Skip to content

Comment on Xbox One forces gamers to pay for games borrowed from friendsparent

Comments

It's a long jump from "This has all the hassles of traditional physical distribution and then some new hassles you just invented" to "You should just let us pirate this."

When people talk about wanting to revolutionize distribution, they mean take advantage of all the efficiency and convenience technology enables. Some would just like to pirate everything, but not everyone. No one means they want to find ways to tweak traditional distribution models to make them even worse.

Open lending == piracy. Closed lending? Well, I've yet to see a secure and easy way to accomplish this, so I'll reserve judgment. But given how Amazon has treated the eBook distribution model, I would expect all digital goods to go down a similar route (no transfer of rights, lending is more of a trial period than anything, and no two copies running at once). All existing models are confusing for both end customers and rights stakeholders, and there is no way to do it in an open manner.

Let's say MS figures out how to let us share games, but it requires a central licensing authority (MS) to negotiate the transactions. Would you not agree the same geeks arguing the lack of sharing now will be the same ones to pick at that system too? It's a moving target, and doesn't do a bit of good for the stakeholders. I'd expect to not see this sort of system to play out.

> Open lending == piracy.

So when I lent my buddy my copy of Double Dragon, that was piracy? I think you're taking your stance a bit far. (Remember, we're talking about physical media here, not downloads.)

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.