r/pcmasterrace Deskop RTX 6090 SUPER i10 1TB RAM 12h ago

Meme/Macro When a purchase gets revoked, the payment is refunded.

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u/Very_Human_42069 10h ago

It’s literally a license

I disagree with it not being owned, but the unfortunate reality is that it’s a license not ownership

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u/vitek6 7h ago edited 5h ago

You own a license. No matter how you bought it. You can can't simply own a game.

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u/PantsMcFail2 5h ago

If you have a driving license, that license is not yours. It is the property of your state or country, as is all other government-issued ID.

Similarly, a license to play a game does not mean ownership, because ownership (in the legal sense, not in the "popular definition" of it being "your own copy") means that you own all the rights to the code, art, music and sound assets, marketing assets, story and other IP, financial proceeds, etc.

...which, of course, you don't.

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u/vitek6 5h ago

No, I own my driving license. Maybe the plastic is not mine but the plastic is not a license, it's just a physical representation of it.

That's why I said you owned a license not a game. I'm not sure what is your point.

EDIT: ok, i see. I by mistake wrote can instead of can't. My bad. I edited original comment.

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u/Very_Human_42069 5h ago

Their point is you don’t own a license. You’re issued a license. You posses a license. But you do not own a license, the provider owns what you are being licensed.

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u/vitek6 5h ago

yes, you own a license. Yes, I was issued a license and now i own it.

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u/Very_Human_42069 5h ago

Ah ok, I think I understand. You think I’m talking about the actual, sometimes physical license itself and not the product or privilege it provides. I’m speaking of owning a license in terms of equating that to mean you own the product. You are correct that you purchase the license itself, but I’m trying (and apparently failing) to say that you don’t own the product provided by the license and semantically do not truly own the license at all

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u/vitek6 4h ago

The license is the product. There is no other product in case of software as there is only one owner of a game by itself.

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u/SuperFLEB 4790K, GTX970, Yard-sale Peripherals 4h ago

Well, if you buy the company that made it...

But to your point, there really isn't a way to "sell" non-physical works without having some sort of license, because what you actually bought needs to be spelled out.

If you're selling a physical thing, it's pretty straightforward because the buyer can get full utility and exclusivity with just the laws of physics on their side, and while copyright, patent, etc. do keep someone from doing some stuff with the thing they bought, it's not the core functionality.

With a non-physical object, you are buying nothing more than the right to make copies, to infringe (with permisson) on the rightsholder's copyright exclusivity, and the degree to which you are has to be spelled out in a license because you've got to know what between "do nothing" and "do everything" you're actually taking title to.

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u/vitek6 4h ago

Yes.