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Who inherits your iTunes library when you die?

181 points by awwstn2 14y ago

iwwr 14y ago
Webapp idea: cross-reference an iTunes library with mp3s available via torrent (or ed2k/kad) of similar quality.
- nuttendorfer 14y ago
  This is already available in the form of music trackers and not only similar quality but often better.
- rgsteele 14y ago
  To what end? iTunes music has been DRM free since April 2009: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7813527.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7813527.stm
JoeAltmaier 14y ago
Where does you library go when you change devices? Aren't tunes licensed to a particular device? Which would make it different from Kindle for instance, where your license is in the cloud, and content accessible from any authenticated device.
- jnovek 14y ago
  The rules are different on each provider of digital media, but as I recall iTunes in particular allows you to authorize up to five devices to playback media, and you can deauthorize devices you no longer own.
  - axxl 14y ago
    iTunes music is now DRM free, but in regards to other data (movies, shows, books, apps, etc) it gets a bit more complex. The 5 "device" limit is actually only relevant to computers. 5 computers can have their iTunes applications linked to an account. Once you get to iOS, any device that is synced with those computers can play that data. You also can log into any number of accounts on an iOS device to redownload/purchase applications etc, however those items will be deleted if you want to sync again with your computer and it is not registered with that Apple ID. And obviously you can deauthorize a computer at any point as well (and are allowed a batch reset once a year iirc).
- whichdan 14y ago
  As far as I know, both iTunes and Amazon files are DRM-free, which would inherently imply that they aren't tied to a machine. iTunes: m4a, has your name and email address encoded Amazon: mp3, has Amazon's unique song id in the ID3 comments And in terms of the cloud: iTunes: $25/yr for iTunes Match, which is completely optional Amazon: Free storage for songs you purchase from Amazon + 5gb extra The important issue is to keep your music backed up, since both Amazon and iTunes offer limited options if your harddrive fails. Anyway, to address your point, Dropbox or a manual file transfer would be your best bet for multi-device support.
  - vondur 14y ago
    It's true for music, which is now DRM free, but not so for E-books and digital video. Those are all DRM'd. (for both Amazon, Apple, and I'm going to guess for the Google Play store as well.
    - MrMember 14y ago
      It's what's keeping me from joining the ebook revolution. I'd love to be able to impulse buy a book and have it 'delivered' instantly, but instead I'm stuck buying the physical version and waiting for it to be delivered.
      - dripton 14y ago
        I was in the same boat until last fall, when I finally caved and bought a Kindle. I hate DRM too, but at least Kindle's DRM is easy to crack, so you have a way out of Amazon's walled cesspool if you need it. (I haven't needed it so far, since the Kindle is my favorite mobile reading device and Kindle Cloud Reader works in Linux. But if Kindle's DRM were stronger, I never would have bought one.)
    - tedunangst 14y ago
      Not all kindle books have drm. I bought one recently that explicitly specified it had none. Just as with iTunes, people should stop repeating what was once true, and focus more on what is true.
rickmb 14y ago
The problem once again is copyright. If copyright hadn't been in the way, there would no DRM, and plenty of neutral services to solve this problem. Right now, if you can't even freely share stuff between the living in your own household, you don't really "own" it, and you can forget about a way to pass it on to your heirs. You don't own stuff you merely rent, and you can forget about passing it on.
- dfxm12 14y ago
  You don't own stuff you merely rent This is the crux of the issue. I don't know if the general public doesn't understand this (because this "indefinite lease" is a relatively new business model), or if they think it is so laughable that when they paid $13 for a "book" on their Kindle, they only really bought a license to lease the book under Amazon's terms, they figured the law will work itself out somehow & "common sense" will prevail... I'm not holding my breath...
  - ajross 14y ago
    Or they know and don't care. Buying a trashy novel isn't normally considered a form of estate planning. I know I've purchased books with the expectation of reading them once and then forgetting about them. I've also purchased a few or online readers that in principle I'd like to reread but in practice seemed more fun to have on a device. I'm certainly aware of the licensing issues (though to be honest I wasn't considering the interests of my heirs!) but I did it anyway. Many purchases are disposable, and it seems to me that this is the realm where digital media is aimed right now. If you think about it, this is always the way we've bought some media, like newspapers and magazines.
    - mcantelon 14y ago
      People have traditionally tended to collect music, however, unlike newspapers and magazines. Coming in contact with someone's interesting record collection used to be a memorable event. Piracy has made music less scarce, though, and the mystique of music has lessened because of it.
dfxm12 14y ago
The problem isn't with laws dealing with a person's estate, it is with the TOS/EULA of the devices & stores that play & sell digital media. According to Amazon, simply giving someone my Kindle does give them the "right" to read the books contained in it. This is just too hard to enforce for the Amazons and Apples of the world to do anything about it (right now). Are people only realizing now that the game has changed? This was obvious from day one: stores selling digital goods have it in their best interest to keep you buying the same thing over and over again, whether you buy the Playstation game you already own on PSN, or you have your buddy "buy" an album on iTunes because you can't let him borrow the CD. Theoretically, this loss of convenience/utility should lower the price for the consumer. It is really up to the market to decide if they want to save a few bucks, or retain the right of first sale (or gift, in this case).
whichdan 14y ago
Another point to consider: Let's say a CD weighs half an ounce, or, roughly 30 CDs per pound. 10,000 CDs would weigh over 330 lbs (feel free to correct me). Storing and transferring 330 lbs of CDs -and- keeping them in good condition, -and- justifying that if you've already ripped them to MP3 seems like a pain in the ass, especially over 20, 30, 40, or 50 years. And on the same note, ripping 10,000 CDs or even a portion of that would take weeks. And that's assuming CDs are still relevant in 20 years. So if you're like my and consider CDs to be unreasonable, what other options do we have? If I have kids someday, I would certainly want to be able to pass down my music collection. And, for the last point: What happens to our licenses if/when Amazon or Apple cease to exist? (Side note: I'm comparing 10k CDs to 10k Books, because 10k Songs is vastly smaller than 10k Books.)
- robfig 14y ago
  Buy CDs and rip them.
  - whichdan 14y ago
    Right, but you still have to keep the CD as proof that you own it.
    - sneak 14y ago
      No you don't.
      - whichdan 14y ago
        So, lets say I bought 100 CDs, ripped them, destroyed the CDs, and then somehow the RIAA says that I don't legally own those MP3s. What happens?
        adambyrtek 14y ago
        They still have to prove in court that you acquired them illegally. Presumption of innocence still holds, at least in theory.
brudgers 14y ago
What is intellectually interesting about this is contemplating the ways in which these issues may interface with the politics surrounding inheritance in the United States. I suspect to see some strange bedfellows on both sides of these issues over the long term.
Pent 14y ago
An extension of this is, will we see more wills with login credentials to different services? Is that even legal to pass down to someone after you die? For example you include your lastpass/1password account in your will.
