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Wyden Asks For Rules About Whether You Own Your Digital Purchases (theverge.com) 54

Posted by msmash from the about-time dept.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Andrew Ferguson urging the FTC to require that companies admit when you're not really buying an ebook or video game. From a report: Wyden's letter, shared with The Verge, requests guidance to "ensure that consumers who purchase or license digital goods can make informed decisions and understand what ownership rights they are obtaining."

Wyden wants the guidance to include how long a license lasts, what circumstances might expire or revoke the license, and if a consumer can transfer or resell the license. The letter also calls for the information "before and at the point of sale" in a way that's easily understandable. "To put it simply, prior to agreeing to any transaction, consumers should understand what they are paying for and what is guaranteed after the sale," Wyden says.
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Wyden Asks For Rules About Whether You Own Your Digital Purchases More

Wyden Asks For Rules About Whether You Own Your Digital Purchases

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  • They're borrowed. That's all. End of story.

    • That is not the end of the story. California passed an excellent law [natlawreview.com] last year which addressed this very nicely, and there are digital purchases which do qualify as "owned" under that law. I hope that this is just a national version of that law, that would be great.

  • The info is already available (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2025 @01:39PM (#65194295)

    Long answer:

    Look in the terms and conditions before you buy.*

    *We may modify these terms and conditions at any time at our sole discretion.

    Short answer:

    No, you don't own it.

    There's more:

    We'll also monetize any and all data we can glean from you, and you agree to binding arbitration.

    • It wouldn't matter if this were all conveyed in a more accessible and understandable format, 99% of customers would immediately click through it without a on more thought than they give to a EULA or other such things. The scarier thing to me though is that a sizable number of consumers aren't even interested in trying to own anything and are happy to be digital serfs providing endless succor to rent-seeking assholes. Maybe someday we'll figure out a slick system where a digital copy can be seamlessly tied t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        I don't think we're talking about just EULAs here. I think we're talking about things like buttons that say "buy" on them when that's not what one is doing when one clicks on that link and follows through on the process presented to them. If I don't walk away from a transaction owning something I should never be presented with any kind of language that implies I will during the transaction.

      • > It wouldn't matter if this were all conveyed in a more accessible and understandable format

        I'd take something like the Creative Commons license logos.
        And prohibiting the use of "buy" and "purchase" on things you won't own after the transaction.

  • Protecting consumers? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2025 @01:39PM (#65194297)

    The party in power. Just kidding. The two men in power, one officially and one not, don't care about consumers. They care about themselves. They move quickly, break things, and blame others.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      And weirdly many Americans, who are also consumers and can get caught up in thinking they've bought something when they have not, and often have a lot of consumer debt, seem to fully support what the two presidents are doing, and seem fine with the dismantling of consumer protection agencies and laws. Do they enjoy being indentured to large companies? I'm not really sure.

      • Yep, head scratcher.

        • And yet we still allow these people to vote...guess this is democracy.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by caseih ( 160668 )

            And worryingly, these people who are allowed to vote also voting for lawmakers who are working hard to suppress voting fom people who are the wrong kind of people.

          • I guess we could initiate a stupid test to vote instead of the old poll tax which was used so effectively to restrict the vote to the right kind of people. I think a better solution would be better education, but that's not going to happen in the red states where they don't even want sex education taught to teach little johnny poking little jennie without a rubber will knock her up.

            • I'm quite okay with a very basic civics test before someone can vote. Simple stuff. Who is the Vice President? Name one Supreme Court Justice. Who's your state governor? Who's your House of Reps? Name one of your state Senators.

              If you can't even answer these basic questions without asking someone/something for the answer, you really shouldn't be voting.

              I'm all for more education but as you say, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. When I was in grade school, K-12, I'd say at least 30

  • Corporate Response: No. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2025 @01:40PM (#65194301)

    It took me a long, long time to get onboard the digital everything train. And even now I'm exceedingly careful that what I "buy" online has a straightforward backup path. If I have to keep a monthly service in order to access the content I "purchased" I don't consider buying it. If I can't download it in an open enough format that I can move it to another device, say when my computer or eink reader dies, I won't buy it. The companies selling these items have made it clear from the beginning that they believe they own the content and you are only paying for access to it, so I try to make sure that my access can not be removed at their whim, forcing me to buy it again if want to continue to access it.

