.

[Sumez | 2,950]

If you buy a Japanese Chrono Trigger SNES cartridge, you own the ROM in that cartridge. You can dump the data, play it in an emulator if you like. You can even hack the rom, and apply the patches of others.

It does not mean you own the English language version of the game, or the DS version, and even if it did, you still couldn't legally download it of illegal ROM sites, even if no one would realistically be able to tell the difference 

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

Wow, I didn't know people had such wild interpretations of IP laws and licensing. The physical disc and the data on the disc are completely separate and bound by different ownership. The disc is sold to you, the content on the disc is licensed to you and there are no blanket laws that apply to all software, they are all governed individually by the licenses used to distribute them.

If you buy a book, do you own the content inside the book? No.

If you buy a game, do you own the content on the disc? No.

[Tanooki | 4,933]

I put disagree on that last post, not that I don't agree somewhat, but you're generalizing far too much to just try and shut down argument which is more wrong.

You do own the content on there, just that copy as it's licensed to you as you paid for the media on the whole, not just the storage of it, paper, plastic, chips, whatever.  You own the totality of it being physical media and the license as much grants you sole ownership of that specific licensed copy as the purchase agreement goes.  Do you actually own the content inside in whole in large, NO, the creator does.

[Sumez | 2,950]

Yeah, you're conflating two different concepts here.

When you own some set of data for yourself, you can copy it and do whatever you want with it, for yourself.
That's not the same as copyright ownership.

[YOURTURN | 1,256]

53 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

If you buy a book, do you own the content inside the book? No.

If you buy a game, do you own the content on the disc? No.

This is where you constantly get everything wrong, it is literally the definition of verbal irony. 

Laws tied to both physical and digital goods state that you agree to a contractual obligation in exchange of both owning and using said product. Such as a car, a house, and the like. With rent and leases being a combination of this with added laws tied to licensing rights.

Licensing rights, which includes leasing and renting, states that you have a time-limited ownership. And that once said rights expire, you must agree to the (often financial) terms to continue said ownership. Property rights state that if you buy a product, you own that individual product.

Meaning...

If you buy a book, you own the contents to that particular book. Which gives you the right to modify it to your personal/private needs, at the expense of any financial and/or legal ramifications.

If you own a game, you own the contents to that particular game. Which also gives you the right to modify the content in the form of a patch or a ROM-based modification. You cannot make these public offerings without the IP owner's consent.

All of this has examples, often found through search engines. But I also doubt you pay the current IP owners money to continue playing your games. (Or do you?)

Just like I can presume others here have bought used/modified text books for college classes, written something in yearbooks, have tie dyed t-shirts for fun, and have either made a mixed album on either a tape, CD, or even an mp3 player.

Things that, by your own claims, should be illegal. 

[Tanooki | 4,933]

See that there is the bite between a rental(digital download) and physical people love to skate around with the ownership, the control factor.

The idea of a car or whatever would work.  I have a Honda Civic.  I own it from bumper to bumper entirely every piece, I can do whatever I want to it, hack the code to have anime or Mario pop up in the LCD if I want, rip the seats out and put a bench in, put a 60s style herbie the love bug steering wheel or leave it alone, and so on.

But with that I don't own the copyright, trademark, patents to said pieces, Honda does, so in the vast outside of my little bubble, they call the shots on every other Honda I never owned.

 

Now with your digital download RENTAL... you get RENTAL terms.

Ever read that stuff, I mean, really break it down?  You only buy a temporary license to run the game, that's it, but it never says once the purchase entitles you to any rights except a rental period.  That period even says, that they can revoke your rental rights for any reason they deem, whether it's in the TOS or not, short of some larger legal violation.  They can't say if you think back to 30+ years back Japanese racism in anime and stuff, we don't like black people, so us at Nintendo revoke any black persons rights who downloaded Mario to have it anymore -- BLIP-- it's gone in some Orwell style.  That's about the only dividing line left.