- tantalor 14y ago
  It's common for services (e.g., NetFlix, iTunes) to explicitly forbid giving your passwords to anybody else. I suppose they would enforce this by cancelling your account (which they can do at any time) when they learn that you're dead.
msrpotus 14y ago
Is Apple (or Amazon or Google) really interested in enforcing this? While the rules might say that kids can't inherit ebooks or songs, I have trouble believing that they'd actually try to enforce it. It does raise the broader issue of households, though. When I have a family, shouldn't I be able to give them access to ebooks I've read and songs I've enjoyed? That's trivially easy with the physical versions (if sometimes annoying that someone else is reading a book you want to read) but how will companies handle the digital equivalent of sharing within a family?
- tjoff 14y ago
  Amazon gives you a way to do this, lend an ebook to someone for x days. Problem is that the publisher set the terms for lending, meaning they can disable it altogether and they can set other limitations such as time limits and that you can only lend them out once etc. Which is kind of sickening. http://www.cio.com/article/696062/How_to_Share_Amazon_Kindle_Ebooks_ http://www.cio.com/article/696062/How_to_Share_Amazon_Kindle... But I can understand what they are afraid of, in a digital world it would be trivial to set up a lending service letting users automatically borrow books from each other. But really, I should be able to lend out to my family, friends and colleagues for as long and often I want (that I can't read it myself while it is borrowed and that I can only lend it out to one person at a time are very reasonable limitations that mimics physical books).
Grovara123 14y ago
Fascinating post - thanks for sharing.
francov88 14y ago
Great article, but i'm not really surprised by the outcome. I mean if kim dot com is being sued why would you ever expect to be able to save your digital content for someone else after death?
unreal37 14y ago
Is this surprising to anyone who has an iTunes account? > “I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family > would be OK with losing a collection of 10,000 books and > songs,” says Evan Carroll, co-author of “Your Digital > Afterlife.” And I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family will be fighting Apple to transfer Britney Spears' last CD from grandpa's account to his favorite granddaughter's account. Or that cool Angry Birds iPhone app he paid 99 cents for back 20 years ago.
- frossie 14y ago
  And I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family will be fighting Apple to transfer Britney Spears' last CD from grandpa's account I realise young folk think they are immortal, but people don't just die from old age. And the problem is, digital media companies like Apple and Amazon don't implement a concept of a "household" account. I am sure I don't live in the only household where the kids watch stuff from an iTunes library populated from the account of one parent. Granted if a parent died the kids' first thought would not be "Drat, no Backyardigans" but it is definitely an issue beyond bequeathing media that nobody else is interested in. An iTunes library may very well be an asset worth hundreds of dollars to survivors. Even if you know each others' passwords, technically it is still illegal to keep using the dead person's account.
  - unreal37 14y ago
    The example you give is a good point to consider. If the wrong parent dies, all of the family's digital books, music, movies, tv shows, season passes (year-long tv subscriptions) get potentially locked up. It's one of the hidden costs of "renting" our entertainment digitally instead of owning it physically. I think this needs to be solved - transferable iTunes accounts or something.
slovette 14y ago
While I do keep an archived copy of my entire 200GB library on the home server, does this even matter anymore? Spotify anyone? Subscription services will eventually win over large locally owned media. It's so nice to have access to any song I want for $10 /month, without having to worry if my iPhone has enough storage to hold it all.
cletus 14y ago
The problem here is that the content industry wants to have their cake and eat it too (quelle surprise). Take ebooks as a much simpler example. The distribution costs of a single ebook are essentially zero. Even if you, as a publisher, pay Apple/Amazon 30% you're better off than retail and retail typically has a higher markup, means printing books, storing them in warehouses, shipping them across the country/world, etc. On top of this ebooks are basically nontransferable whereas paper books can of course been sold secondhand. The latter is such a "problem" that the textbook industry, as just one example, will keep changing editions each year or two just to kill the secondhand market. It should come as no surprise that ebooks are nontransferable either. Given all these restrictions and lower costs of production it seems logical that ebooks should be cheaper than their dead tree equivalents. But oh no, they're typically the same price or even more expensive. This is nothing but greed. What's more, publishers are shooting themselves in the foot (long term) here because they should be encouraging a system whereby you can buy a given textbook, it can't be sold secondhand and the original owner keeps getting updates (people don't typically rebuy later editions of the same textbook I would guess). Music isn't really that different. CDs, which are transferable, have the same costs of printing, storage, distribution and retail markup, even against the 30% (is this confirmed for music?) margin Apple/Amazon take yet I don't think you'll be saving any money by buying whole MP3 albums vs CDs (more often than not). If electronic media were cheaper like it should be I think consumers would have an easier time accepting the nontransferability aspect. People, on the whole, have an innate sense of fairness (IMHO). As far as iTunes accounts and the like go, on a practical level you can simply take over the account. Apple has a facility to change the Apple ID. I can't see any barriers to this. EDIT: From [1]: Traditional publishing has a traditional formula for calculating the retail list price, the price printed on the book. That list price is typically about eight times the cost of manufacturing. In clothing retail terms, that translates into a markup of about 88% between publisher and reader. There are several reasons for the big percentage. Not only does the actual bookseller require a markup, but often there are two “middlemen” between the publisher and the bookstore: a distributor and a wholesaler who must each get a piece of the action. And of course the publisher wants to make a profit and better not sell merely for the cost of manufacturing. which basically confirms the 12% figure. But I was referring to the retail markup and costs of distribution (distributor/wholesaler). [1]: http://bookmakingblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/prices-discounts-markups.html http://bookmakingblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/prices-discounts-...
TheGateKeeper 14y ago
I remove DRM from everything I purchase. Who inherits my iTunes library (or kindle library etc etc)? My estate does.
esonderegger 14y ago
Since I'm most of the way done with the work of being the executor for my mother's estate (she died about a year ago), hopefully I can provide some perspective here. As a practical matter, a laptop and any software purchased for it gets put as a single line item on an estate appraisal for personal effects. Our appraiser certainly didn't want to boot up the laptop and examine its contents for valuable files. The only times I've turned on that laptop in the past year have been to look for clues about financial documents, look for pictures to use at her funeral, and to make sure I had a backup of her phd thesis. Personally, I'm thankful that digital assets are non-transferrable because in my case, no one would have wanted them, and it allows me to feel no guilt about not putting them on an estate tax return. Also, digital media are not the only non-transferrable assets that can potentially belong to an estate. Season tickets to sporting events and vehicle registrations come to mind, but I'm sure there are others. I guess the question comes down to: if Apple allowed you to buy transferable licenses to music in the iTunes store at $1.50/song and non-transferable licenses at $1.00/song, which would you buy? I suspect the overwhelming majority of Americans would choose the $1.00 non-transferable license. Also, I suspect estate planning would almost never enter into that decision making process. Thankfully, at least with iTunes music, this is not an issue of DRM. If there had been any music on my mom's laptop that I wanted, it would have been easy to transfer it.
