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Will Your Books and Music Die With You?
theodp writes "Many of us will accumulate vast libraries of digital books and music over the course of our lifetimes, reports the WSJ, but when we die, our collections of words and music may expire with us. '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 author Evan Carroll of the problems created for one's heirs with digital content, which doesn't convey the same ownership rights as print books and CDs. So what's the solution? Amazon and Apple were mum when contacted, but with the growth of digital assets, Dazza Greenwood of MIT's Media Lab said it's time to reform and update IP law so content can be transferred to another's account or divided between several people."
Will anyone want your collection of Justin Bieber and Rihanna when you die?
However you may also decide to delete the whole lot, unseen, just in case it contains the sort of "material" you'd prefer not to remember your departed loved one by.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It's all a "license" now. Ownership, while not entirely a thing of the past, has changed form... or rather, has reverted in form. There is ownership and there is property. The problem is that the property is you and the ownership is someone or something else.
Is this a case where corporate personhood is a good thing?
Does this mean what you should do is fire up a trust and have the trust purchase all the media? Then the trust lives on (and is ownership transfers or was likely already shared with your intended recipient(s)).
Or is that going to get you in trouble with your trust "sharing" its media with you?
...and just one of the many reasons I have hundreds of CDs lying around. I've bought some music and videos from iTunes. I prefer buying CDs because they're physical and tangible. Google or Apple can't decide to "close the service" and take all of my CDs away.
For that matter, there are still recordings only to be found on vinyl. There's either too weak of a modern interest in certain albums or "not enough profit" for record companies in re-releasing them. Either way, I don't see physical media going away anytime soon.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
They are just licenses these days. They are not tangible so it's hard to apply property rights to them.
It's a great business model though - you have to buy it again rather than passing it on through death or disinterest.
This sort of shit disgusts me, so I still buy real books and CDs. If new content is not being produced in this way, there is still plenty to read and listen to.
I have the unusual habit of paying writers directly after downloading their books on warez sites. So as far as I'm concerned, my books are paid for and readable by anyone who happens to inherit them after I die.
Not that I give a toss about what happens after I die, mind you...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
They need to make DRM illegal. Sorry, but once you release something, copyright has always been based on honor. By creating mechanisms to lock down content, it is taking it out of the peoples' hands.
By pointing out that things are "lost" and then correcting the truth to reveal that nothing was "lost" because the notion of ownership was an illusion in the first place proves what has been stolen from under our noses.
Now you have a "license" for particular works on your ipod, but not your car stereo or anywhere else. If you want the same content there, you have to pay again and again. And if for some reason you violate the license terms, you might just lose it all. The point is to note who is in control. Those who are in control are the owners. Since you don't have control over your iPhone or other devices which are locked down, you don't own it either.
These are all truths that people have a hard time accepting.
The easy solution is to not leave the content you've paid for tied to some account maintained by big corporations.
Duh
Problem solved in a common sense way
Amazon and apple sell un drm music so that's not an issue
In the small odds my kindle is still running when I die, I'd be happy to leave it to a grandkid.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
You don't own anything it is just in your possesion.
This is yet another reason I don't have any online music, e-books, or other media, and still prefer the old-fashioned physical types.
Plus, it's fun to go out and get records for a dollar or two at the local used music store and rip them myself. $1 for a record of 10-12 songs. That's excellent economics and the quality doesn't need to be perfect if it's being compressed anyways. Used books? You can buy almost any fictional novel these days for under $3, used. Most are closer to a dollar.
Ultimately, yep, we're all going to lose this stuff unless we keep backups. People lost photos and data in house fires, it's going to become questions in later generations of what's actually worthwhile keeping. Photos of you with your trousers around your ankles out drunk on some random sat night might be hilarious to you on facebook now, but they aren't going to mean anything to your grandchildren. I think ultimately, a lot of this stuff needs to be forgotten....
We're going to lose our music and our books, this is why we have copyright libraries around the world, to keep this stuff for our future generations. As long as Disney don't get their way (They'd better not) this stuff will all hit public domain and our grandchildren will get access to all this anyway.
Honestly, I don't know how much of a loss this really is and whether it's worth talking about in the grand scheme of things..
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
My most cherished possessions are books that have come down through three generations from a great-grandfather.
