> That’s because you never actually bought the item. You got a license to run it on someone else’s server.

Don't mean to sound too cranky but this "you just bought a license" crap has been a thing since software began being software. It was no more fair back then than it is now.

No one is arguing, at least I don't think they are, that a company has an obligation to keep servers running in perpetuity. But to tell me I have no portable way to retain the bits I bought--excuse me, "licensed"--from a company is just crap. If a game can run in single-player mode without a server, or if a movie file can be played, or a song file listened to, then the act of "buying" it should mean I can do that for as long as I can keep my computers running and the onus on keeping backups of those files is on me.

We call them app "stores," we use the moniker of "purchased," and the ads call them "ours." If companies don't want to let us keep the ability to independently use the software or content files we "purchased," then they should be prohibited from using the lexicon of buying things and be very explicit that this is a one-time fee for a rental that can be taken away at any time.

Being explicit does not mean burying it in a multi-thousand word document that no person with a regular command of English can understand and that none of us have the power to negotiate for ourselves.

There is nothing unfair about licensing. I contribute to FOSS software, I expect that an individual or company abide by the terms of the license I grant them and that license is terminated if they fail to meet various conditions. That seems fair to me, it wouldn't become unfair if a payment was required either.

But I think you have got it right with the rest of your comments. There has to be a meeting of the minds in these dealings, and I don't believe these companies are acting in good faith when they explicitly or implicitly suggest that you are "buying a game" or "buying a song" even if you can find out what that really means in fine print somewhere.

Hopefully we get more legislation and precedent that forces them to be more explicit about what these purchases mean exactly.

In FOSS, the conditions and possible termination are usually centered around redistribution. You can do whatever you want on your own computer, with no restrictions placed upon you, and those restrictions are the "unfair" part of licensing.

(AGPL is a little different, but that's an issue for another discussion.)

Yes they often are.

Actually “we” don’t call it “purchased”, they do. It’s a deceptive marketing practice for rentals.

Take for instance Amazon. They say they sell you a digital video, but they actually can’t, because in reality they have a revocable license, which does get revoked, thus all your “purchases” disappear. If you owned physical media, this couldn’t happen.

https://www.slashfilm.com/574053/amazon-sued-purchased-movie...

It's one thing if it's an MMO or something else that inherently needs a central server. It's another if it's a game that could work 100% offline if not for the DRM.