- wmf 14y ago
  if Apple allowed you to buy transferable licenses to music in the iTunes store at $1.50/song and non-transferable licenses at $1.00/song, which would you buy? Maybe smart people would buy the transferable for $1.50 then later sell it "used" for 75 cents, which is a win for both the seller and buyer.
- myko 14y ago
  > Thankfully, at least with iTunes music, this is not an issue of DRM. If there had been any music on my mom's laptop that I wanted, it would have been easy to transfer it. With iTunes music sure. What about TV shows and movies? Books?
  - gnu8 14y ago
fjorder 14y ago
Unless you are currently very old or very ill I seriously doubt that even you yourself will be able to access your iTunes library by the time you're on your deathbed. The funny thing is that you probably won't care either. As successful as iTunes and Apple currently are, media distribution is still undergoing massive disruption. It's likely that something completely new and utterly amazing compared to any current online media store will win out in the end. Distribution services that provide a sub-par experience on the majority of hardware out there are doomed to fail even sooner. i.e. iTunes does not provide a good user experience under anything but OSX, and even there it's love/hate. Amazon and Google Play are serious contenders despite the artificial iOS obstacles Apple is heaping in their paths. One might argue that iTunes will live on even if other stores win out, but legacy support only goes so far. Once iTunes stops making Apple money they'll wait a respectful period of time and then quietly shut everything down. I know many will disagree with me on iTunes' fate, but all I have to do is to live long enough and I'm virtually guaranteed to have the last laugh!
angry-hacker 14y ago
Owners of digital products want the same kind of protection like products you can touch have but they don't want to give anything back. Such as right to loan, lend or resell their products... it's wrong on so many levels. (I know Amazon somehow let's you lend books for limited time but I'm talking about industry in general)
scotttobejoking 14y ago
Classic first world problem, right here... Oh no - I have so much music that a physical storage model doesn't scale - in fact, I have so. much. music. that I can't afford to own it in physical media! I can only afford to license it for my lifetime! Whatever shall I do? This isn't to say that transferable digital assets are unimportant, but just to point out that part of the reason people in previous generations did not suffer our terrible woes is that only very few of them tried to accumulate obscenely large collections. (I have 27 GB of music accumulated - that's 16 days of nonstop music. When I cast my eye over history, I am in the obscenely wealthy 0.001% (pick a number) who could command over two weeks of nonstop music on a whim. It's nothing less than obscene.) If you keep a moderate library, there's nothing wrong with physical media.
- roc 14y ago
  Library size has nothing to do with it. People choose digital for reasons other than "too many little plastic discs to keep track of". Digital content enables a certain class of packrat, to be sure. But they're tangentially relevant, at best.
  - scotttobejoking 14y ago
    I wouldn't say that library size is only tangentially relevant. After, all, if we all had small libraries, we wouldn't be worried about them as a valuable part of our estate, would we? You're right, digital media bring all kinds of convenience and portability that make them valuable forms of media that should be transferable. (More important is that they should be transferable across formats/devices in time - I don't think my kids will be able to play my mp3s when I die :-) But digital media uniquely encourage large library size - they are uniquely prone to accumulation. How many times have you seen the following argument made, "If you made it easy to buy a digital copy legitimately, I wouldn't pirate?" Well, with successful stores (such as iTunes) the purchasing process has been made extremely easy. What happens when you have extreme ease of purchase coupled with negligible storage cost? That's a recipe for inadvertent hoarding if I ever saw one! Digital media enable us to lose all sense of scale of how much we have accumulated(because we have no physical objects to haul about. I don't think it's just a certain class of packrat that suffers, I think we all suffer from this loss of perspective. It makes the question of transferability more acute to us, because we're investing more (money, time, attention) in gathering and consuming media than we would otherwise. So I stand by my original post - this is a first world problem :-)
robomartin 14y ago
This is why I don't buy any digital books other than programming books (that will be irrelevant in decades) and books that, in general, will not survive the test of time. In other words, none of the library will be of value in a few decades. Anything else I still buy physical: books I care about, music, etc. As an example, if I was after a design-patterns book, I'd buy a physical copy. Algorithms book? Physical. PHP programming book: digital. The latest "how to launch your startup book"?: digital. I own CD's for all of my music. As an electrical engineer I have had the experience of collecting hundreds of physical data books only to throw them all away years later. That world has changed completely with the availability of freely downloadable PDF data sheets and data books. The same is the case with most mechanical components catalogs and product information books. Open and free websites and/or PDF files have replaced the world of hard-copy manuals, books and catalogs. And so the question might very well be: What are other book genres going to look like in ten, twenty, thirty or fifty years? It could very well be that book authors discover that they can earn a lot more money if their book is published digitally and made available openly while being supported by advertising or donations. While most would reject the idea of a 300 page PHP book with an add on every header or every page, the idea that this book would be free to the reader might change their viewpoint. Catalog or data-book providers have an incentive for providing these book or documents for free: They are trying to sell you what's inside them. That transition was a no-brainer. Novels, fiction, business, political, hobby and other books might not have such strong tie-ins with revenue generating opportunities. This means that they have to make some money per unit sold (or unit read). Maybe all books will become websites with advertising and many opportunities to monetize them. And, at the same time, the reader will have the option to pay a nominal amount to turn off all advertising. The idea of transferring ownership of digital assets to survivors might eventually translate into simply providing a list of the books, songs, etc. that the survivors can freely explore as a sample of what the deceased like to read or listen to. In the end, I think only a limited set of physical items hold sentimental value. As far as real monetary value, well, I think that books and records hardly count as investments save for very, very rare stuff.
lambada 14y ago
I'd love to know what happened to the iTunes library of Steve Jobs when he died. He undoubtably will have had many purchases of music, books, movies etc. He was adamant that the physical medium was dead. I would assume that his library is now unused? Or perhaps he had a single account his whole family used - which, from my understanding, wouldn't be compliant with the licensing agreement.
- hyperbovine 14y ago
