For some reason, it was never considered deceptive for shops to advertise themselves as “selling” CDs and tapes and videocassettes and DVDs and video games; if you bothered to ask, you discovered that what you were buying was a “licence” to use the product, not ownership of the product as such. Well, that’s changing, at least in some places. The US state of California has now decreed that not mentioning this distinction between “licence” and “ownership” constitutes false advertising, so vendors had better make it clear <https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/steam-now-reminds-you-that-it-really-sells-a-license-for-a-digital-product/>. In case customers get upset at discovering something they should have realized before, the article ends with the reassuring words: So long as Steam lasts forever, however, this new language should not be that alarming.