    It seems there are a lot of people that don't do their own due diligence when it comes to digital content. And while it's easy to say, "Screw 'em. They were stupid," it would be nice to see some form of legal constraint put on the digital distribution companies when it comes to these types of 'sales.' Having an up-front disclaimer telling the purchaser what it is they are actually purchasing is legitimately one of the few suggestions I've heard that isn't an egregious governmental overreach in the name of consumer protection. As such, I'd be all for it. I don't see it happening in the current climate, but it'd be a nice direction to see things head at some point in the future.

  • You only own physical objects
    ALL digital products and software expire
    They may require server access or subscription fees, or they may only run on one version of an OS and hardware
    All software and digital stuff expires. ALL of it

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      mp3s? I might eventually have to convert them to some PCM format, but there will be a way of playing that for as long as digital computers have audio outputs.

  • I have assumed for some time.. (Score:3)

    by Travco ( 1872216 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2025 @02:06PM (#65194347)
    That any money I spent on digital "products" would ultimately be wasted. The thing that irks me about this wastage is that if I don't own the product I should be paying a lot less for it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      You own the raw materials. The "physical shell" on which a critical part of the product resides which becomes a useless shell eventually. I's that critical part that will expire or depends on a service which has an expiration date or monthly fee at some point. So technically you didn't "waste" it; you bought an expensive paperweight that had extra features temporarily.

      • For purely digital products, I purchase the physical shell separately, so irrelevant. And even then more and more I can't do what I want with that physical shell.

      • In the case of books on paper, that "shell" has lasted hundreds of years. I'm not sure I care if the shell expires way after I do. Maybe my descendants will. Even CD's I bought in the 80's are looking to last longer than me. And I've already transferred the "product" to redundant hard drives as well in case the CD fails.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      I only buy digital MP3 files from Amazon. At least, I can keep and listen to them offline locally on any players!

  • Even if you owned a shiny disc, we control the optical drive firmware. Sony

  • corporation?!!

    HA!

  • Answer companies will give is simple (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2025 @02:40PM (#65194437)

    Not only will you will own nothing, And nothing is guaranteed, but you also agree we can surveil you and collect and sell all data learned about you.
    We can even share it with data brokers and insurance companies who are bound to find uses for the data.

    We can also turn it off next month if we decide you should buy a new one. Or we can cancel it next month unless you agree to a new monthly fee or usage fee for credits.

  • Someone's finally focusing on the right questions.

  • You have no rights when it comes to media when its not on your server. Ive had too many movies disappear to believe any different. Most of them have come with dvd/bluray with the stream anytime advertisement where I believed I might be able to watch it while travelling or at someone's house. Companies like Microsoft have advertised extremely cheap digital content only to yank it hours, days, weeks later saying ..yeah sorry our mistake. Whereas if Id purchased it at an actual store, that kind of callous cust
  • What is the point of asking, Wyden? Why not instead draft some legislation that makes it clear that consumers own their purchases in the same way they own a Blu-Ray disc and that companies cannot rescind their purchases?

    • We first need to launch a committee to discuss whether we should commission a study on whether or not we should draft a law. This gives the appearance of doing something.

      Obviously, many of us already know that if it's digital and not on your own server, you don't own it. If it comes with DRM, you don't own it.

      Maybe Wyden is so in the dark about how these things work that he needs that committee and the follow up study while most of us would be happy if they just wrote a simple little law saying you need to

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • You don't know if it will pass if you never try it. These Senators and Congressman probably have made some purchases or have family that have made some purchases and if they knew how tenuous those purchases were they might be motivated to protect consumers through legislation. Right now, Congress is not very friendly towards Hollywood so the time is ripe.

  • sigh (Score:2)

    by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
    here we go again, you have never realy owned sw, you have owned a lisene to use said softwar or content inn accordance with the terms stipulated in said license. If said lisence was granted to you by a third party (steam, amazon et all) that subsequently looses the distribution deal you're probably sol. Whats's so hard to grok about that.? ps IANAL so if I have this wrong please correct me

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Bull. Do you own any dead tree books? Then you own a licensed copy. You don't see a difference between that, and buying an ebook?

  • Canada law has made this very simple, If you "buy a digital copy" or something, you are buying a license for that media. This also applies to CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, etc. You get a license to use that media for personal use. This means that if you buy a DVD, you legally can download a Blu-ray quality version off the Internet legally. You own the license to view it, not limited to format. Things only get a little murky if the HD version has been "transformed" enough. Transformed is where the content has been ad

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