There’s a preconceived notion that if you purchase something in a digital format, that you own it. When you buy digital music, movies, games, or programs from iTunes, Amazon, or any number of retailers, it’s assumed that you own it in perpetuity, and can do whatever you want with it, however, I’m sorry to say, that’s not the case.
Recently, in the news, iTunes announced the break up of their service into three apps (music, movies, and podcasts). Customers were concerned over the future of their music collections, with over a decades worth of tunes housed on their service. Thankfully, you will still have access to your files and be able to purchase more through their newly separated services, so if you purchased the entire MCU franchise on iTunes, you don’t need to be concerned… or do you?
In a former article from CNN Business that highlighted this issue back in 2012, you technically do not own the music you paid for on the service, but in plain english, have paid for the extended borrowing of the content, which cannot be resold, redistributed, nor used for any income generating purposes. This also goes for any other digital content purchased. This license is also subject to the discontinuation of content if the service no longer owns the license to the product – in other words, if the company you bought it from lost that license, and you want to continue streaming it, you might find it missing one day.
If you have created content by original means, then yes, you do own it and then have the freedom to do whatever you please with it, as long as it does not contain anything owned by anyone else, but just as record labels and film distribution companies flags content all the time on YouTube that have their material, the actual ownership of the content is not covered by your purchase of its license, which is what you’re doing when you’re paying $1.29, or whatever the price tag.
The safest way to ensure your stuff doesn’t go away is to download it. Whether on to a physical hard drive or your personal cloud site that’s not associated with the vendor. Regardless of any boardroom agreements, you’ll be able to continue to watch all your episodes of the Star Trek: Discovery, anytime you like… just don’t link it up to a sharing site, unless you want to get a nasty lawsuit.