I wouldn't count on any e-publisher catering to your desire to pass your "possessions" on; indeed, they may finally come out and state it plainly that you're just renting the content. If prodded on the issue that you'd value the ability to pass them on, they'll probably say something to the effect that that this would create real problems for them - since people would use the mechanism to pass books from person to person weeks apart, letting 10 kids in a classroom all read one copy of The Hunger Games - whereas the "legitimate" usage of passing them on at death is not valued by most buyers, as its just too far in the future.
Ironic, that viewpoint, since they also claim that authors need 100 years of copyright AFTER their own death, as they value that so terribly much, without it, they'll never write the book.
The issue is that we're all different. As an example, in the old days, when I went on holiday on the continent I used to take six or seven paperback books with me. There was no point in carrying them back to England, so I left them in hotel rooms or coffee shops when I finished with them. A few years ago, I decided to have a clear out of books that I had read and would be unlikely to read again. I probably took five hundred or so to charity shops, but I still have more than a thousand books lying around in my apartment. I wouldn't call myself "lazy" but I possibly read differently to the way you read.
Having a Kindle has revolutionised my reading, but of course using it a lot means that after I die I'll be leaving some of my property to Amazon rather than to my family. This is an interesting problem - other people will have the same issue relating to music. It's not just a question of being "lazy".
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
You possess a copy, you don't own it. If this distinction seems minor to you, try using a piece of music you think you "own" in a game that you write or in a movie you make and you'll find out what the true status is.
The problem already starts long before death, as how to you even share those books and other digital goods with the rest of your family? Do you give your Kindle device to your kids? Do they get their own but reuse your account? What if they get their own account? What about games on Steam, etc.? A lot of digital services right now don't really have a clean way of sharing digital goods with the rest of the family and many form of sharing might be considered a TOS violation. What about when it comes to a divorce who gets the library? All those issues start long before death comes into play, they essentially start right when you want to interact with another human being.
Second we really don't know where the DRM movement is going. The only thing impeding the transfer of ownership is the DRM. If there is no DRM, then pretty much no one owns it. We simply pay a sum to reward the stakeholders, and hopefully the creator.
Third, the widespread ownership of such content is relatively recent phenomena. Conservatives outlets like the WSJ want us to believe that this is the way it has always been, and will always be, but that is not true. For books, it has been at most a couple hundred years that cheap books have been available so the average person could have a big collection, and more likely a hundred is a better estimate. We probably had have large collection of vinyl for 50 years of so. Movies has only been priced to sell in the consumer market since the 80's.
So what does this mean? A changing definition of ownership. If I have an LP or a VHS or a book, I only own a copy, nothing else. If I the copy is destroyed or lost, there is not legal right for a replacement of the content. If one had money for a cassete recorder, or a copy machine or a second VCR, one could make a copy, but there are generational losses, and copying on large scales to make a backup of everything was very time consuming. WIth a CD and a computer one was able to own the content for the first time, but that has only been around for less than a generation.This kind of forms a background on why music is not copy protected as much as books and movies.
One may complain that one has to pay $10 a month for movies, and if one does not pay, one loses the collection, but what has one lost? What does ownership really mean in terms of real history, not that made up by the WSJ. It is true that if one has a collection of books those books could be converted to a small amount of cash. The real value of books and music, at least in my upbringing, was the culture and education they provided. This far surpassed any cash value. And think of this. I don't have the vast collection of my father's books and music because he let go of books over the years, as they are very bulky to move, and the records were destroyed in a flood. OTOH if the books and music were on Amazon, and I had his password, I would.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
You don't own the things you buy, you're just licensing them. Since the licenses aren't transferable, that's the end of that story. It sucks, but at the same time, these services have a right to dictate the terms that you're purchasing under. By using the service and buying from them, you agree to those terms, so you don't have much of a right to complain about them.
There are two valid solutions to this:
1) Only buy physical media. Yes, it can be kind of a pain in the ass sometimes, but it's the only way to guarantee that you absolutely and irrevocably own what you're buying.
2) Only support digital businesses that don't use copy protection. This may mean going without the latest top 40 music download or the hottest new ebook, but in this age of self-publishing, there's a vast array of unrestricted content available, much of it wonderful. The people producing it are far more likely to appreciate the purchase, and you won't just be lining the pockets of companies fighting to take away your rights.