  I would be surprised if he had time to read, watch movies or listen to music. It would not surprise me at all to learn that he essentially used iTunes only for QA.
001sky 14y ago
This is another reason there was supposed to be an expiratoin date on copyright. It was never intended to last 120 years and multiple generations, was it?
csense 14y ago
I'm not a lawyer, but here are the questions I'd ask, which likely have different answers for different online services, different states, and different countries: 1. Are the rights under the EULA / ToS transferable due to terms explicitly in the EULA governing transferability? 2. If there are no explicit terms, what is the "default setting" for transferability? 3. Are the digital items being sold considered goods, services, or some combination? (I'd imagine it's much easier to terminate a contract for ongoing services than to negate heirs' rights to goods the deceased has purchased.) 4. Is there a catch-all "escape clause" in the EULA which says "We're allowed to terminate your right to access these songs or movies at any time for any reason, or no reason"? 5. What about the first sale doctrine? Doesn't it say that you have some right to transfer items regardless of what the EULA / ToS says? From a practical standpoint, you can probably transfer the account by just giving the password to the receiving heir. Making new purchases on the old account may no longer be possible if they check to make sure the name on your credit card matches the name the account is registered to, but I'd imagine many providers don't do this check and only care about what your CC info says if they start getting chargebacks. If you don't know the password and don't have access to the deceased's email to use the usual password reset mechanism, you may be facing an uphill battle. It would also be a micromanagement nightmare to have several accounts on the same service with different content. It might also trigger provider's alarms if you access several different accounts from the same IP address (although if the number is reasonably small -- less than ten, let us say -- hopefully they'll assume it's legit, i.e. multiple accounts belonging to different people living in the same house with a single NAT'ed Internet connection.) The simple fact of the matter is that most Web businesses' domain modeling assumes that customers live forever. What happens when they don't is basically anarchy. We're still at the point where most of the people who die never had a large online presence, but in 30-50 years that will no longer be true. An ideal situation for content providers would be for all content to be destroyed when someone dies, because then the next generation would have to buy it if they wanted it instead of inheriting it. The problem is that this leads to cognitive dissonance, because heritability of possessions is a central feature of many cultures, including ours. An ideal situation for consumers is complete transferability. The first problem is that this encourages piracy -- if there was a free and legal resale market where any song could be sold for (let us say) $0.50, while songs can be bought on iTunes for $1.00, iTunes would make exactly $1.00 on each song it released, because exactly one person would buy it, then resell it (keeping a local copy), and its buyer would resell it, etc. The second problem is that it's difficult for a company halfway around the country to differentiate between the legitimate heir of someone who's actually died and an account thief.
csense 14y ago
As other posters have pointed out, the problem with many DRM schemes is that there's no guarantee the company will stay in business, or will continue to host the DRM servers. In fact, if the DRM'ed stuff you've bought is a one-time purchase (as opposed to a subscription of some kind), then it's in the provider's economic best interest to drop support as soon as possible. There's not going to be any more money coming in from the user once he's made his purchase, but there's going to be money going out to pay the DRM servers' costs because they consume physical space, power, bandwidth and technical expertise on an ongoing basis (as well as hardware that wears out and needs to be replaced). I personally support as little DRM-crippled content as possible. I only purchase e-books in open formats, use GamersGate instead of Steam (avoiding DRM-crippled products), and buy a fair number of physical books and DVD's. I've actually walked away from imminent purchases, both online and in stores, when I discovered that the product I was about to purchase had aggressive DRM.
ricardobeat 14y ago
iTunes songs are currently DRM-free. You can just copy the files to wherever you want, or re-sync the whole library to another iTunes match account for $25. That's one battle won, now we need to get rid of DRM for video and ebooks...
- kunil 14y ago
  >or re-sync the whole library to another iTunes match account for $25. why $25?
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/ http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/
edanm 14y ago
This simple issue shows the big, huge, gaping problem with the future of digital media. In the past, the labls/publishers/whoever wanted to create content, be able to sell it, and have a monopoly on it. The way to do this was to sell physical instances of the creation, like books, DVDs, and CDs. This worked wonderfully, because it's simple for people to understand giving money over to receive a physical good, which you own, and which you can e.g. later sell, or transfer to your kids. In short, the old way was: "buying" == "getting a physical copy of the media". The problem is, since digital media arose, there has been a slow shift in the meaning of buying content. The producers are acting like "buying" no longer means "getting a physical copy of the media". They're acting like it means "having access to consume the media". E.g., buying a song from Queen means I get to listen to the song. It has nothing to do with having the physical file. In other words, the new model is: "buying" == "getting the (legal) ability to consume the media". This is true in many ways, both good and bad for the consumer. The good is that, e.g., when I buy an audiobook on Audible, the physical file is irrelevant. I can delete it, and download it again. It's my ability to get the book that they're selling. I can have many physical copies of the book, on my computer/iPhone/laptop/whatever, and they're fine with it. The bad is that a lot of the rules for physical media are no longer relevant - I can't sell it, I can't lend it, I can't let people inherit. Actually, this doesn't bother me much. Because I don't think of owning an Audiobook in the same way I think of owning a physical book. My thoughts are "I pay $10 to hear this book, once". Of course, this says a lot about me, because I don't have this same thought about ebooks - I do equate them to physical books. My prediction is that the world will be going in a direction in which physical ownership of digital media is irrelevant. This has to happen, because of the way digital media works. People will be buying the "ability" to listen to songs, not buying actual songs. Programs like Amazon's "lend books" will be seem very antiquated and irrelevant. Arguably, the way these will work is by buying subscriptions to services, i.e. $10 for all the music you can listen to ala Spotify. I think this is the only way the world can go which will make sense to consumers, although I fear for the publishers.
rsaarelm 14y ago
The simplest long-term consumer approach to digital media is to just hold a list of the titles of the stuff you like, and assume you can download any item from it at any time if you want access to it. You don't need to worry about keeping a private multi-gigabyte storage intact and accessible over decades nor access control and rights management arrangements with a single commercial entity that might not exist in ten years. Unfortunately for commercial content providers, this approach is basically equivalent to "pirate everything, all the time".
johnrgrace 14y ago
I've been pondering exactly this for my current business plan, what's been clear to me is that this is more of a business/legal issue as opposed to technology. Oh to sunder the walled gardens.

