From ebooks, to videos and software, the answer is increasingly no

Do you actually own anything digital?::From ebooks, to videos and software, the answer is increasingly no

  • Xtremis77@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1043·
    11 months ago

    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.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        161·
        11 months ago

        Those are rookie numbers. Need to start getting entire TV shows in 4k and things you’ve seen previously but may want to watch again in the future quickly and easily.

        • BigDaddySlim@lemmy.worldEnglish
          15·
          11 months ago

          Personally can’t justify many series in 4k, some of the ones I have only ever got SD releases (DVD at best) but there are a few I can justify 4K for. Mainly very cinematic shows such as The Mandelorian or The Last of Us. As long as they have subtitles in the other shows and are available in their best original release resolution it’s fine for me.

          For example if the original Doctor Who series had a 4K release for it’s entirety it would probably be my entire server lol. 693 episodes in 480p is almost 300GB.

      • foggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        63·
        11 months ago

        Y’all are chumps.

        I got 6TB SSD and 16TB HDD.

        But I guess it’s less than half full so… Idk, maybe Im the chump with too much headroom.

    • 69420@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      They’re my bytes, and I’ll put them in whatever order I wish, thank you very much.

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    75·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldEnglish
    362·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug@lemmy.worldEnglish
      195·
      11 months ago

      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.

        • AlataOrange@lemmy.worldEnglish
          202·
          11 months ago

          Yes, imminent domain. You don’t own land you only lease it from the government.

        • otp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          13·
          11 months ago

          Can they stop your land?

          I think you mean seize. And I guess it depends on where you live in the world.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.worldEnglish
        313·
        11 months ago

        When it comes to the US government at least, there are 4th Amendment protections in place, so no, your property can’t be seized “for any reason or no reason at all”.

        Theft is a thing, but it’s random and you have the right to defend yourself in your own home. You also aren’t at risk for losing EVERYTHING. Not in the way you are if your digital library license gets revoked.

        • AlataOrange@lemmy.worldEnglish
          16·
          11 months ago

          If a cop can take your property with no consequences and you will be arrested or killed if you defend yourself and your property, then what the law says doesn’t matter as the defacto state of reality isn’t concerned with such petty things as laws.

        • AdmiralShat@lemmy.mlEnglish
          11·
          11 months ago

          This comment is so fucking frustratingly ignorant of the realities of living in the US. Is this a troll comment?

        • doingthestuff@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          11 months ago

          You clearly don’t know about the state of seizure laws in the US over the last years. Having cash is reason enough for them to seize it and they don’t have to suspect you of a crime. They can simply find the cash as suspicious and take it and you have to prove the legality of your cash or property at your own cost/expense to get it back.

  • User79185@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    27·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • MashedTech@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      11 months ago

      I like that on GOG you know you own it because they let you download the installer DRM free so you literally can keep a separate copy of all of your purchases. You will always have access to them regardless of what happens to GOG. Videos, music, games, everything they sell.

  • jabjoe@feddit.ukEnglish
    24·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • Sanyanov@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • jabjoe@feddit.ukEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        Drives me mad the main stream seam unaware/ignoring that it’s about anything free piracy. You hear next to nothing about the problem of DRM, digital ownership, digital freedom or even proper competition in proper markets. There is sometimes mentions of Right To Repair, but they never follow the thread. Or talk about how the internet runs on FOSS. A FOSS system like Debian is a wonder, that still, after 15y of use, floors me when I think about it. A utopian vision of humans can do.

        • Sanyanov@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          I get you

          Drives me even more insane when they actively complain about losing access to something, or not having it available offline, and do nothing about it

          Like, here’s the super simple solution, just take it!

          But they won’t sacrifice a tiny bit of their habit to break free. They’ll keep on whining about the world and not doing anything, even when they are directed to it with the most simple, grandma-style guidance.

          • jabjoe@feddit.ukEnglish
            4·
            11 months ago

            They can’t really perceive what is being done to them. They can notice something, but can’t quite put it all together.

            Voices like EFF, OpenRightsGroup, FSC, etc, need to be heard and made understandable by normal people, news and government.

  • kerrigan778@lemmy.worldEnglish
    161·
    11 months ago

    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

    • echindod@programming.devEnglish
      10·
      11 months ago

      I am curious why you think that. I download Bandcamp files and place it on a home server, and I have never had any problems. It is conceivable that they have a tracker or some bull shit connected to it, but more than a little unlikely.

      Bandcamp files play fine on non bandcamp-approved playing devices. This is a big win on my book.

  • Brownian Motion@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    11 months ago

    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”.

  • WetBeardHairs@lemmy.mlEnglish
    7·
    11 months ago

    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.