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The History and Future of Digital Ownership (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/technology

68 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'd like to get the community's feedback on this. I find it very disturbing that digital content purchased on a platform does not rightfully belong to the purchaser and that the content can be completely removed by the platform owners. Based on my understanding, when we purchase a show or movie or game digitally, what we're really doing is purchasing a "license" to access the media on the platform. This is different from owning a physical copy of the same media. Years before the move to digital media, we would buy DVDs and Blu-Rays the shows and movies we want to watch, and no one seemed to question the ownership of those physical media.

Why is it that digital media purchasing and ownership isn't the same as purchasing and owning the physical media? How did it become like this, and is there anything that can be done to convince these platforms that purchasing a digital copy of a media should be equivalent to purchasing a physical DVD or Blu-Ray disc?

P.S. I know there's pirating and all, but that's not the focus of my question.

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[+] shalafi -6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thank you! Lemmy seems to believe everything digital is free forever. There are real costs associated with maintaining infrastructure.

Having said that, I pay Google $100/yr. for 2TB of storage. I steal all my media and place it there. Local backups as well, of course.

Y'all do whatever works for you, but don't whine when these companies drop "your" media.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

There’s a case to be made about “buying” digital media and being able to keep the file in your local storage, that way it wouldn’t cost anything to the publisher when you play the content.

I understand the piracy implications, but most of the content is pirated anyway regardless of DRM, so the only ones affected are those who actually pay for content.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you! Lemmy seems to believe everything digital is free forever. There are real costs associated with maintaining infrastructure.

then dont fucking call it "buying"