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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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[–] jordanlund 1 points 1 year ago

"Why is it that digital media purchasing and ownership isn't the same as purchasing and owning the physical media?"

Because Sony doesn't have the right to permanently sell you the content, that can only be done by the original rights holder.

So when Sony "sold" people every season of Mythbusters, they were limited by their contract witb Discovery. Once Discovery altered that contract, it becomes illegal for Sony to keep distributing it.

For physical sales, there's the "First Sale Doctrine":

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

Rights holder produces physical product. Books, movies, games, whatever. Bulk sells them to distributors, who then have the right to sell it to retailers, who then have the right to sell to you, the general public.

And then you have the right to do with it whatever you want.

There is no digital first sale doctrine.

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