Some people may say that piracy is a valid option, but even discounting any moral arguments around it, all you're doing is giving companies reason to further lock down content. If nobody is buying their stuff AND nobody is pirating it, they'll have no scapegoat, and will be forced to make a real change. Meanwhile, you'll be helping the actual authors / musicians / etc. make a living off of their works and avoid the publishing middlemen.
Transferring digital assets in probate isn't IP's only problem. The primary international treaty governing copyright, the Berne Convention, has been revised since the 1970s, so there's virtually nothing about digital issues in it.
The key problem is that, here and abroad, crony capitalism reigns supreme. Legislative bodies only listen when deep pocketed lobbyists speak. Copyright extension, bad as it was, was bought by Disney et al. Being responsible, financially and otherwise, simply isn't on the typical legislator's to-do list. Getting reelected and getting rich are. In the U.S., for instance, there are laws against you or I engaging in trivial levels are insider trading. There are no laws that keep members of Congress from investing in companies that they're benefiting with legislation.
And Amazon, Apple, Google and the rest, have no interest in seeing this change. With the laws unsettled, they're in a position exploit that vacuum. Transferring digital assets at death is on the same legal level as a used digital music and ebook market. Neither Amazon nor Apple want that. And Google, copier of much that is copyrighted but out of print, wants to settle problems with orphan authors (i.e. the Google Book Settlement) in ways that benefit it alone. And almost daily we see how these corporate giants are using patent and trademark law to stifle competition. In a similar fashion, Amazon is using clueless (or worse) lawyers at the DOJ to attack Apple and the publishing industry, so it can resume it's drive to dominate print and ebook distribution here
And the tech press isn't doing any of us a favor. It's dominated by faddish geeks obsessed with the next new gadget, geeks who know nothing about law and little about how life in general works. As a result, they're easy to manipulate, the nonsense they wrote during the debate about the Google Book Settlement being one example.
Our core problem, though, lies with voters. A disturbingly high percentage of the U.S. now see the federal government as a 'sugar daddy' who sends them money. They'll vote for anyone, no matter how crooked, who claims their government money gravy train is threatened. The rich get bailouts when their finances turn sour and subsidies under Obama's pseudo-stimulus scheme. The poor get promised also sorts of government benefits unrelated to actually working for a living. The people who get shafted are those who work honest and hard, particularly those who create new businesses and jobs.
And our economy is in a mess because no one who could be creating good jobs wants to battle an Obama administration that is making clear it'll tax any money they make, regulate them to the strangulation point, attach them (i.e. Gibson Guitar) if they don't contribute politically to Democrats Chicago style, and claim to be virtuous doing so.
And worst of all, there are many, particularly in our news media, that believe those claims of virtue are true.
I'm building a pyramid to store all my worldly possessions with my mummified body after I die.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
to my son, who shares the same first and last name (different middle though).
Hopefully he'll do the same and this will continue in the family for as long as there is e-mail.
... would Ron Paul support making sure we keep these rights through government laws and enforcement?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This is the easy one. Just do what the rich do to get around inheritance tax: form a non-profit foundation, which buys all the music on yer ipod, the foundation is immortal so there's no issues about inheritance. You can start a non-profit org really cheaply, but the yearly paperwork involved varies state to state (NY state requires yearly reports to be filed).
Damn right. I don't expect to live long enough to be a burden on my children, but I can get even by leaving them an attic and basement full of random shit for them to sort through.
If you really want to get even then visit when them when they are grown. Print full pages of solid primary colors on their printers. Stomp through the house. Dirty EVERY glass and leave just a 1/4 of an ounce in it and leave it in the refrigerator. Place new bars of soap in a glass of water. Use a half of a bottle of shampoo at a pop. Unwind ALL the toilet paper. What am I forgetting?
Most digital content is not linked to you or your life at all and exists under an account. You can pass on the username and password like any other object.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
My wife and I have promised to come to their houses for dinner and say "I don't like it" before we taste it - and fight at the table.
doesn't care about the majority of my books and music. What they DO care about, they have their own copies of. Many things legally (because we obviously consider it worth the money and want the makers to make more good stuff), some things not.
