this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2026
625 points (99.4% liked)

Technology

87742 readers
4067 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
625
PlayStation Wants To Prove In Court That You Don't Own Your Digital Games (www.polygon.com)
submitted 1 day ago by unglueclass23@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
180 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] gastroglizzy@piefed.social 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

licenses are a very IT central idea.

No, that's just the implementation you're most familiar with. Licenses are a copyright idea that IT adopted and made digital. Every physical movie and game you own also comes with a license that authorizes your retail use of it, but forbids your commercial use of it. You can't rent your copy of Shrek out to people, nor can you charge admission to people to watch Shrek at your house, nor are you allowed to make copies of your Shrek DVD and sell them, for example.

[–] LaggyKar@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Care to back that up? You wouldn't need a license to do something that copyright laws already allow you to do on their own. For example, making additional copies for your own personal use is perfectly legal, if allowed depends on your local fair use or private copying exemption law (provided you do it without circumventing DRM, e.g. via the analog hole), even though of course the movie studio wouldn't give you a license for that.

Of course, DRM is the real issue here, as due to anti-circumvention the movie industry controls who can legally make players for movies on DVD/Blu-Ray (unlike on VHS and CD).

You can’t rent your copy of Shrek out to people

That's literally how Netflix got started.

[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Netflix had a different type of license they negotiated with the rights holder. They didn't just buy DVDs retail and start mailing them around.