The tension is that digital goods are somewhere between. Especially when the delivery mechanism is streaming, and/or DRM keys that need to be renewed.
Sure, many people want a one-time download with no promise or obligation to re-deliver it in the future. Then again, many people don’t want the burden of caring for bytes for the rest of their lives and prefer to download on demand.
This whole thing is basically just “different people want different models of commerce for digital content”
That's the thing. If they are truly goods, they cannot be in between! Otherwise they are being handled as services and as such they will be terminated at some point. So unless we redefine the word, a true "purchase" can never depend on future actions from the provider (like renewing some DRM).
Hasn't it been clearly established for at least a couple decades now that all of these are de facto scams?
The solution to this is to not have DRM
Agree that people want this - but this is an undue burden on the provider side. You have to perpetually maintain and provide access to content FOREVER including all the systems and support staff to auth.
If I can individually pay for and maintain an NAS with TB's of data on it, I think these multinational megacorps can afford to do the same. Maybe scale for delivery will cost them a bit of profit, but really it's a shame how individuals say this is some how an undue burden on these corporations...
You know what is the real undue burden? 100 year long IP/copyright law. It actively diminishes our culture, making it bland and hardly changing. Humanity is created by the stories we tell, and retell, and with every retelling - the stories change and evolve... But you can't do that and make a living in modern capitalism... That is the true undue burden, and I think forcing these companies to at least provide access to the stories we paid for is the least they can do for a nigh 100 year monopoly on the stories of our society.
Instead we have the private marketplace fulfill all those needs for the low low price of ad infestation. Imagine how smart our kids would be if instead of 20 minutes of unsolicited ads a day, they saw 20 minutes of educational content and were required to pass a math quiz to access YouTube?