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

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

76 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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[+] [email protected] -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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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?

[–] [email protected] 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".