Why is not possible to sell digital games and movies that you own to others like physical media?
In: 66
“Ownership” of a digital copy is an abstraction. We attach property-like rights to intellectual property, and call this copyright.
Until fairly recently, this was only really an issue for authors and publishers. Media was usually sold on some form of physical media such as a book or a record. Few people had the means of making affordable copies.
When it comes to digital media they need to provide ownership-like rights to an individual copy. This involves granting certain rights to allow making personal use copies. The problem is, nobody has worked out a rational way to make this work for transferring ownership.
Different people want different things here so it makes it even harder because we need a system everyone is happy with.
Latest Answers