You Own Nothing: The True Cost of Digital Media

you see back in my day things were simpler you would go to the local blacksmith exchange currency and have him craft you an object of desire from there you could be on your merry way no lengthy contractual obligations no licensing and software keys things were simple yes but alas this holds true no more the reality of it is that today in the world of digital purchases streaming and software blooply dues the entire concept of ownership and having things is a far cry from years gone by now my last video was about cloud gaming and how it would eventually replace the traditional home console and the biggest response i got was in regards to the concept of ownership how streaming games through the cloud would remove the ability to really own your own media in the future now it's been a common concern amongst many people that if this digital only future becomes a reality well can you ever really feel safe in the possession of your favorite things so today i want to explore why so many people feel this way rightfully so in many cases but the story might not be as clear-cut as you initially thought now it should be stated that owning a copy of media doesn't entitle you to owning the media itself this is common sense just because you bought a vhs of the star wars back in 1932 that doesn't mean you own the rights to merchandising and to the sequels what have you this is because of copyright a work of art that is copyrighted gives the owner exclusive rights to selling copies in doing with the work whatever they want you can brutally corrupt the original vision if you want now in terms of copyright law it's a long and winding tale that offers some insight into how we got to where we are today see in the early days copyright would be applied to maps and writings and other various works in the united states early copyright protection lasted just 14 years after publication followed by an optional additional 14 years now this was well the 18th century so things were different on the front of intellectual property but if you were to apply these rules today these things would now be in the public domain and once something is in the public domain it's free to use for any purpose you can share it sell it recreate it whatever with no limits by the early era of film music recording what have you this copyright was expanded to 28 years and could be renewed to another 28 beyond that the entire purpose of copyright is to protect the owner from immediate financial loss you don't want somebody stealing what you just made but 56 years is a long time to be relying on a single work if a company is still profiting off of these works from over half a century ago you could argue that creativity is being stifled in some way but alas corporate interests will push this much much farther as we go ahead by 1976 copyright law had materialized into more of what we know of today this would now be whenever the author of the work dies plus 50 years before it can enter public domain this would ensure that the family of the author would receive compensation once they pass however corporate authorship was a different story corporate authorship is when an employee for a company produces something for said company and this is set at 70 years after publication now this might seem like it's pushing it but uh it still wasn't good enough for some so during the 1990s the walt disney company lobbied heavily to extend this to 70 years after an author's death or a laughable 95 years after publication for corporate authorship this was done because otherwise mickey mouse would have entered the public domain in the early 2000s yes they pushed the problem forward but now we're seeing well his day is coming soon and while many expect disney could try something like this once more i don't think they will recently it's been said by large interest groups that pursue something like this that it would be virtually impossible to pass such an act in the day of the modern internet not only would the average person be far more informed than say in the 90s but those who rely on public domain works now have far more vested interest so why does any of this matter i mean public domain stuff is cool but it isn't that particularly relevant to the average person right well see for anything you own that is a byproduct of a trademark copyrighted property brand or machine it isn't yours a good example would be a pumpkin say you buy a pumpkin at the pumpkin store you bring it home cut out the seeds plant more pumpkins and show them to everyone you know you can sell the pumpkin you can eat the pumpkin there's no limitations to your pumpkin fun however if you go and buy a vhs of kazam well you're free to go home and watch it on a vcr but you don't have as many options as the pumpkin legally you cannot copy it or show it to millions of people or sell duplicates on the street because in terms of ownership you own nothing more than this piece of plastic and not what's on the cassette now that's a given something we as a society have accepted over the years but see with digital purchases things start to appear slightly different duplication became much easier and as such the legality of media in a digital format was cracked down upon enter the digital millennium copyright act the rights to ownership over digital entities became dust in the wind to the common person you can't reverse engineer a product you can't duplicate software and many of the things that we associate with the world of technology today spawns during this time the precedent is that media and software is never owned by the consumer but rather licensed for use more importantly though it can be revoked from the user after purchase without compensation so by buying a copy of a video game you are really only purchasing the right to use video game on specific video game hardware to play video game but it's not all doom and gloom because see outlined within the dmca is a couple exemptions that make life a little bit more