181 points by awwstn2 14y ago

iwwr 14y ago

Webapp idea: cross-reference an iTunes library with mp3s available via torrent (or ed2k/kad) of similar quality.

nuttendorfer 14y ago
This is already available in the form of music trackers and not only similar quality but often better.
rgsteele 14y ago
To what end? iTunes music has been DRM free since April 2009: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7813527.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7813527.stm

JoeAltmaier 14y ago

Where does you library go when you change devices? Aren't tunes licensed to a particular device? Which would make it different from Kindle for instance, where your license is in the cloud, and content accessible from any authenticated device.

jnovek 14y ago
The rules are different on each provider of digital media, but as I recall iTunes in particular allows you to authorize up to five devices to playback media, and you can deauthorize devices you no longer own.
- axxl 14y ago
  iTunes music is now DRM free, but in regards to other data (movies, shows, books, apps, etc) it gets a bit more complex. The 5 "device" limit is actually only relevant to computers. 5 computers can have their iTunes applications linked to an account. Once you get to iOS, any device that is synced with those computers can play that data. You also can log into any number of accounts on an iOS device to redownload/purchase applications etc, however those items will be deleted if you want to sync again with your computer and it is not registered with that Apple ID. And obviously you can deauthorize a computer at any point as well (and are allowed a batch reset once a year iirc).
whichdan 14y ago
As far as I know, both iTunes and Amazon files are DRM-free, which would inherently imply that they aren't tied to a machine. iTunes: m4a, has your name and email address encoded Amazon: mp3, has Amazon's unique song id in the ID3 comments And in terms of the cloud: iTunes: $25/yr for iTunes Match, which is completely optional Amazon: Free storage for songs you purchase from Amazon + 5gb extra The important issue is to keep your music backed up, since both Amazon and iTunes offer limited options if your harddrive fails. Anyway, to address your point, Dropbox or a manual file transfer would be your best bet for multi-device support.
- vondur 14y ago
  It's true for music, which is now DRM free, but not so for E-books and digital video. Those are all DRM'd. (for both Amazon, Apple, and I'm going to guess for the Google Play store as well.
  - MrMember 14y ago
    It's what's keeping me from joining the ebook revolution. I'd love to be able to impulse buy a book and have it 'delivered' instantly, but instead I'm stuck buying the physical version and waiting for it to be delivered.
    - dripton 14y ago
      I was in the same boat until last fall, when I finally caved and bought a Kindle. I hate DRM too, but at least Kindle's DRM is easy to crack, so you have a way out of Amazon's walled cesspool if you need it. (I haven't needed it so far, since the Kindle is my favorite mobile reading device and Kindle Cloud Reader works in Linux. But if Kindle's DRM were stronger, I never would have bought one.)
  - tedunangst 14y ago
    Not all kindle books have drm. I bought one recently that explicitly specified it had none. Just as with iTunes, people should stop repeating what was once true, and focus more on what is true.

rickmb 14y ago

The problem once again is copyright. If copyright hadn't been in the way, there would no DRM, and plenty of neutral services to solve this problem. Right now, if you can't even freely share stuff between the living in your own household, you don't really "own" it, and you can forget about a way to pass it on to your heirs. You don't own stuff you merely rent, and you can forget about passing it on.

dfxm12 14y ago
You don't own stuff you merely rent This is the crux of the issue. I don't know if the general public doesn't understand this (because this "indefinite lease" is a relatively new business model), or if they think it is so laughable that when they paid $13 for a "book" on their Kindle, they only really bought a license to lease the book under Amazon's terms, they figured the law will work itself out somehow & "common sense" will prevail... I'm not holding my breath...
- ajross 14y ago
  Or they know and don't care. Buying a trashy novel isn't normally considered a form of estate planning. I know I've purchased books with the expectation of reading them once and then forgetting about them. I've also purchased a few or online readers that in principle I'd like to reread but in practice seemed more fun to have on a device. I'm certainly aware of the licensing issues (though to be honest I wasn't considering the interests of my heirs!) but I did it anyway. Many purchases are disposable, and it seems to me that this is the realm where digital media is aimed right now. If you think about it, this is always the way we've bought some media, like newspapers and magazines.
  - mcantelon 14y ago
    People have traditionally tended to collect music, however, unlike newspapers and magazines. Coming in contact with someone's interesting record collection used to be a memorable event. Piracy has made music less scarce, though, and the mystique of music has lessened because of it.

dfxm12 14y ago

The problem isn't with laws dealing with a person's estate, it is with the TOS/EULA of the devices & stores that play & sell digital media. According to Amazon, simply giving someone my Kindle does give them the "right" to read the books contained in it. This is just too hard to enforce for the Amazons and Apples of the world to do anything about it (right now). Are people only realizing now that the game has changed? This was obvious from day one: stores selling digital goods have it in their best interest to keep you buying the same thing over and over again, whether you buy the Playstation game you already own on PSN, or you have your buddy "buy" an album on iTunes because you can't let him borrow the CD. Theoretically, this loss of convenience/utility should lower the price for the consumer. It is really up to the market to decide if they want to save a few bucks, or retain the right of first sale (or gift, in this case).

whichdan 14y ago

Another point to consider: Let's say a CD weighs half an ounce, or, roughly 30 CDs per pound. 10,000 CDs would weigh over 330 lbs (feel free to correct me). Storing and transferring 330 lbs of CDs -and- keeping them in good condition, -and- justifying that if you've already ripped them to MP3 seems like a pain in the ass, especially over 20, 30, 40, or 50 years. And on the same note, ripping 10,000 CDs or even a portion of that would take weeks. And that's assuming CDs are still relevant in 20 years. So if you're like my and consider CDs to be unreasonable, what other options do we have? If I have kids someday, I would certainly want to be able to pass down my music collection. And, for the last point: What happens to our licenses if/when Amazon or Apple cease to exist? (Side note: I'm comparing 10k CDs to 10k Books, because 10k Songs is vastly smaller than 10k Books.)

robfig 14y ago
Buy CDs and rip them.
- whichdan 14y ago
  Right, but you still have to keep the CD as proof that you own it.
  - sneak 14y ago
    No you don't.
    - whichdan 14y ago
      So, lets say I bought 100 CDs, ripped them, destroyed the CDs, and then somehow the RIAA says that I don't legally own those MP3s. What happens?
      - adambyrtek 14y ago
        They still have to prove in court that you acquired them illegally. Presumption of innocence still holds, at least in theory.

brudgers 14y ago

What is intellectually interesting about this is contemplating the ways in which these issues may interface with the politics surrounding inheritance in the United States. I suspect to see some strange bedfellows on both sides of these issues over the long term.

