Owning Digital Content

 Photo Credit: Getty Images, Mirek Toski

        Do you really own digital content? It doesn’t feel like you do, at least not in the same way as tradition content. For instance, this is my blog, but it doesn’t feel like it really belongs to me. If for instance this blog was a tradition journal, it might be pasted on to my offspring when I die, but being digital, that seems more than a little unlikely. They aren’t exactly going to find the password and username in a box in the attic, are they? No, if anything, this blog will sit forgotten on a web host somewhere until it’s deleted to create more room. That points to why I think we don’t feel like we own digital things; we think of them as disposable. For example, Bruce Willis had to sue Apple so that he could leave his iTunes library to his daughter (Child, 2012). That was seen as odd, but would we balk at the idea of a father trying to stop his record collection from vanishing into the ether? We just seem to believe that digital things are unreal and ephemeral, and that as long as it exists somewhere, everything is ok. Next time, we’ll look at why that might be.

References

Child, B. (2012, September 3). Bruce WIllis to fight Apple over right to leave iTunes library in will. Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/sep/03/bruce-willis-apple-itunes-library