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i am in a love/hate relationship with techonlogy.
i wish i was more analogue than i am, but digitalisation is sooo handy.
having a stereosystem and walls upon walls of records... or spotify.
having a library filled with wonderous books that decay... or ebookreader.
contacting family and friends by getting off my ass and physically visit them... or just send a text message or give them a call to ask some stupid question.
one thing that i 100% hate though is pretend-ownership-through-licensing in the world of technology.
using spotify i am paying a monthly fee to access everything, if i stop paying, i stop having access. if spotify turns off their servers, i lose access and stop paying. it is a risk i am willing to take so i don't have to fill my home with literally thousands of records.
the city library has an online service, free of charge, that simulates their core services, lending of books, ebooks in this instance. i sign in, i see if the virtual book is available, i borrow it, free of charge, when my time is up, i lose access to it. again, i am fine with this for the same reason as above(i read A LOT).
what i am not fine with however are services such as itunes, steam, audible and the likes. the idea is that the user pays a one-time sum to corp, and thus gets the software available on their device... but that is not all. the user gets a license, in lack of better word, soulbound, to whatever software, be it a song, video, game or book.
if the user dies, the license is nulled and the software is not usable anymore. if the company dies, the license is nulled and the software is not usable anymore. if the company decides to straight up remove the software from their portfolio for whatever reason, the license is nulled and the software is not usable anymore.
in other words.
on audible, i purchase a virtual book, a license at least to be able to read that book from my account.
if audible decides that the author did something they do not like, they can remove all that authors works from their service, including straight up ripping it out of my library.
in the analogue world, i purchase a book, a tangible decaying wrapping of signs, i can bring the book with me whereever and whenever.
if the publisher of the book and author decides to split and stop selling the book, i am unaffected.
because i bought the book, not a revokable license to access the contents of the book through a service owned my neither the author nor the publisher.