Instead of having to clean out a house full of junk and trying to sell books and music that pretty much no one wants - so it ends up being shuffled between thrift stores or simply thrown away - when I die, my kids will just have to erase kindles and mp3 players. If there is something of mine they want but can't get from my stuff for some reason, it's sure to be pirateable.
Already have. For definitions of accumulate=pirate.
As to what will happen to it after I die? Doesn't matter. Anybody that I know who wants a copy can have one while I'm alive. It takes three days just to copy the music (granting that's going from average SATA drive RAID to a USB2 external).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
you're a pinko communist good-for-nothing.
As I violently violate the law and strip out the DRM from every purchase. it's mine, I dont care about their TOS, I'm going to get rid of their restrictions and make sure my purchases cant be stolen from me.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But what about your porn????
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
The concept of 'you don't own anything any longer' or copyright law is not a true law; it's a corporation law. A law 'of the land' for example - Murder - is one that is enforced by peace officers, and the judicial system. It is also very binding too. As in, your ass is in jail for a long time. Corporation law against individuals, on the other hand is nearly unenforceable, and cannot easily be found out. For now, RIAA/MPAA cannot come into your systems and snoop to see if you have the latest copy of Beaver's song, and find out if you bought it legally or not. Probably not even economically feasible. Yes Corporations perform corporate extortion (IE: RIAA saying "pay us $5,000 for our precious copyright infringement or else we'll sue you into economic bondage) but that is becoming increasingly rare and also it's if they can find out. But onto the topic. Copyright law may say "you cannot do anything but kiss our rumps." But in practically, they cannot do a thing to stop individuals from actually making MP3s of every song they own. (and If I pay money for something, I own it.) Or converting every book, DVD, etc to an open, non-DRM format. The WSJ may be a good paper, but they're missing the big picture. Individuals cannot be stopped, and the idea of dying with all this DRM blocked digital works is frankly a dead issue. Only ones who do not want to take a bit of time to exercise their rights and are sheep are at risk.
-- Kevin C. Redden kcredden@ gmail 392992
Yeah, the article's precepts are really off.
We shouldn't need to collect books and music. Only reason I do is as a hedge against copyright extremism, and because the Internet isn't always handy, and storage is cheap. And to serve as a list of stuff I like, but that's easily handled by keeping just lists, not content. This "problem" is not an issue.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I own the damned copy. Ownership of a copy is recognized in copyright law, and a separate thing from ownership of the copyright or a license to any of the rights which make up copyright. A lot of publishers attempt to claim you don't even own the copy, some convincingly (e.g. a rental DVD), some rather less so (e.g. a product with an EULA printed within the packaging of a product you bought from a middleman.)
When I die, things will belong to those who inherit it. They will get the things I own. This is including my car including the gasoline in that car and also any debts I have.
If you have books from the library, they will still belong to the library when I die. They will not suddenly belong to those who I mentioned in my will.
Things I do not own, they will not get. e.g. they will not get my car if it is leased. I am not the owner, so they do not get it from me. It was never mine to give away.
And here lies the REAL issue. We do not own the things we think we own. We do not actually buy things, we lease or borrow them.
The music does not belong to us. I can imagine a future where people will not be able to actually own things. Your clothes will be owned by whatever brand you wear. Your music belongs to Apple. Your OS belongs to Microsoft. Your computer belongs to Dell.
And then you owe your soul to the company store.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
True for physical media, yes. That is how it works if you buy a CD or a book. But electronic copies are something else entirely.
I don't suppose you ever left behind a copy of 'Lilith' in a holiday cabin. If so, thank you. I took that one myself to finish, and left 'Beak of the Moon' in it's place.
Slightly smaller then the music as measured in bytes. Much smaller when measured in minutes play time. I've barely got 3 years of porn (queued up 1 after the other). That's about 1 years production of the American porn industry IIRC.
Collections seem to develop inertia of their own.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What am I forgetting?
Lego caltrops on the floor.
Boy, you can't get anything by these MIT geniuses, you know?
It's not like we've known this for the past 20 years or anything.
Seriously, I wonder if "Dazza Greenwood" is expecting some sort of recognition for this striking realization, and I wonder whether he had to "think outside the box" to figure out that the IP laws are defective by design.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is why I buy hard copies of any book I really like. Partly to show off that I've read it but also to pass along to my children or others who may be interested.
UID 4190? He must have joined Slashdot when it was still a magazine.
