Sky News reports:
As Sony has announced that some films purchased by customers through their PlayStation Store are to be deleted, removing access to those films by those who bought them, it raises the question of ownership of purchased digital media. Is it owned by the purchaser or just leased?
Remember that WEF phrase "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy"?
Well this how it works.
Everything you purchase - whether it's hardware (cars, appliances, machinery) or software (games, movies, music etc) - will be licensed.
You, the licensee, own nothing as it's all owned by the licensor (or lessor in the case of housing).
What licensing really means is that the licensor can withdraw your right to use something unless you do something like buy another one or pay to update your license.
Now that may mean that some people are happy but many people will not be.
This was all trialled in the software world.
Pretty much all commercial software is licensed.
Originally, software was supplied on physical media (tapes, floppy disks, DVDs).
Then they moved to digital download
Then they moved from 'lifetime' licenses to monthly subscriptions.
Licenses are 'sunset' by simply stopping updates and discontinuing support which means that eventually the product just stops working as everything around it has moved on. This is already a very common practice with mobile phone operating systems.
The point is that once everything is licensed, you literally do own nothing and are in the complete control of the licensors of anything you use.
Scary.