If the people decide to elect a comedian with a dustbin on their head, they can do. That apples to Chicago as much as Clacton
Societies have gotten really good at convincing people they don’t have power so it’s rarely exercised but it’s always worth remembering the difference between abstraction and the underlying reality.
If they stop believing money has value (so they wouldn't want to come to my house), men with guns will come to their house, force them out of it and change the locks.
This isn't a voluntary system, it's a forcibly imposed one.
You’re assuming there’s going to be large groups of people that believe money still has value. However, there’s nothing inherently different about the first group of people with guns and the second group of people with guns.
If hypothetically there’s a large moon heading to earth so everyone is going to die, everyone is responding to the same situation.
Less extreme situations result in societal collapse, and that’s just one of many options.
Additionally Lobbying shows us the amount of money for corruption is surprisingly low.
Are we taking about abolishing the fiat currency system or bringing back the guillotines ?
If you haven’t been paying attention lately, laws are only as good as they are enforced and it has become obvious that the ruling class is not going to enforce laws against themselves.
The solution here is not something most people are willing to inconvenience themselves over
Then the wind shifted and, suddenly, we could and we did. It took them decades to undo that progress and decades more to reassert their grip.
Don't self-sabotage by imagining that it is impossible to achieve change through democracy. We've done it before and we can do it again.
Using foreign wars to prosecute domestic agenda is a strategy that predates written history, let alone Vietnam. Rulers have always understood which levers were available to them, this is not a modern discovery. Classical history in particular is full of this sort of thing and worse in a democratic context, which is comforting in the sense of where we stand and concerning in the sense of where things could go.
Machinations were always organized. I'm reading about Louis Brandeis and I'm struck by how familiar the robber baron talking points are; they are exactly the talking points I heard from neoliberals growing up. Time is a flat circle when it comes to antitrust. Also: they tried to coup FDR! They got themselves a strongman figurehead and everything, it just didn't work.
I'd actually give us the advantage today: the information environment is messier and more difficult to control and machine politics is barely starting to form rather than firmly established everywhere at every level.
The laws in this country are primarily written by and for large corporations. They’re not going to meaningfully practically restrain them just because something got passed.
a) Consumers don't have enough money already, so they're both stressed out and getting fewer things for themselves. These combine to mean that they're less likely to be willing to give up what little luxuries they have left, even if you're just asking them to substitute one media property for another.
b) The companies being targeted are just too damn big. The consolidation that began in the '80s has reached truly ludicrous levels in 2026, meaning that the company can just...ignore drops in profits for months or even years while consumers get worn out.
How much content really is only on Sony’s store, and how much of it would wear you down if you didn’t consume it within X years?
There are truly painful boycotts (try boycotting the only ISP in your area), and boycotts that are an inconvenience. This one is a far cry from losing a luxury or getting worn out.
I mean, sure; it's much more painful to boycott the only ISP around, or the only grocery store within a 30 mile radius, but just because there are things that could be worse doesn't mean that this can't be bad.
The point of a government in society is for people who give a shit to guide this kind of thing.
Is it? What’s the most effective boycott you can think of ever achieved?
Completely different circumstances as the protest was very organised and the target far smaller than a multi national company and the reason was far more important than access to a few films
Look at how the firestone tire scandal in 2000 effected their company's bottom line. Or how the click of death effected the fortunes of the owners of Iomega. Reputation actually does matter sometimes.
Demos doesn't have capital. People never had power. Whenever they've thought they won ... they just damaged position of someone powerful for someone even more powerful without even knowing it.
By this logic, in consumerism power comes from consumers, but maybe it's more complicated than that?
In a browser, the top category on Google's "Movies & TV" is "New to buy or rent". The buttons on the page for a movie are labeled "$X.XX Buy" and "$X.XX Rent". In the Google TV app on my android phone, the two buttons are "Rent 4K // $X.XX" and "Buy 4K // $X.XX".
The splash images in the Apple TV app iOS say "Buy or rent it now.", and the buttons on the page for an individual movie are labeled "Buy $X.XX" and "Rent $X.XX".
Movies, on digital marketplaces, have had this kind of distinction for a lot longer than games have.
Paid apps largely failed as a business model though (why would a consumer take a risk on buying a paid app that they can't try before they buy) so most apps that you pay for are free apps with IAP subscriptions... which I guess makes it a little more explicit that you're renting the app, for better or worse.
EG. A mapping app that includes a one time bundle of maps that don’t get updated can be sold as a one time purchase. If you provide continuous updates, which most people expect now, pulling off a one time purchase business model is HARD. The other option is versioned access or time limited support, which is really just a subscription model by a different name. That said I wish versioned access was still a thing. Photoshop CS is still fine for what I want, I’m happy to pay for an upgrade when it makes sense, but a continuing subscription to software that hasn’t substantially changed in a decade sucks.
Strangely, some kindle books actually do meet california criteria of "buy" by allowing a download of the book in .pdf or .epub format.
But when you go to buy them, it still seems to say:
By placing an order, you're purchasing a content license & agreeing to Kindle's Store Terms of Use.It is only later in your library that it quietly says:
Download available in additional formatsIs there something in Apple or Amazon terms which say they can't under any circumstances deprive you of accessing the content you have bought with their "Buy" buttons? I don't see why you are trying to assign a difference between them and Sony here?
We have words like leases, licenses, or renting for a reason and they are not new.
The companies which shifted their business model to renting in the digital age have perpetuated the "buy" buttons to make their customers think the transaction was the same as when they purchased a physical media... but clearly, and it's by far not the first case, these companies will deprive their customers of their "purchase" for many reasons that shouldn't be any concern for someone who actually "bought" something... like the companies suddenly deciding to stop paying for the rights of the thing that they alledgly "sold" to you.
So just as clearly, theses were not actual purchases but just licenses, non-transferable, allegedly "perpetual" but unilaterally revocable at any time with no refund.
I really don't see why you seem to think there is anything hazy about this, or hard to delineate. This law seems to cover the cases in which these companies abuse the language in question, Amazon and Apple are not "selling" you anything digital, you acquire a pretty limited license on all of these services.
One important question, which I don't know the answer to, is whether Sony is nuking stuff from your devices. If not, then they could claim that you bought the thing and can keep using it on your existing devices. If you can move the content from a PS5 to a PS6 in 5 years, then arguably it's fine to say you "bought" it. But if they're wiping the content from your local devices, then you've definitely not bought the thing.
Let's not broaden this definition in favor of the vendor.
Clearly this law needs to be worded harsher, so the button MUST say "rent" if you are renting.
No, there is a much better alternative.
No renting of copyrighted works for money. The customer owns a copy or GTFO.
The customer has to know what they're getting. Either they own it, or they're renting for a certain period. Nothing ambiguous.
That immediately destroys several useful and viable business models that actually work in that they provide more access to more creative work to more people while the rights holders also make a return.
I am in favour of copyright reform but not of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Does it though? The incremental revenue from customers renting something and then renting it again is going to be very small. The "loss" from providing them with a permanent copy instead would be a rounding error, especially for a product with no marginal cost.
Meanwhile rentals are an attempt to cheat the public out of a bunch of rights they would otherwise have under First Sale etc. Which turns your access argument on its head, because the thing they're being denied is the ability to sell their copy when they're done with it, which in turn denies less well off customers the ability to buy a cheaper copy second hand.
It destroys the library model used by Spotify, Netflix, and all the other similar services for one example. Those are clearly not working on the same basis as selling permanent copies of everything you might want to listen to or watch. They clearly do make a lot of revenue from subscribers enjoying the long tail of music and programmes and often that includes repeats. Many more people enjoy many more works that aren't the big headliners under this model. People can also try something they might enjoy without committing to the cost of buying it and therefore don't have to feel bad if it's not for them and they give up after a few minutes. And yet obviously the subscribers individually spend far less in many cases than it would cost them to buy permanent copies of everything they'd listened to and watched. Given the popularity and financial success of the streaming services this is evidently an alternative model that works for both sides. So I would challenge your claim that the loss from always providing permanent copies is insignificant.
I don't really buy the other argument you're making either. With digital works there isn't much reason for a "second hand" market where copies would be significantly cheaper than a "new" copy direct from the supplier. When people used to trade used works on physical media there was a degree of degradation in those media that justified a price reduction. Why would someone who had bought a copy of the latest summer blockbuster sell it for 30% of its original purchase price if it's a flawless digital reproduction identical to a new one? Naturally this shifts the dynamics in the market and the price of buying a true permanent copy that can legally be sold on afterwards would tend to increase because of this effect. Meanwhile the library services I mentioned above work on almost the opposite basis and it tends to push the price per work accessed down because the subscribers aren't effectively subsidising other people who are enjoying identical works to themselves but without paying the original source anything to access those works.
I think there is demonstrably room enough in a world of billions of people with access to orders of magnitude more content than any of us could experience even once in our lifetimes for multiple economic models. What matters is that people get to create useful works and other people get to enjoy those works and the financial arrangements make this worthwhile for everyone. There are certainly flaws in the current copyright model that is established in most of the world. There are rights that I think people who have bought (or believe they have bought) permanent copies of works should enjoy with the force of law behind them if necessary.
I don't have a great answer yet to the problem of rights holders not wanting to make anything available permanently at all so that everyone is locked into some form of temporary arrangement. Clearly market forces haven't always sorted that one out effectively and some sort of adjustment is warranted. But I'm also wary of relying on some form of government regulation that distorts the market and potentially excludes arrangements that everyone actually involved might find worthwhile. Maybe you could somehow require that once any work has more than a certain number of licensed copies in circulation or has been available to a certain number of people from authorised sources for a certain (relatively small) number of years then it must also be available for sale as a permanent licence - regardless of any other continuing and still legitimate ways to access it from authorised sources - but with some recognition that a fair price to buy a permanent copy that comes with all the associated rights today might be significantly higher than what these things used to cost in the days when physical media were required.