He probably knew Mozart personally with a UID that low.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Apple and Amazon.com grant “nontransferable” rights to use content, so if you buy the complete works of the Beatles on iTunes, you cannot give the White Album to your son and Abbey Road to your daughter. [...] Apple limits the use of digital files to Apple devices used by the account holder.
That's the second surprise restriction of the week for me. The first was that Windows OEM licenses die with the hardware they came on. The restriction on Windows licenses is not enforceable in Germany (according to a comment), it makes me wonder if the restriction on music is actually enforceable.
A more serious problem IMHO is that you can't lend your digital "goods" to others while you are still alive. For things that aren't DRMed to death (no pun intended), of which music is about the only example I can think of, you can't lend it to your friends legally. About 80 % of the books I read are things I find when going through the bookshelves at my parents' home, so when ebooks and physial books are priced similarly, people should really take these restrictions into account.
Maybe I'll stick to CD rips from now on, though keeping the physical discs around is unpractical and destroying them seems "wrong" in some way.
This issue has been gaining importance as our online life becomes an increasing portion of our activity and consumption. People used to keep photos in albums - now they're scattered among devices, memory cards and online services. Personal diaries are now protected with a password instead of a physical lock - and might even be stored on Blogger or LiveJournal or another online service rather than on a hard drive. Family financial information or even personal recipes might be stored in Google Docs. Most of the services we use on a regular basis have little-to-no provisions in place for a family member or an executor to transfer account information. Few companies and even fewer users are thinking about end of life issues when it comes to their online lives.
I did an article about this about a year ago available at http://www.virtualworldlaw.com/2011/04/you-cant-take-it-with-you---death-and-the-virtual-world.html
"The plural of anecdote is not data."
(Me again) The notion of "accounts" tied to people takes away a lot of freedoms that we had with physical media. Someone should create some software that creates a separate account for each purchase on iTunes, Amazon and Steam, and manages access automatically. Wouldn't solve the legal problem in the article, but it would make it practical to lend media and games, to divide them among multiple heirs, and to sell used copies.
Her copy of Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North by Peter Freuchen
I come here for the love
Just to be clear here - TFA is referring to digital files, not books. My books will survive me quite handily, even if my digital files do not.
'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 author Evan Carroll of the problems created for one's heirs with digital content
I can think of a situation, and I think it's probably pretty common: the family doesn't have access at the moment, know the extent of the collection or really expect to have it. I don't know anyone who shares their digital media in the way physical possessions are shared. If family members have access it's by giving them a copy, which will be outside the supplier's control; otherwise the media is all personal. There's no shared pool of possessions in the same way that family members might shares their physical library or CD collection.
When i die, my stuff will be easy access ('cept for for the porn, it's truecrypted, some things family doesn't need access to). Will they want it? I doubt it. But don't care. I will be dead.
So whatever happens after i die happens. I will be dead.
Be seeing you...
No, of course my music and movies and books won't die with me. I simply don't have digital assets with copy restrictions. If it isn't licensed under creative commons or other sane copyright licenses why the hell would I risk having it or passing it on to others? They want THOUSANDS of dollars per song if you can't prove you own it. The entertainment value of copy restricted media is just not worth the legal risk or hassle of dealing with it.
My Opa hoarded after the war. His garage was so full of stuff, he even pulled nails out of old railway sleepers then put the nails in a jar, just in case he might need them one day! Upon his passing, even a garage sale didn't put a dent in his collections of nuts, bolts, nails, pop rivets, all in their own jars & labelled up. Now, in reflection on myself, I've been playing Guild Wars for ~6 years and boy have I got stuff! 9 characters with filled storage, all inventory storage slots purchased & full...But I think if I were to pass away with my children inheriting my Guild Wars account, they'd take one look at it, then go back to their Playstation 7's and their Nintendo 512's.
But in saying that, my aunties & uncles spent months reminiscing in that garage, their heart glowing with every new jar of washers opened, that jar summarizing my Opa's character, saving for a rainy day. Like physical items, I think a will & the families should have the last say of what goes to who regarding digital media.
