Well, I have 10 Tb of pirated digital content sitting safely at my own home, so I would say yes, yes I do own a lot of digital stuff.
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They're my bytes, and I'll put them in whatever order I wish, thank you very much.
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.
Yes, because I go out of my way to make damn sure of it.
How ? Please share so that people like me can learn. I've started watching Louis Rossman YouTube videos and that guy actually makes sense about how companies are treating their customers.
Not the OP, but I'm buying DRM free ebooks and software only, and for every album, movie or series I purchase, I'll download a pirated copy that I add to my offline storage + backup.
If a book I want is not available without DRM, I'll buy a hardcover and a pirated copy.
Pirate stuff. That's the easiest way to make sure you own it
Even if you buy it(which I do support more and more), pirate it. We're at a point where it's just far easier to use the pirated versions of a lot of digital items and you also don't have to worry about someone "taking it back" afterwards.
Can it be taken from you, at any time, for any reason or no reason at all?
If yes, then you don't own it.
I mean, that technically applies to everything. The government can seize your land, the police are in the news every few days for straight up taking money out of people's homes and vehicles and shooting dogs, robbery is still a living profession, etc
There's really not a lot that sentence doesn't apply to, if anything at all.
If I can actually download it and it's DRM-free, yes.
The only certain way to own digital products is apparently to pirate it illegally.
Gog provides DRM free installers when buying games at their store
And plenty of steam games are DRM-free too.
I really wish steam made it clear though. Should have to come with a tag stating DRM/no DRM. Shit, let us filter games by its DRM status.
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 stacked 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.
This.
Also, we all here are aware of the problem, to the point where such posts are nothing but circlejerk.
The article might come as eye-opener to some, but certainly not here. Time for solutions. And they are political.
GOG, buy music in mp3/flac format, not sure about video. I guess you can pay for subscription and just pirate stuff you like to keep real ownership.
Yep, I always check GOG first when I want to buy a game on PC.
I think I own my fingers, so them.
I’ve got a digital watch
My digital watch, a Pebble, stopped working. The company who maintained it got bought by Garmin. Garmin broke my digital watch 🙃.
Mine is a Casio I’ve had for about 30 years, I’m pretty sure it’s mine by now
Aye, I be ownin' it all, mateys!
No.
Like Doctorow said, if you cant own it you can't steal it.
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.
Possession is 9/10ths of the law, so I 90% own a whole lot of stuff I pirated while I don't own most things Ive paid money for... Great system guys
We still own all our CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays, so them as long as the players still exist.
Only if the DRM is broken. DRM can make the player stop working sooner. It's literally about making the media less playable.
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.
The only "digital" I download, is something that I can put on my personal storage. If I can download it to Nintendo Switch and then move it to USB or SD card, then I can clone the sd card and therefore I own it. (immediate usage might be different, and they may chose to delete if it is put back on the Switch. But I still own it, I just need to find an alternative method to use it).
Same goes with games/movies/whatever. If I can download it and store it on my NAS, I own it.
If you are paying for "digital" but you cannot acquire a copy of it, then it is NOT "Digital" it is streaming. You are paying for the privilege of using some services' electronic library, but you do not own anything on it.
I've been watching this argument lately, and its amusing. The whole Sony thing about Discovery (or whatever it was) has nothing to do with ownership. You were paying to access a library that Sony curated. Sony dropped the contract with the other party, and chose to tidy their library. You just have access to it, because they let you. You do not have any ownership whatsoever, you signed a T&C that says Sony curates the library and they can do what they like.
People seem to have a hard time using words like "content", "streaming" and "digital" vs "electronic copy", "local digital copy" and "DLC"; and then confuse "ownership and "content access".