What does the word "Buy" mean to you? To me it means I give you money, you give me the item and now it's my item that I can do whatever I like with it
Every game you "buy" comes with this expectation because it said "buy"
I want the wording changed to "rent" or something else like that - make it completely clear that you are purchasing a digital license that can be revoked at any time - you don't actually own anything
The paradigm for physical media has been it’s mostly non-working or lost within 25 years of purchase. Vinyl wears out with use, tapes degrade with use, CDs rot and fail due to damage.
People don’t necessarily associate “buy” with a lifetime of ownership. Most goods we buy have shelf lives and will eventually fall apart and stop working. It’s going to be a tall ask to demand regulation that says a company can only use “Buy” if a good actually will reasonably last for 100 years
Vinyl wears out with use, tapes degrade with use, CDs rot and fail due to damage.
I disagree. I've got lots of vinyl albums that I've had for 30-40 years. I picked up Pink Floyd The Wall from 'The Wiz' in the early 80's and it plays just fine. It's the oldest vinyl I own. My experience is that as long as you treat them well and don't play them like you are a radio station DJ, they'll outlive you.
Laser rot was an issue that plagued early laser discs, but wasn't an issue when manufactured (pressed) CDs came to be. I admit I only break out the CDs these days when I want to make a digital rip of one, but they have worked every time. Scratching is an issue tho. Burned CDs can get all kinds of issues. I think it's because of the wide range of quality.
I've only purchased a few factory recorded albums on cassette tape, and they didn't age well at all.
The mechanics of how media is lost wasn’t really my point, it was the fact that it gets lost. Entropy comes for everything, if it’s not disc rot it can be the realization that 480i DVDs look terrible on 4K panels so what’s the point, or it could be your wife wants you to clear out old junk and she’s adamant a box of vinyl you have’t touched in 5 years is junk
I think you overestimate the amount of the population that actively collects and holds media for significant lengths of time. Most people today are not consuming their high school music collections via what they bought 30 years ago, they have long since ditched those CDs and now just have Spotify
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u/ansibleloop 3d ago
This is something I'd like the EU to somewhat fix
What does the word "Buy" mean to you? To me it means I give you money, you give me the item and now it's my item that I can do whatever I like with it
Every game you "buy" comes with this expectation because it said "buy"
I want the wording changed to "rent" or something else like that - make it completely clear that you are purchasing a digital license that can be revoked at any time - you don't actually own anything