/. has covered this many times before, Technology has a limited life, if you have Digital music, you can move it to a physical medium, but you then need a device to use that physical medium. If you have books, you move them to a medium that can store the material, if you have some sort of limited, proprietary format THEN YOU DID IT WRONG. I buy physical medium and transfer it to digital, and I have several devices to replay the content, I buy books, too many books, but I doubt that my Grandkids will care.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Its not your collection unless you have some sort of physical media. One thing I love about vinyl records is that if we lose electricity, i'll still be able to play records with a dixie cup and a thumbtack - although it will obviously tear up vinyl, you should see my point.
What am I forgetting?
Buy their kid a drumset. And the other kid a Mr. Microphone.
we'll no longer have books available to the general population. libraries will have been closed by the "let's eliminate taxes" nutjobs. cassettes, cd's, records will be artifacts from an ancient era. the content creators will own the rights, and you're lucky to have any music to listen to while you read people magazine on your idevice. the future is going to suck.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I've barely got 3 years of porn (queued up 1 after the other)
BARELY???
How much porn does one penis need?
Like I say, collections develop inertia all there own.
Do I really need a music collection that would take decades to play?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I preffer to grab a large double-double head down to the store enjoy myself
How many bookstores let you walk in while chowing down on a double cheeseburger? Am I the only one who thinks this behavior is strange?
You possess a copy, you don't own it. If this distinction seems minor to you, try using a piece of music you think you "own" in a game that you write or in a movie you make and you'll find out what the true status is.
There is a very large and fundamental difference between a digital book being wiped off my eReader without my consent and me choosing to plagiarize said book for recognition or reward. Let's not get off topic here and confuse what most people know is a true violation of copyright vs. "intended use".
True for physical media, yes. That is how it works if you buy a CD or a book. But electronic copies are something else entirely.
(opens eBook)
File----Print.
Go ahead and tell me again how it is different now?
Ebook services require you to agree to a license agreement. As the sale is of a license and not a physical object, the first sale doctrine does not apply.
So wait, you're saying 30 years of legislation and technology driven with the express purpose of preventing the transfer of something (in this case, books, movies, and music) from the hands of one person to another without corporate benefit has had the result of....making it hard to transfer something from the hands of one person to another?
Just because one of the pair of hands is cold and dead doesn't change the situation at all for corporate lawyers. That's pretty much how their souls are all the time.
-Styopa
This whole argument is late to the party. The software industry has been slowly killing the concept of sharing for years. Now that music is simply a set of digital values like software, the music industry is in a position to apply the same unfair restrictions and have you eat it. Its your own fault. For listening to the music industry marketing. Break free. Start listening to music under the creative commons license and start sharing it with your friends and family. If you want to leave a legacy for your children and friends after your dead... show them that you were the generation that began to reject these horrible license shackles. Just because something is "free" does not mean it has no value. Your music selection passed on should be a reflection of who you are not what you bought. Show future generations that you were a person who choose not to be enslaved by corporations through marketing.
The first site you should visit is http://jamendo.com./ Support the concept of sharing and let this be your legacy
Have you not been paying attention? All your books belong to the publishers. All you have is the limited right to read them on particular devices for a limited period of time if the publishers don't change their minds. Same goes for your music.
This is not true of the concept of digital media in general. This is a result of the license agreement attached to the digital content you buy. The solution is to only select content for which the license does allow for sharing and transfer. The creative commons license is an example of a license which can provide for sharing and transfer. Support artists who use the creative commons license.
Or are you specifically talking about media that have DRM embedded in them? Or loosely pasted on top of them, as is more often the case?
Do people actually still try to use that shit?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
So who does own the bits of rust on my spinning disk which happen to embody a copy of the ebook? If it's in flash, does each cell have an owner depending on which ebook resides there?
He could have exactly the uid he wanted, just go back to the appropriate time when it was available.
It is kind of depressing - not because it's all DRM'd, because it isn't. Anytime I get any media that does have any DRM on it, which I do occasionally when it's the easiest way to obtain something I want, I then immediately find a way to strip the DRM off it - it's the principle of the thing.
Still, when I die, I do expect all my music will die with me, just because who in my personal life is going to -want- a hard drive with a giant collection of mostly random mashups and covers and remixes?
My books won't die with me, though - they're all hard copies. People still buy those, and I like to think decades from now, they'll still be happily coexisting with ebooks or whatever else.
When I die, my "work stuff" folder and the password for the truecrypt container found within shall be passed on to my eldest son, as is done among my people.