I think the laws of ownership, as they apply for things like physical things that are hard or impossible to replicate, need to be revised a little with easy to copy software, especially on issues of reselling or lending.

I think a lot of it can be directly transcribed into software, but not everything.

Conversely, you can gain some things in software that you simply can't have with physical things. Namely, your ability to backup said software redundantly and keep pristine copies of it indefinitely with a very high degree of certainty.

Fair point
I said Technically, you can resell them. Which is true. Never said it was legal by the way. You know people sell there steam accounts? But if you get caught you will be banned.

Edit: True, but you can still resell it. I bought used PC games second hand with DRM on them. Sure, you have to do something to get it running, but the game was being resold by someone. Honestly, we are both right on this topic and not sure what we are auguring about now.

and again - all you are doing is justifying gOg's decision. what you fail to see is that I so far have not argued for or against Linux, as it does not matte - justifications have no impact on the point i made. However, thats is all you have done so far, and at the very best that's only very tangental to my point, if we are being very generous. You going on about it just shows that you did not understand my point. what you are basically arguing here, is that we should not take responsebility for our actions, if the action is justified enough (which is immoral).

if gOg have made a decision, then whatever the the outcome is, it is what gOg decided. gOg has so far decided to not support Linux, so gOg is not supporting Linux, and this was gOg's decision. the reasons why does not matter towards this point, for all that i care it could be because gOg does not like pink elephants. when you make a decision (no matter for what reason) then you are the one that own that decision. so in this case, gOg is to blame for not supporting Linux, as gOg decided to not support Linux (because they do not like pink elephants).

is it the word "blame" that triggers you? should I use "accountable for", "liable for", "fault", "responsable for", or any other synonym? becuse this is not rocket science, it is not even worthy of discussion. again - I am not saying anything wheter gOg should or should not support Linux, that's all uppon you. all I am saying is that gOg weighted up the pros and cons, and they decided to not support Linux. that was gOg's choice.

so all I am saying that wheter gOg support lLinux or not is gOg's decision, they can have good reasons for this, they can have bad reasons for this. and i cannot for thel life of me see how you are arguing against it, becuse the only other logical opposition to gOg making a buisess decision - is that they did not take a buisness decision. to which you have already said they do..... so Q.E.D?

(if it si not clear - you have so far not argued against my point, but against a justification for supporting Linux. if you have a valid argument against my point, then thats fine and I would like to deal with it, but if you are just going to continue with the justification for gOg's decision, then this is just becoming repetetive and pointless. I don't think I can make my point much clearer than I have done now, so if you still do not understand it then.... I don't know)

edit - I was thinking of an over the top alllegory, so here it is. If i kill a man, i am to blame for his murder. I may have very good reasons to kill him (he might have raped and killed my 7 year old daughter, then released on a technicality and swore to rape and kill my other daughter). I may even not go to jail for it. However, no matter what the reason, I am still the one to blame for his murder, I was the one that made the choice to kill him. a good reason do not shift away the blame from the fact that I killed him.

bye, adios, tchau, au revoir

Yet 10 years later nothings changed, because the court doesn't understand code.

Think about how books work, as they are the nearest equivalent.
Do you own the words on the pages, of course not, the copyright holder does.
You can sell the book (or Disc) because the words (code), can't be removed from the medium that carries it.
How can you sell the words (code) when there is no physical carrying mechanism.

There is a fundamental break with old laws of ownership when the medium is pure words, and code.
Courts can rule otherwise until they are blue in the face, but when the code can be infinitely copied, the old property rights of ownership can't be applied that way.

It doesn't mean new laws couldn't enforce some sort of ownership rights, but that would have to include DRM of some sort.
How else can they both remove your copy, and transfer it to the new owner?

That's the fundamental problem, beyond the current laws ability to enforce, digital has no intrinsic value, when code can be copied infinitely, and no Read Only medium exists to store it upon.

So are we resorting to arguing for DRM on GOG now
I see no way you could enforce a true transfer of ownership with DRM free code.
in fact I see enforcing such rulings as the death notice for DRM free code.

For the Store owner to remove your access to the game in your library is pointless if you have a DRM free offline Installer.
Adding DRM free code to the buyers Library, allows them to have the same installer, rinse, and repeat.

Second problem is you're asking the store to do extra work for no recompense, that would inevitably mean added cost in the shape of a store ownership transfer fee

third problem code is updatable and can change, so which version can you sell, one you bought obviously.

Stores would set those transaction fees+Updates, so high that it would be cheaper to just buy a new copy from them. it would come with a updates included for set time period clause.

The current system uses contract law, and EULAs to sidestep all the fundamental issues of digital code, due to the combination of infinite copy + No physical container, it's a workaround fudge, and if nobody has come up with a viable solution by now, it likely doesn't exist.

technically, you can do everything that is illegal.

Not really buying, and selling on the black market doesn't transfer ownership rights
It's just possession of illegal goods, or stolen goods if physical.
his original statement, was you own GOG Games, now that's devolved down to
"… but Piracy"

My point has been made.

Not when the thing being made illegal is actually impossible. (I'm pretty sure there are laws like that in the books somewhere.)

I'm glad someone gets it.

So just to be clear, what about all the people who buy physical items they cannot resell unless they have licenses? Like prescription drugs or marijuana? Don't they own it even if they cannot resell it? Not everyone can even get licenses to sell

But anyways, we kind of derailed this guy's thread.

Edit: All I'm saying is that just because you cannot sell the games legally does not mean we do not own the media for ourselves. Let's agree to disagree because this is getting pointless.

That's all well and good, but it seems irrelevant to me.

You are arguing that the court's ruling doesn't make sense and/or isn't applicable/enforceable in practical terms. You're making some good points toward that end and I don't necessarily disagree.

De jure, however, you still have full ownership of every copy of a game you bought here.

For context; while UsedSoft is in fact still in business and whether things changed with digital storefronts for games might hinge on the question whether anyone actually cared enough to press the matter since then, I'm not really advocating for pursuing the right to resell. In practical terms I would assume this would just be asking for more DRM, as you've already pointed out. I am just slightly irked by the willingness of customers to waive away their rights so easily by buying into the narrative of 'buying a license', parroting EULA that legally aren't worth cock, as the implications are wider than just the right to resell. Since you claimed the laws of every capitalist country in the world agreed with you, I was simply curious whether anything changed legally that I might have missed.

But is what you buy here actually a copy?

IANAL etc, so I'd be happy if anyone wants to correct me on this. That's why I asked in the first place.

That said, from my understanding what you actually buy here is an instance of a game, which carries a perpetual license to access the IP. Keep in mind that software is a good according to NICE classification. Transfer of ownership at point of sale should apply here, if I'm not mistaken. If you're buying software on a physical medium, you're buying an instance of that software and the perpetual license to use the software IP. As per the EU Court of Justice it doesn't matter, though, if the instance is delivered via physical medium:

Isn't that statement a tad too nebulous? According to this article (https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/09/linux-user-share-on-steam-continues-the-slow-climb-steamos-rises/) there's around 1.2-1.3% of Steam users who game on Linux. That's a lot of people if we take into account steam.db's concurrent user data for this year, which has climbed from a figure of 25 million to an average of 27-28 aprox. The extrapolation might not be valid, sure, but still, that's a lot of people and potential user base for gog. The question is whether gog are confident they can attract those users (or some of them) to their platform when there's Steam, Lutris, or Heroic which offer more features or are more versatile than a potential galaxy linux client. So I'd argue galaxy coming to Linux isn't a matter of user base, but of value proposition.