They can decide they (1) don't want to honor downloads anymore, (2) kill the network, (3) decide to revoke your account for any legitimate reasons like you being a vile pig on the network, (4) ...fill in the blank... and that's all they need, period revoked.  At that rate you have until that copy on your system is somehow compromised and your heh 'buy' is gone.  Some services historically will even reach out and remove files from your system once it hits the net even too over bad behavior to lost licenses.  A real copy,  you being an internet douchebag, licenses expire, system breaks, whatever...doesn't let them steal your game as you bought it, just like my car example.  Honda isn't going to come to my house tomorrow, tell me they hate silver haired people, saying gimme the fucking keys with a pack of lawyers in tow.

That's the difference, the real rub here.  So yes, when you do buy a tangible object you own it lock stock and barrel in totality to do whatever you wish as far as US law goes, outside of weaponizing, using it as a drug mule, or some other illegal activities.  Yet that ownership ends at your contents, company still owns all the overriding patents, trademarks, and copyrights on the lot of it.  We don't live where because Konami lost the TMNT license they can come to my house with a couple of cops, and confiscate my NES, SNES and Gameboy Turtles games because they lost that to Ubisoft years ago, or because I called someone something horrific on social media so my ownership is revoked.

[inasuma | 1,203]

Depends on what "contents" means... if you mean the physical items, then yes. If you mean the creative works (words and images in the manuals, software on the disc), then no; you only own a license to use/view them.

[Link | 2,709]

9 hours ago, Sumez said:

some 4K movies do give you the option of an online download with a code in the cover, though)

I think this brings about an interesting point. Several works are available only as data. Others are available on physical media and include a download. At the same price as a standard purchase of the one.

I have "two copies" of certain albums because of this. If I were to sell the CD on the secondary market, am I then beholden to also delete the files if I downloaded them? Would I first email them to the buyer? 

Is it likely that downloads would have been included 30 years ago if only it were feasible and convenient?

[ThePhleo | 2,184]

7 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

Wow, I didn't know people had such wild interpretations of IP laws and licensing. The physical disc and the data on the disc are completely separate and bound by different ownership. The disc is sold to you, the content on the disc is licensed to you and there are no blanket laws that apply to all software, they are all governed individually by the licenses used to distribute them.

If you buy a book, do you own the content inside the book? No.

If you buy a game, do you own the content on the disc? No.

https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html
 

Read section 117.

It explicitly states that it is within your legal rights to create a copy of any physical computer software you own, and must delete it if you no longer own it.

Where interpretation can get blurry is whether or not it’s legal to download someone else’s copy off the internet if you own a physical copy.

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

35 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html
 

Read section 117.

It explicitly states that it is within your legal rights to create a copy of any physical computer software you own, and must delete it if you no longer own it.

Where interpretation can get blurry is whether or not it’s legal to download someone else’s copy off the internet if you own a physical copy.

At no point in time did I state you weren't allowed to make archival copies of purchased software.

[Sumez | 2,950]

3 hours ago, ThePhleo said:

Where interpretation can get blurry is whether or not it’s legal to download someone else’s copy off the internet if you own a physical copy.

You can that's blurry, but at the same time it's stated clearly that said person isn't allowed to send their version to you.  

[YOURTURN | 1,256]

3 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

At no point in time did I state you weren't allowed to make archival copies of purchased software.

Verbal irony, take 2. 

11 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

If you buy a book, do you own the content inside the book? No.

If you buy a game, do you own the content on the disc? No.

By your own words, the software is a "licensed product" and not the purchaser's property. Meaning that the purchaser is only allowed to use the content, not archive it. Because archiving software is the same as doing a ROM dump. Which you have said is not allowed because the purchaser does not own the software contained in the product they had purchased.

So yes... You have, ironically, told us that purchasers cannot archive something they do not legally own.

And I would say more, but your use of the word "contract" as an excuse to back up that claim was hard to work with. Not because I could have easily pointed out that the EULA uses the word to define the life of said contractual agreement. But rather the fact you'll more than likely dismiss the reality that it allows a "no archiving" clause to be added.

LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement

Oh, and I have been refreshing everything I need to know with info that includes stuff found on Wikipedia. Mostly the IP end of the copyright/trademark laws tied to my very own business goals. 

[ThePhleo | 2,184]

15 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

At no point in time did I state you weren't allowed to make archival copies of purchased software.

I thought that's what you were saying. My mistake.

[phart010 | 1,707]

If you buy a game, you are entitled to a backup copy exclusively for your personal use. The copy allowed is a platform specific 1:1 copy.
 