interesting yes exemptions so you can do things to things you own a novel concept smartphones are generally locked to a specific carrier when you buy them but you can unlock a smartphone after it's paid off obviously you can also jailbreak a smartphone but you can't jailbreak a computer or a game handheld or other various devices and what you do after you jailbreak it well that's on you you can modify hardware that is essential for a product to run usually the best example would be a car cars have proprietary software in them but if your car won't start because some sensor broke you can replace it however you want sure you'll void the warranty but it is still legal however you cannot modify the software of the entertainment system in the car since it's not essential and even if it was you still can't modify it yeah they really care about those entertainment systems of course the most interesting part to me and probably you is the video games one major concern for many people is what happens when an online game gets shut down what happens in 20 30 years when fortnite goes away well there is legal precedent for that you can download and upload a game to an online library once the servers are declared dead by the creator or if they are inaccessible after a six month period this however doesn't protect against any online game play you can download the game but only play it locally the specific wording also allows for obsolete games that are not just online specific and these can be archived in the same manner a good general rule is if you cannot get the game through the publisher itself by any means it becomes obsolete and is a viable candidate for an internet archive this is why fan projects can be removed from websites but still available here because it's still preserving media and since most older games have multi-platform releases many versions of those games are also obsolete obviously most titles released in the past two decades will not fit into this category and even less since 2010 but since archiving older works is a time-sensitive issue i'm glad we didn't have to wait a few decades before something as important as media preservation was legally recognized what i've been thinking about though is well what about the limited time releases what comes to mind is that super mario tetris 99 sort of game or this egregiously overpriced collection i mean these have been said to not be permanent releases so do they become obsolete the moment they're removed from store shelves the moment you can't buy them online i mean online authorization is required to buy the game in the first place so if it's no longer available doesn't this mean they're fair game for internet archives maybe however this doesn't mean you can just download it online and put it in your switch from an sd card because to make this work would require altering the switch software which again they frown upon okay so after all this you may be wondering why buy digital at all if the rules and regulations of these digital copies make it so you don't really own the product why not just buy a physical copy okay so here's the thing that disk is still a license as i've said before and being as such the content on it is still not yours go read the terms of service agreements for any game console for any electronic device and it will say that if you break the terms of service any software can be locked or removed from your account even if on a disk how do they do this well they send out a patch that breaks the game yes even without precedent the only way to get outside of all this with modern games would be through drm free services you know stuff like gog and not gog this doesn't make copying and sharing the games legal it just means that the games can't be removed from your device from the publisher it's really more of an ease of mind thing than anything else and it doesn't really change what you can do with the game in the eyes of the law so what does that leave us with if we want freedom with our media old game consoles and these discs no internet connections at all well that's a problem too because physical media has a lifespan cd-roms of the 90s are going to start succumbing to disk rod and it's only a matter of a few years before games of this era become incredibly hard to find in working physical condition arguably more concerning though is the fact that these potential kill switches allowed by the terms of service can be applied anywhere not even just games not even just media and anything that connects to the internet usually contains these sort of terms of service agreements smart home devices smart fridges it wouldn't be against the law for a company to break your toaster so it doesn't produce toast anymore even worse if you had a electronic lock they could just lock you out okay so is this the fruition of our dystopian big brother fears uh i i don't know see the odds of this happening any of this happening is so remotely slim the odds of microsoft shutting down xbox live tomorrow and breaking every game on every piece of hardware just in petty spite is about the same odds that the sun turns into a cat and explodes sure it's not as comfortable as conventionally owning something but in all of these cases these terms of service are mostly standard practice they exist so that if you get banned for cheating in fortnight you can't go and sue whoever you want because your account got deleted could this be abused by the company for malicious acts of course so cherish your time with the objects that are yours and yours alone so this video is for you razor snake for no terms of service can remove you from my possession i i love you [Music]

Channel: KnowledgeHusk

Views: 421,985

Keywords: KnowledgeHub, You Own Nothing, You Own Nothing the True Cost of Digital Media, KnowledgeHub DRM, KnowledgeHub you own nothing, xbox game pass, future of digital, ps5, playstation store, steam, digital download only, xbox live, xbox series x

Id: iSGu_P185s4

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2020