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

submitted 11 months ago by heygooberman@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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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[–] godzillabacter@lemmy.world 26 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I think the point is more so why are digital purchased DRM'ed and prohibited from local storage in so many ways. The historical argument is "well you're not buying it, you're buying a license to use it for as long as we wish to provide it", but why does it necessarily need to be that way. And more generally, from the standpoint of artistic/media preservation, as BluRay releases continue to decrease and console video game releases become continually more digital-only, these non-archivable or locked-without-server-license-validation media results in IP that at some point in time, this media could be permanently lost.

Personally, I feel this is unacceptable. The media we consume forms a huge portion of our culture, and is just as much an example of artistic expression as painting. While I thoroughly believe artists/companies should be able to charge for these properties, I do not believe that when it is no longer profitable for them to support the system, that these pieces of media should simply be discarded with no method for future recovery and preservation.

[–] Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Simple. When you license your show to a streaming platform, it is more lucrative to put in an arbitrary end date on the off-chance the platform decides to renew the license. Consumers have no say in this so they just have to take what is given.

Want to stream it forever? Be prepared to pay an exorbitant amount of money because the showrunnere REALLY don't want that.

[+] helenslunch@feddit.nl -9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

why are digital purchased DRM'ed

Because piracy

E: if one of the downvoters would like to provide a better answer, I'm ready to learn from you.

[–] godzillabacter@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but most DRM has been circumvented in one way or another. DRM primarily continues to keep law-abiding citizens from easily acquiring a copy of media they rightfully own as opposed to preventing piracy.

Though if institutions insist on utilizing DRM for prevention of privacy, I do think that DRM should be built to fail after a meaningful timeframe, at worst the expiry of the copyright for the material. Unfortunately many pieces of media, particularly video games, are abandoned and unsupported long before their copywriter expires. Abandonware in general is not well handled by modern copywrite law.

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 points 11 months ago

Yes, but most DRM has been circumvented in one way or another.

Yes I mentioned earlier that it didn't make sense.

[–] gjoel@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why I don't get is why they fight so hard to promote piracy though. It's not enough that it's free, it also has to be easier?

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 points 11 months ago

Well. They don't. Quite the opposite. I can't tell you what they're thinking but my best guess is so they can point to measures taken at their board meetings and say "this is what we're doing to fight piracy".