Like I don’t understand why this even became a thing and who even thought of it?
In: Economics
Because the legal owners didn’t sell their ownership of it to you. What they sold you was a *license* to use their software in a limited way. Think of it like leasing out your or renting out your house: while another takes possession of your car or house, you still retain full legal ownership of it; you merely give them the right to use it in accordance with certain terms for a certain amount of time you guys agreed upon.
They could have drawn up the contract to transfer ownership of it to you, but then it probably would cost a lot more. Think about Spiderman. Who owns Spiderman? Sony does. But they sell you the rights to see the movie in the form of a movie ticket (or rental on a video streaming platform). They’re not selling you the rights to Spiderman (which if you had means you can sell and distribute it and you now own the copyright), but a license to see it a certain amount of times under a certain set of circumstances. But if you want to buy Spiderman outright, that can probably be arranged too, but it’ll cost a lot more than a $12 movie ticket.
So you see there’s a fundamental difference between owning something, and being given license to use it, and the law recognizes this difference. It’s the difference between lending / leasing and selling, between renting and buying.
> Like I don’t understand why this even became a thing and who even thought of it?
It started witht the concept of “intellectual property,” which was born when we realized we were coming up with works and inventions of the mind, of the intellect—works of art, music, ideas, code, software—which we realized needed to be just as real legally and worth protecting as physical property like a car or house.
Digital works are nothing more than a string of 1s and 0s if you think about it. And yet the law prohibits you from reproducing or sometimes even using certain combinations of 1s and 0s—why? Beacause those 1s and 0s are not independent of but rather are inseperably linked to something sacred and protected, intellectual property that belongs to someone.
If you were a photographer, artist, writer, musician, or software developer you would feel this: your ideas and effort end up as 1s and 0s which unless protected, anyone is free to copy or rip off or misuse. But the law protects you: if you only want to sell someone the right to use the software you produced in a limited way, and not do whatever they want with it, the law protects you.
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