When you buy a game on NES and you think you are entitled to a copy of same game on a different platform, like Wii U or Switch, that’s an issue. because the availability of the game on a different platform typically comes with extra value in the form of features that you did not pay for. Those can be the simple convenience of having it on the new platform, enhanced video filters, save states, rewind, etc.

Edited November 22, 2021 by phart010

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

On 11/20/2021 at 8:36 PM, Code Monkey said:

This is all specified in the license agreement. This is why standard licenses exist and why most software licenses use standard agreements like the MIT license or the GNU General Public License.

Please explain to me exactly where this license agreement exists on the outside packaging (or a specific reference to it external to the packaging).  I can't remember what the specific company or package were in the court case I recall, but it was determined by US courts a long time ago that you weren't automatically locked into agreeing to a EULA of any type that you couldn't see and weren't made aware of prior to opening the packaging.  Insofar as games are concerned, I can't think of a single console game that has ever had any such licensing agreement written anywhere in it, although such things as trademark notices, "all rights reserved," etc., showing that the selling company retained rights to the IP were and still are commonplace.

On 11/21/2021 at 10:50 AM, portabello said:

Well all tell ourselves that the answer should be yes, but I think it’s truthfully no. If you bought Star Wars on Blu-ray, it doesn’t give you the right to download a 4K version online for free.

That part is actually blurry, but in reality you'd still have to be downloading the same 4K version from online that you had on your disc.  You'd still be legally free to rip your own 4K copy of it from your existing media, should you be able to lay hands on such a copy.

On 11/21/2021 at 4:20 PM, Tanooki said:

You do own the content on there, just that copy as it's licensed to you as you paid for the media on the whole, not just the storage of it, paper, plastic, chips, whatever.  You own the totality of it being physical media and the license as much grants you sole ownership of that specific licensed copy as the purchase agreement goes.  Do you actually own the content inside in whole in large, NO, the creator does.

You own the physical and data copy of whatever your purchased, just not the IP/copyright/etc. rights to that content.  As mentioned a few times previously, at least in the US, we have the legal right to back up such media for our own archival purposes, and are allowed to retain them so long as we retain ownership of the original physical thing that gave us access to the content to begin with.  This might be what you're getting at, but just not making it clear, so if so, I apologize for looping you back in.  Just had to point out the difference between our personal ownership of the physical object and content contained therein versus having IP/copyright/etc. rights to such content.

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

16 hours ago, FenrirZero said:

Verbal irony, take 2. 

By your own words, the software is a "licensed product" and not the purchaser's property. Meaning that the purchaser is only allowed to use the content, not archive it. Because archiving software is the same as doing a ROM dump. Which you have said is not allowed because the purchaser does not own the software contained in the product they had purchased.

So yes... You have, ironically, told us that purchasers cannot archive something they do not legally own.

And I would say more, but your use of the word "contract" as an excuse to back up that claim was hard to work with. Not because I could have easily pointed out that the EULA uses the word to define the life of said contractual agreement. But rather the fact you'll more than likely dismiss the reality that it allows a "no archiving" clause to be added.

LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement

Oh, and I have been refreshing everything I need to know with info that includes stuff found on Wikipedia. Mostly the IP end of the copyright/trademark laws tied to my very own business goals. 

With 2 Autistics arguing, this isn't going to go anywhere but you can't infer that I said you can't archive software just because I said you don't own it. I don't mind participating in an argument here but not if you're going to tell me I'm saying things I'm not.

You reference THE end user license agreement as if this is the one that covers all software. That is a general license agreement but what I stated is that games are bound by the specific agreement they're shipped with.

You need to realize here that I'm not arguing you're totally wrong and I'm totally right. I'm simply stating that your understanding of what I said is not what I actually wrote.

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

1 hour ago, darkchylde28 said:

Please explain to me exactly where this license agreement exists on the outside packaging (or a specific reference to it external to the packaging).  I can't remember what the specific company or package were in the court case I recall, but it was determined by US courts a long time ago that you weren't automatically locked into agreeing to a EULA of any type that you couldn't see and weren't made aware of prior to opening the packaging.  Insofar as games are concerned, I can't think of a single console game that has ever had any such licensing agreement written anywhere in it, although such things as trademark notices, "all rights reserved," etc., showing that the selling company retained rights to the IP were and still are commonplace.

