"Don't get too attached to your apple account. It belongs to Apple, not you."
I cannot stress enough how important it is to understand that Apple, Google, or Amazon can simply _decide_ to remove access to anything you've "purchased", including many physical goods (if they are internet-connected and running proprietary software), and you have absolutely no recourse.
@tindall
This also applies to games you’ve bought you’ve bought digitally as well, *especially* if it requires an internet connection to work, even if it’s a single-player game (I’m looking at you, Elite Dangerous!)
IIRC, you’ve basically bought a license to play a game, you don’t own it in the traditional sense… A license that can be revoked on the whim of the company you ‘bought’ it from
@tindall
One exception might be games you’ve purchased from someplace like GOG.com, which IIRC are DRM-free
@Christian Or Itch.io :)
@tindall
Ah, yes! I forgot about itch.io lol
@tindall Yep! This is why about two years ago, I started buying movies on physical media again, instead of digitally.
@tindall this is why I don't like movies and other media becoming virtual. Your purchase only lasts while the company does. I want physical media.
@tindall This nearly happened to me with Steam over a backcharge like ten years ago. My account was SMALL then compared to what it is now.
@cassvs Scary, isn't it?
Tech pontificating?
@kf4yfa
If you think about the transaction a bit differently, it's not so bad. You aren't buying anything, you're renting access for some unspecified time, determined solely by the company you're renting from. If more people understood that, I think these services wouldn't be nearly as popular. Certainly sounds like a waste of money to me. The illusion of ownership is a great marketing tool, I guess.
Tech pontificating?
@cassvs It is an illusion. Where can you buy things you truely own anymore?
Tech pontificating?
@cassvs In the case of renting then, what's difference?
@tindall this applies to any SaaS really
@tindall (or Microsoft)
@tindall (or Microsoft)
@tindall
Software licensing, software patents, dial-home-devices, and Software-as-a-Service, and container-ization all serve a singular purpose: control. Sometimes it is forced consumerism and shuttering of the right to purchase property, and other times it is genuinely affable utilitarianism (or ignorance). Technology is inert: it be humans' use whose works make it evil in our minds.
@tindall
Patent trolls may wish to suppress disruptive technologies in order to allow advancement of a pet technology.
Or, Disnee may decide they don't want humans to learn about its ancient deeds (B&W cartoons) made disreputable by political correctness tides, and remove them from public databases-- by force.
@tindall
So long as corporations are allowed personhood and thereby allowed to make produce for which the public interest is not allowed to reckon, we will be at 'their' mercy. Therefore, we humans must further limit their power to bounds that make them more manageable, lest we be plucked for every whim or fancy an eye might perverse towards capital.
Otherwise: we Very Soon may be lifelong unwitting pawns of an A.I. that doesn't understand morality.
@tindall It's a VERY important point but PSSST it's trivial to strip the DRM from Kindle books :)
@tindall Okay, but not Valve, right?
@mike Yeah, also Valve, absolutely. Monopolies and lock-in are bad even if gaben runs the show.
@tindall Here are some more examples: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-back-doors.html#install-delete