860

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a bill into law that won't stop companies from taking away your digitally purchased video games, movies, and TV shows, but it'll at least force them to be a little more transparent about it.

As spotted by The Verge, the law, AB 2426, will prohibit storefronts from using the words "buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good or alongside an option for a time-limited rental." The law won't apply to storefronts which state in "plain language" that you're actually just licensing the digital content and that license could expire at any time, or to products that can be permanently downloaded.

The law will go into effect next year, and companies who violate the terms could be hit with a false advertising fine. It also applies to e-books, music, and other forms of digital media.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago

I don’t understand why they don’t just charge both parties the average cost when one side has waaay more legal resources than the other. Seems like such an obvious issue with the legal system that even the founding fathers should have realized if they thought for a second.

Or they did and this is the intended system.

[-] cynar@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

If anything, that would be worse. Imagine, you sue, and have a single lawyer, on a discount rate. They respond with a team of 100 highly paid lawyers. Your now paying 50-500x what your own lawyer is actually charging. This could also work in both directions.

[-] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

Sorry what I meant is to pool both parties legal budget, divide it in half and give each the same amount.

Basically disarms all corporates from using their army of lawyers because their big army will never give them an advantage. So they would actually avoid legal battles cause it would cost them money with no unfair advantage.

[-] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Now, how do you define what a reasonable budget is? That basically becomes a fee to sue.

[-] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago

Same as speeding tickets in Nordic countries, it’s a parentage of total revenue. Im sure these details can be ironed out but the idea is that a corp can’t use its unlimited resources, it has to share said resources with their opponent to ensure a fair trail, otherwise it’s not justice imo.

[-] cynar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

That would be very easy to weaponise, particularly against smaller companies. Once you're dealing with lawyers, you need to assume that worst case scenarios will rapidly become the default. You also then end up with even more red tape, deciding who should pay what, prior to the trial even starting.

[-] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

How could it be weaponized?

It costs money (relative to your company size) to do any legal action, a big company suing means they lose waaay more $ than the small opponent.

Same thing with the small guy, it’s not a lot of $ to sue but it’s still a big chunk of your business so you would want to avoid unless your pretty sure the law is on your side.

[-] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

E.g. a competitor "encourages" multiple individuals to open cases. Perhaps with some "financial assistance". Suddenly, the company is dealing with the costs of 10 cases. Even worse, they can no longer use economies of scale to cope (e.g. have an in-house lawyer). They are on the line for the complainant's cost. The cases don't have to go far, the company pays the opposing lawyers either way.

Also, if you can't see how ambulance chasing lawyers couldn't exploit a guaranteed payout system (to the lawyers at least), I would question your imagination.

[-] Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Its not a required amount be brought to the tables. Its whatever amount is chosen by each gets split in half. Both sides could choose to barely represent themselves even.

this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
860 points (99.8% liked)

News

23266 readers
3827 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS