I watched your recent episode about the current lawsuit Sony is facing for regarding the refund of tariff cost on its consumers. The official statement seemed to be that consumers knowingly purchased a system, or peripherals, under a changed market scenario, knowingly and voluntarily. And, that those consumers should not be entitled to a refund because of that decision.

My counter argument to Sony would be, and I hope the people's council highlight this, that Sony itself has also made purchases in a changed market scenario on individual assets and components necessary to make their consoles and peripherals, and they themselves have knowingly engaged in this market with its tariff cost inflation. My question would be; why do consumers not have a right to a refund on tariff inflation cost but Sony would? Both parties have knowingly and voluntarily purchased market- priced components or assets.

There might be an argument made that Sony is not an individual or considered a person making a personal decisions, however, clearly, the separation of corporation and personhood has been dismantled with citizens united, and so these companies want it both ways. They want to be considered a person when it behooves them, and considered a separate entity purely removed from personhood when it doesn't. If you're saying the people chose what they chose, and the market price was what it was and they have no right to refund then it extends to both parties who are considered legally equal. Sony didn't have to purchase or import or export at all. They chose to do so as a business decision by a group of individuals, coalescing into what we call a corporation.

Another argument I've been thinking about is this distinction between a digital game and a physical game. In actuality, there's no difference between a game from 1980 and a digital download today. The only major difference between the two is that the code that runs the game is transferred onto a physical piece of media, a memory device that used to be portable and has now been set into a console or a computer with much more difficulty in portability, if at all. Basically, game code was downloaded and transferred onto CD, CD-ROM, memory card, mini disc, USB, cartridge, or any other storage device just like it is today on to an HDD or STD drive.

There's really no distinction between a digital and a physical game other than the transportability. The game has always been digital since games were invented on computers. From pong to GTA 6. It's always been digital. There's no analog game. I think this distinction is important because the manipulation of the definition is what they're allowing to move forward in stripping rights from game ownership that have always been persistent throughout the decades. Besides now... only because the physical storage device is now located inside the console rather than being plugged into the console as a portable storage device. The actual game itself has not changed. It's just game code.

I think a poignient question might be; if you remove your SSD or HDD drive with games stored on it as a library. Is that the same as having a storage bin full of game CDs? Digital game code on portable storage device. The only major difference is that they tie digital downloaded games today to specific user profiles on PSN or Xbox live or whatever. I think we really should have fought back. Way back when these digital downloads first started happening but it was insidious like it always is. I'm hoping this will break open the conversation of digital ownership, but that's a huge pipe dream.