I've spent 25 minutes reading the license agreement for any Ubisoft game I've ever bought for my Switch. It isn't on the outside packaging but the agreements state that  you have to stop playing the game immediately if you don't agree to the terms. Whether or not you're legally bound by that I have no idea, I don't claim to always be right and I don't claim to be a lawyer, I'm just saying that's the perception.

[OptOut | 8,883]

5 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

With 2 Autistics arguing, this isn't going to go anywhere

Basically every argument, on the internet, EVER! 

[YOURTURN | 1,256]

17 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

With 2 Autistics arguing, this isn't going to go anywhere but you can't infer that I said you can't archive software just because I said you don't own it. I don't mind participating in an argument here but not if you're going to tell me I'm saying things I'm not.

You reference THE end user license agreement as if this is the one that covers all software. That is a general license agreement but what I stated is that games are bound by the specific agreement they're shipped with.

You need to realize here that I'm not arguing you're totally wrong and I'm totally right. I'm simply stating that your understanding of what I said is not what I actually wrote.

For beginners, everything you said is based on your own opinions. And are not based on facts. In this case, you sound like Arthur Conan Doyle (my genetic cousin) during his spiritual days.

As for the EULA, I should point out that I read up on the structuring it offers for some time now. And skipping buyer protections and rights, the agreement is one that tends to be modified as per the IP owner's requirements. Which is why I I trust making digital purchases on both Steam and for my Nintendo Switch Lite.

Simply because during the PS3 days, purchasing digital content via the PSN store requires the buyer to literally store their purchases on either their console or a external HD. Thus limiting how many consoles can own said content, with ownership ending if the content is not stored when Sony chooses to remove it from said store.

Plus, I should add that I wasted my time trying to point out the facts. As per to what you are saying. And have failed to retrieve a Japanese interview that answers what was asked in this topic. With the worst being after I had to cancel my flight back to Tokyo, along with everything else I had planned for five weeks.

So going back to the first statement, I am not going to go beyond that point. Because I am an analytical thinker, and tend to draw parallels when ones can be found. That is how my ASD works. 

[YOURTURN | 1,256]

1 hour ago, OptOut said:

Basically every argument, on the internet, EVER! 

Pretty much true. Which makes the fact I have to spend the rest of the year with you guys that much worse. 

Plus, I officially miss the Nakano apartment I had rented for the rest of the year. It was a nice quiet location, with the best part being the fact I don't have to hear anything about Wata. 

[Tanooki | 4,933]

@darkchylde28 Yeah that's what I was saying, you don't own the overriding licensed product and all that entails, but you do own all rights to do as you wish with the item you purchased.  It's why I tried to break it down better using the car example.  I own a Honda Civic, I can do whatever I like to it, but I don't own actual Honda or the Civic itself, just my specific one.  That's how it works on the games, the developers know this, HATE this, and want to eradicate physical media so they can do as they wish, charge whatever high end they want, and you will just have to take it, or leave.

[Vectrex28 | 366]

Buying a game essentially entitles you to owning a licence to play the game, and you can do that on any platform you want. Pretty sure I still have ROMs of a few games I dumped some time ago and there's nothing wrong with playing these on an emulator or an everdrive

[Vectrex28 | 366]

On 11/23/2021 at 4:22 AM, FenrirZero said:

Pretty much true. Which makes the fact I have to spend the rest of the year with you guys that much worse. 

Plus, I officially miss the Nakano apartment I had rented for the rest of the year. It was a nice quiet location, with the best part being the fact I don't have to hear anything about Wata. 

Hah Nakano, I go there from time to time, tho Nakano Broadway isn't what it used to sadly

[YOURTURN | 1,256]

14 hours ago, Vectrex28 said:

Hah Nakano, I go there from time to time, tho Nakano Broadway isn't what it used to sadly

I haven't been to Nakano Broadway since around February or March, 2018. And by that time it was more of a "Let's get some exercise!" regime. Especially since the shops I frequently visited were tied to Robot Robot and Mandarake. The year before I did more hunting there while figuring out which is the best path between there are Ikebukuro. 

I miss those long walks. And the tucked away vending machine that offered bottles of Dr. Pepper for around 80 JPY.