Do you actually own anything digital?::From ebooks, to videos and software, the answer is increasingly no
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I really wish there was some form of individual copyright that could be sold for specific media. I buy a song on itunes - I own a limited license to listen to that song so long as iTunes may serve it. If I was smart enough to download it to my device, then I might hold onto it a few moments longer in spite of Apple losing the copyright and denying me the ability to listen again on devices without the download. Sucks for me right?
What if I could buy a limited copyright? One that is strictly tied to my individual person and that specific media I had purchased. That copyright is nontransferable, but it is platform agnostic. I could then use that legal copyright to view or listen to that media on a streaming or distribution platform of my choosing. I could listen to a song on Spotify, or Pandora, or Apple, or Google, and I only had to buy it once. Those platforms would not need to negotiate copyright access for media, only demonstrate the ability to serve that media and limit access to those with the copyright.
I would HAPPILY buy all of my media for a … 3rd time? 5th time? God I don’t even know how many times I have purchased some of my music. Vinyl, CD, iTunes, streaming services a plenty… a second CD or two from mixes. Yeesh. I’m fucking tired of it. I want to be able to feel as if I had some kind of longer lasting ability to access the media of which I have paid for.
You wouldn’t pay to not own a car
I own a digital watch
I own lots of content, because I created it myself.
My fingers
It all depends on the licence. Even if you buy something on physical media you may not technically own it. If something has a FOSS licence MIT, BSD, GPL, etc Then yes you do own your copy and no one can change that.
I may only have a license to view the contents of a dvd, but at least I’ll always be able to view it as long as it’s in my possession and I have a dvd player.
Content you can only access remotely via someone else systems (or requiring remote authorization via there systems) can be taken away at anytime regardless of the terms of your license, even supposedly “indefinite/permanent/lifetime” licences.
Both of these items use the same term ‘purchase’. This term used to refer to the first situation only, but now it covers both.
Why do I need to own them?
Let’s say you paid $150 for microsoft office. One day microsoft says, we are only doing office 365 subscriptions and when you launch word, it will not let you use it. It makes you pay for a cloud subscription instead.
If you’re on Lemmy, you almost certainly understand the problem and know how to acturally own digital stuff.
The problem is all the normies who can’t even see the problem. We need everyone to be protected by law and it all to be citizen oriented. As the moment, it’s all stack in favour of exploitive multinational companies. Maybe ever was it so, but we need to fight that.
We treat it as a tech problem, something to work round, but it’s a political problem and we need to solve it politically.
If you own a physical object and it has an internet connection than you don’t actually own it.
No, and once I became aware of the fact realized that I was kinda screwed when it came to video games.
Every single video game I have purchased is on Steam, and considering its DRM and licence business model, I had multiple conversations with my friends who also had the same worry and wondered what would happen if Steam shut down one day. Valve did state that they’ll remove the DRM if the platform shut down, but there’s no way of knowing the future as million things can happen and for all we know, they might change their minds or not be in a position to remove the DRM once the time came.
Not “if”, but “when”.
But don’t worry, before that they will start dropping games to save on storage costs, so odds are you will no longer have access to anything you “own” way before they go under.
I think I own my fingers, so them.
Those who down voted you are either idiots, or hate clever wordplay
or they just hate OP for still having their fingers
I don’t own my digital media but nobody is taking it away from me 😎👉
If I can actually download it and it’s DRM-free, yes.
Hell yeah I do.
If it’s on my Jellyfin server, I own it as much it’s possible to own anything.
If they wanted me to pay for it, maybe they shouldn’t have dicked me around, watering down my subscribed services while simultaneously jacking up the price.
