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Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
In this day and age ownership of digital media is often an illusion. When you buy a book or movie there are severe restrictions on what you can do with these files. In some cases, purchased content can simply disappear overnight. These limitations keep copyright holders in control, but they breed pirates at the same time.
[...] Millions of people have now replaced their physical media collections for digital ones, often stored in the cloud. While that can be rather convenient, it comes with restrictions that are unheard of offline.
[...R]esearchers examined how the absence of the right to resell and lend affects people's choice to buy. They found that, among those who are familiar with BitTorrent, roughly a third would prefer The Pirate Bay over Apple or Amazon if they are faced with these limitations.
These rights restrictions apparently breed pirates.
"Based on our survey data, consumers are more likely to opt out of lawful markets for copyrighted works and download illegally if there is no lawful way to obtain the rights to lend, resell, and use those copies on their device of choice," the researchers concluded.
The paper in question is two years old by now, but still very relevant today. While we don't expect that anything will change soon, people should at least be aware that you don't always own what you buy.
Source: https://torrentfreak.com/you-dont-really-own-that-movie-you-bought-but-pirates-180915/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by garfiejas on Wednesday September 19 2018, @12:09PM
Using terms like own and buy made it easy for people to subscribe to DRM management systems; The EU/US forced Apple to change "Free" to "Get" on the App store if you remember, so words really do matter https://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/19/apple-replaces-free-button-with-get/ [macrumors.com]
And its not just media, with IoT devices, do you really "own" them if they're permanently connected to a "service provider" and won't work or significantly degrade when not connected?
Its important to realise that You don't control these devices, you merely "inform" the real owners of the device of your intentions (a "wish", with all that implies :-), they may or may not decide to implement them, but they're the ones in control not you.
I'm not saying that all DRM schemes are inherently bad (though where will our culture be in 20 or 30 years if we don't "own" anything?) or all IoT/Mobile platforms are insidious electronics in our homes, work places and cars designed to gather behavioural data sold to the highest bidder.
The language just needs legally enforcing, its not "free" if it requires in-app subscriptions; I can't "buy" or "own" it if I can't sell it, its a subscription; I can't "control" e.g my home - if it requires some 3rd party connection to function, I inform them of my "wishes".