Pent 14y ago

An extension of this is, will we see more wills with login credentials to different services? Is that even legal to pass down to someone after you die? For example you include your lastpass/1password account in your will.

tantalor 14y ago
It's common for services (e.g., NetFlix, iTunes) to explicitly forbid giving your passwords to anybody else. I suppose they would enforce this by cancelling your account (which they can do at any time) when they learn that you're dead.

msrpotus 14y ago

Is Apple (or Amazon or Google) really interested in enforcing this? While the rules might say that kids can't inherit ebooks or songs, I have trouble believing that they'd actually try to enforce it. It does raise the broader issue of households, though. When I have a family, shouldn't I be able to give them access to ebooks I've read and songs I've enjoyed? That's trivially easy with the physical versions (if sometimes annoying that someone else is reading a book you want to read) but how will companies handle the digital equivalent of sharing within a family?

tjoff 14y ago
Amazon gives you a way to do this, lend an ebook to someone for x days. Problem is that the publisher set the terms for lending, meaning they can disable it altogether and they can set other limitations such as time limits and that you can only lend them out once etc. Which is kind of sickening. http://www.cio.com/article/696062/How_to_Share_Amazon_Kindle_Ebooks_ http://www.cio.com/article/696062/How_to_Share_Amazon_Kindle... But I can understand what they are afraid of, in a digital world it would be trivial to set up a lending service letting users automatically borrow books from each other. But really, I should be able to lend out to my family, friends and colleagues for as long and often I want (that I can't read it myself while it is borrowed and that I can only lend it out to one person at a time are very reasonable limitations that mimics physical books).

Grovara123 14y ago

Fascinating post - thanks for sharing.

francov88 14y ago

Great article, but i'm not really surprised by the outcome. I mean if kim dot com is being sued why would you ever expect to be able to save your digital content for someone else after death?

unreal37 14y ago

Is this surprising to anyone who has an iTunes account? > “I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family > would be OK with losing a collection of 10,000 books and > songs,” says Evan Carroll, co-author of “Your Digital > Afterlife.” And I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family will be fighting Apple to transfer Britney Spears' last CD from grandpa's account to his favorite granddaughter's account. Or that cool Angry Birds iPhone app he paid 99 cents for back 20 years ago.

frossie 14y ago
And I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family will be fighting Apple to transfer Britney Spears' last CD from grandpa's account I realise young folk think they are immortal, but people don't just die from old age. And the problem is, digital media companies like Apple and Amazon don't implement a concept of a "household" account. I am sure I don't live in the only household where the kids watch stuff from an iTunes library populated from the account of one parent. Granted if a parent died the kids' first thought would not be "Drat, no Backyardigans" but it is definitely an issue beyond bequeathing media that nobody else is interested in. An iTunes library may very well be an asset worth hundreds of dollars to survivors. Even if you know each others' passwords, technically it is still illegal to keep using the dead person's account.
- unreal37 14y ago
  The example you give is a good point to consider. If the wrong parent dies, all of the family's digital books, music, movies, tv shows, season passes (year-long tv subscriptions) get potentially locked up. It's one of the hidden costs of "renting" our entertainment digitally instead of owning it physically. I think this needs to be solved - transferable iTunes accounts or something.

slovette 14y ago

While I do keep an archived copy of my entire 200GB library on the home server, does this even matter anymore? Spotify anyone? Subscription services will eventually win over large locally owned media. It's so nice to have access to any song I want for $10 /month, without having to worry if my iPhone has enough storage to hold it all.

cletus 14y ago

The problem here is that the content industry wants to have their cake and eat it too (quelle surprise). Take ebooks as a much simpler example. The distribution costs of a single ebook are essentially zero. Even if you, as a publisher, pay Apple/Amazon 30% you're better off than retail and retail typically has a higher markup, means printing books, storing them in warehouses, shipping them across the country/world, etc. On top of this ebooks are basically nontransferable whereas paper books can of course been sold secondhand. The latter is such a "problem" that the textbook industry, as just one example, will keep changing editions each year or two just to kill the secondhand market. It should come as no surprise that ebooks are nontransferable either. Given all these restrictions and lower costs of production it seems logical that ebooks should be cheaper than their dead tree equivalents. But oh no, they're typically the same price or even more expensive. This is nothing but greed. What's more, publishers are shooting themselves in the foot (long term) here because they should be encouraging a system whereby you can buy a given textbook, it can't be sold secondhand and the original owner keeps getting updates (people don't typically rebuy later editions of the same textbook I would guess). Music isn't really that different. CDs, which are transferable, have the same costs of printing, storage, distribution and retail markup, even against the 30% (is this confirmed for music?) margin Apple/Amazon take yet I don't think you'll be saving any money by buying whole MP3 albums vs CDs (more often than not). If electronic media were cheaper like it should be I think consumers would have an easier time accepting the nontransferability aspect. People, on the whole, have an innate sense of fairness (IMHO). As far as iTunes accounts and the like go, on a practical level you can simply take over the account. Apple has a facility to change the Apple ID. I can't see any barriers to this. EDIT: From [1]: Traditional publishing has a traditional formula for calculating the retail list price, the price printed on the book. That list price is typically about eight times the cost of manufacturing. In clothing retail terms, that translates into a markup of about 88% between publisher and reader. There are several reasons for the big percentage. Not only does the actual bookseller require a markup, but often there are two “middlemen” between the publisher and the bookstore: a distributor and a wholesaler who must each get a piece of the action. And of course the publisher wants to make a profit and better not sell merely for the cost of manufacturing. which basically confirms the 12% figure. But I was referring to the retail markup and costs of distribution (distributor/wholesaler). [1]: http://bookmakingblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/prices-discounts-markups.html http://bookmakingblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/prices-discounts-...

