- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Do you actually own anything digital?::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
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.
If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing.
We get it, every comment on every Lemmy post. We get it.
I liked the explicit way version 2 of the GPL explained it:
Version 3 says the same, but less clearly (note that “affirms” is entirely different from “grants”):