The Pros And Cons Of Digital Ownership

Improved Essays
People want things. Perhaps they are greedy, and perhaps they need to eat to live. Either way, there is rarely a time where you did not want something. Recently, this statement has been extended to people desiring entertainment. Many individuals want entertainment. The real question is, what is the best option for consumers, and producers, when choosing how they want their entertainment. For decades, we have had access to recorded music, pre-performed and stored movies, and digital video games. These technologies have advanced from the walkman, Videocassette Recorders, and cartridges; to MP3 files, Netflix, and online games. There is no longer necessarily a need to go to the store to purchase and access entertainment. However, there is still a definite desire for people to have a tangible commodity for them to access their entertainment through. There has been a notable amount of debate about whether consumers should purchase their entertainment digitally with software or physically …show more content…
Joel Lee states in an article heading that “Digital Ownership is a Lie.” He advocates that people don’t own their digital files because of the questionability and difficulty of sharing it (Lee). Controversially, file sharing has been prolific with programs like Dropbox, and the ability to share access to media bound to an account has been as simple as sharing account details. Furthermore if these actions are crimes today, they are likely to have been crimes when physical distribution was mare prominent. Also, the crime is hugely difficult to trace due to the victim’s inability to readily realize the crime, protecting the consumer of the product well. With these facts brought to the forefront, it is simple to conclude that these arguments for a lack of ownership in the digital market, while plausible, does not fully undermine the advantages of this format. Even Lee said “The ownership issues will likely fade into the

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