TheGateKeeper 14y ago

I remove DRM from everything I purchase. Who inherits my iTunes library (or kindle library etc etc)? My estate does.

esonderegger 14y ago

Since I'm most of the way done with the work of being the executor for my mother's estate (she died about a year ago), hopefully I can provide some perspective here. As a practical matter, a laptop and any software purchased for it gets put as a single line item on an estate appraisal for personal effects. Our appraiser certainly didn't want to boot up the laptop and examine its contents for valuable files. The only times I've turned on that laptop in the past year have been to look for clues about financial documents, look for pictures to use at her funeral, and to make sure I had a backup of her phd thesis. Personally, I'm thankful that digital assets are non-transferrable because in my case, no one would have wanted them, and it allows me to feel no guilt about not putting them on an estate tax return. Also, digital media are not the only non-transferrable assets that can potentially belong to an estate. Season tickets to sporting events and vehicle registrations come to mind, but I'm sure there are others. I guess the question comes down to: if Apple allowed you to buy transferable licenses to music in the iTunes store at $1.50/song and non-transferable licenses at $1.00/song, which would you buy? I suspect the overwhelming majority of Americans would choose the $1.00 non-transferable license. Also, I suspect estate planning would almost never enter into that decision making process. Thankfully, at least with iTunes music, this is not an issue of DRM. If there had been any music on my mom's laptop that I wanted, it would have been easy to transfer it.

wmf 14y ago
if Apple allowed you to buy transferable licenses to music in the iTunes store at $1.50/song and non-transferable licenses at $1.00/song, which would you buy? Maybe smart people would buy the transferable for $1.50 then later sell it "used" for 75 cents, which is a win for both the seller and buyer.
myko 14y ago
> Thankfully, at least with iTunes music, this is not an issue of DRM. If there had been any music on my mom's laptop that I wanted, it would have been easy to transfer it. With iTunes music sure. What about TV shows and movies? Books?
- gnu8 14y ago

fjorder 14y ago

Unless you are currently very old or very ill I seriously doubt that even you yourself will be able to access your iTunes library by the time you're on your deathbed. The funny thing is that you probably won't care either. As successful as iTunes and Apple currently are, media distribution is still undergoing massive disruption. It's likely that something completely new and utterly amazing compared to any current online media store will win out in the end. Distribution services that provide a sub-par experience on the majority of hardware out there are doomed to fail even sooner. i.e. iTunes does not provide a good user experience under anything but OSX, and even there it's love/hate. Amazon and Google Play are serious contenders despite the artificial iOS obstacles Apple is heaping in their paths. One might argue that iTunes will live on even if other stores win out, but legacy support only goes so far. Once iTunes stops making Apple money they'll wait a respectful period of time and then quietly shut everything down. I know many will disagree with me on iTunes' fate, but all I have to do is to live long enough and I'm virtually guaranteed to have the last laugh!

angry-hacker 14y ago

Owners of digital products want the same kind of protection like products you can touch have but they don't want to give anything back. Such as right to loan, lend or resell their products... it's wrong on so many levels. (I know Amazon somehow let's you lend books for limited time but I'm talking about industry in general)

scotttobejoking 14y ago

Classic first world problem, right here... Oh no - I have so much music that a physical storage model doesn't scale - in fact, I have so. much. music. that I can't afford to own it in physical media! I can only afford to license it for my lifetime! Whatever shall I do? This isn't to say that transferable digital assets are unimportant, but just to point out that part of the reason people in previous generations did not suffer our terrible woes is that only very few of them tried to accumulate obscenely large collections. (I have 27 GB of music accumulated - that's 16 days of nonstop music. When I cast my eye over history, I am in the obscenely wealthy 0.001% (pick a number) who could command over two weeks of nonstop music on a whim. It's nothing less than obscene.) If you keep a moderate library, there's nothing wrong with physical media.

roc 14y ago
Library size has nothing to do with it. People choose digital for reasons other than "too many little plastic discs to keep track of". Digital content enables a certain class of packrat, to be sure. But they're tangentially relevant, at best.
- scotttobejoking 14y ago
  I wouldn't say that library size is only tangentially relevant. After, all, if we all had small libraries, we wouldn't be worried about them as a valuable part of our estate, would we? You're right, digital media bring all kinds of convenience and portability that make them valuable forms of media that should be transferable. (More important is that they should be transferable across formats/devices in time - I don't think my kids will be able to play my mp3s when I die :-) But digital media uniquely encourage large library size - they are uniquely prone to accumulation. How many times have you seen the following argument made, "If you made it easy to buy a digital copy legitimately, I wouldn't pirate?" Well, with successful stores (such as iTunes) the purchasing process has been made extremely easy. What happens when you have extreme ease of purchase coupled with negligible storage cost? That's a recipe for inadvertent hoarding if I ever saw one! Digital media enable us to lose all sense of scale of how much we have accumulated(because we have no physical objects to haul about. I don't think it's just a certain class of packrat that suffers, I think we all suffer from this loss of perspective. It makes the question of transferability more acute to us, because we're investing more (money, time, attention) in gathering and consuming media than we would otherwise. So I stand by my original post - this is a first world problem :-)

robomartin 14y ago

This is why I don't buy any digital books other than programming books (that will be irrelevant in decades) and books that, in general, will not survive the test of time. In other words, none of the library will be of value in a few decades. Anything else I still buy physical: books I care about, music, etc. As an example, if I was after a design-patterns book, I'd buy a physical copy. Algorithms book? Physical. PHP programming book: digital. The latest "how to launch your startup book"?: digital. I own CD's for all of my music. As an electrical engineer I have had the experience of collecting hundreds of physical data books only to throw them all away years later. That world has changed completely with the availability of freely downloadable PDF data sheets and data books. The same is the case with most mechanical components catalogs and product information books. Open and free websites and/or PDF files have replaced the world of hard-copy manuals, books and catalogs. And so the question might very well be: What are other book genres going to look like in ten, twenty, thirty or fifty years? It could very well be that book authors discover that they can earn a lot more money if their book is published digitally and made available openly while being supported by advertising or donations. While most would reject the idea of a 300 page PHP book with an add on every header or every page, the idea that this book would be free to the reader might change their viewpoint. Catalog or data-book providers have an incentive for providing these book or documents for free: They are trying to sell you what's inside them. That transition was a no-brainer. Novels, fiction, business, political, hobby and other books might not have such strong tie-ins with revenue generating opportunities. This means that they have to make some money per unit sold (or unit read). Maybe all books will become websites with advertising and many opportunities to monetize them. And, at the same time, the reader will have the option to pay a nominal amount to turn off all advertising. The idea of transferring ownership of digital assets to survivors might eventually translate into simply providing a list of the books, songs, etc. that the survivors can freely explore as a sample of what the deceased like to read or listen to. In the end, I think only a limited set of physical items hold sentimental value. As far as real monetary value, well, I think that books and records hardly count as investments save for very, very rare stuff.

lambada 14y ago

I'd love to know what happened to the iTunes library of Steve Jobs when he died. He undoubtably will have had many purchases of music, books, movies etc. He was adamant that the physical medium was dead. I would assume that his library is now unused? Or perhaps he had a single account his whole family used - which, from my understanding, wouldn't be compliant with the licensing agreement.

hyperbovine 14y ago
I would be surprised if he had time to read, watch movies or listen to music. It would not surprise me at all to learn that he essentially used iTunes only for QA.

001sky 14y ago

This is another reason there was supposed to be an expiratoin date on copyright. It was never intended to last 120 years and multiple generations, was it?

csense 14y ago

I'm not a lawyer, but here are the questions I'd ask, which likely have different answers for different online services, different states, and different countries: 1. Are the rights under the EULA / ToS transferable due to terms explicitly in the EULA governing transferability? 2. If there are no explicit terms, what is the "default setting" for transferability? 3. Are the digital items being sold considered goods, services, or some combination? (I'd imagine it's much easier to terminate a contract for ongoing services than to negate heirs' rights to goods the deceased has purchased.) 4. Is there a catch-all "escape clause" in the EULA which says "We're allowed to terminate your right to access these songs or movies at any time for any reason, or no reason"? 5. What about the first sale doctrine? Doesn't it say that you have some right to transfer items regardless of what the EULA / ToS says? From a practical standpoint, you can probably transfer the account by just giving the password to the receiving heir. Making new purchases on the old account may no longer be possible if they check to make sure the name on your credit card matches the name the account is registered to, but I'd imagine many providers don't do this check and only care about what your CC info says if they start getting chargebacks. If you don't know the password and don't have access to the deceased's email to use the usual password reset mechanism, you may be facing an uphill battle. It would also be a micromanagement nightmare to have several accounts on the same service with different content. It might also trigger provider's alarms if you access several different accounts from the same IP address (although if the number is reasonably small -- less than ten, let us say -- hopefully they'll assume it's legit, i.e. multiple accounts belonging to different people living in the same house with a single NAT'ed Internet connection.) The simple fact of the matter is that most Web businesses' domain modeling assumes that customers live forever. What happens when they don't is basically anarchy. We're still at the point where most of the people who die never had a large online presence, but in 30-50 years that will no longer be true. An ideal situation for content providers would be for all content to be destroyed when someone dies, because then the next generation would have to buy it if they wanted it instead of inheriting it. The problem is that this leads to cognitive dissonance, because heritability of possessions is a central feature of many cultures, including ours. An ideal situation for consumers is complete transferability. The first problem is that this encourages piracy -- if there was a free and legal resale market where any song could be sold for (let us say) $0.50, while songs can be bought on iTunes for $1.00, iTunes would make exactly $1.00 on each song it released, because exactly one person would buy it, then resell it (keeping a local copy), and its buyer would resell it, etc. The second problem is that it's difficult for a company halfway around the country to differentiate between the legitimate heir of someone who's actually died and an account thief.

csense 14y ago

As other posters have pointed out, the problem with many DRM schemes is that there's no guarantee the company will stay in business, or will continue to host the DRM servers. In fact, if the DRM'ed stuff you've bought is a one-time purchase (as opposed to a subscription of some kind), then it's in the provider's economic best interest to drop support as soon as possible. There's not going to be any more money coming in from the user once he's made his purchase, but there's going to be money going out to pay the DRM servers' costs because they consume physical space, power, bandwidth and technical expertise on an ongoing basis (as well as hardware that wears out and needs to be replaced). I personally support as little DRM-crippled content as possible. I only purchase e-books in open formats, use GamersGate instead of Steam (avoiding DRM-crippled products), and buy a fair number of physical books and DVD's. I've actually walked away from imminent purchases, both online and in stores, when I discovered that the product I was about to purchase had aggressive DRM.

ricardobeat 14y ago

iTunes songs are currently DRM-free. You can just copy the files to wherever you want, or re-sync the whole library to another iTunes match account for $25. That's one battle won, now we need to get rid of DRM for video and ebooks...

kunil 14y ago
>or re-sync the whole library to another iTunes match account for $25. why $25?
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/ http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

edanm 14y ago

This simple issue shows the big, huge, gaping problem with the future of digital media. In the past, the labls/publishers/whoever wanted to create content, be able to sell it, and have a monopoly on it. The way to do this was to sell physical instances of the creation, like books, DVDs, and CDs. This worked wonderfully, because it's simple for people to understand giving money over to receive a physical good, which you own, and which you can e.g. later sell, or transfer to your kids. In short, the old way was: "buying" == "getting a physical copy of the media". The problem is, since digital media arose, there has been a slow shift in the meaning of buying content. The producers are acting like "buying" no longer means "getting a physical copy of the media". They're acting like it means "having access to consume the media". E.g., buying a song from Queen means I get to listen to the song. It has nothing to do with having the physical file. In other words, the new model is: "buying" == "getting the (legal) ability to consume the media". This is true in many ways, both good and bad for the consumer. The good is that, e.g., when I buy an audiobook on Audible, the physical file is irrelevant. I can delete it, and download it again. It's my ability to get the book that they're selling. I can have many physical copies of the book, on my computer/iPhone/laptop/whatever, and they're fine with it. The bad is that a lot of the rules for physical media are no longer relevant - I can't sell it, I can't lend it, I can't let people inherit. Actually, this doesn't bother me much. Because I don't think of owning an Audiobook in the same way I think of owning a physical book. My thoughts are "I pay $10 to hear this book, once". Of course, this says a lot about me, because I don't have this same thought about ebooks - I do equate them to physical books. My prediction is that the world will be going in a direction in which physical ownership of digital media is irrelevant. This has to happen, because of the way digital media works. People will be buying the "ability" to listen to songs, not buying actual songs. Programs like Amazon's "lend books" will be seem very antiquated and irrelevant. Arguably, the way these will work is by buying subscriptions to services, i.e. $10 for all the music you can listen to ala Spotify. I think this is the only way the world can go which will make sense to consumers, although I fear for the publishers.

rsaarelm 14y ago

The simplest long-term consumer approach to digital media is to just hold a list of the titles of the stuff you like, and assume you can download any item from it at any time if you want access to it. You don't need to worry about keeping a private multi-gigabyte storage intact and accessible over decades nor access control and rights management arrangements with a single commercial entity that might not exist in ten years. Unfortunately for commercial content providers, this approach is basically equivalent to "pirate everything, all the time".

johnrgrace 14y ago

I've been pondering exactly this for my current business plan, what's been clear to me is that this is more of a business/legal issue as opposed to technology. Oh to sunder the walled gardens.