Will Your Books and Music Die With You? 248
theodp writes "Many of us will accumulate vast libraries of digital books and music over the course of our lifetimes, reports the WSJ, but when we die, our collections of words and music may expire with us. 'I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family would be OK with losing a collection of 10,000 books and songs,' says author Evan Carroll of the problems created for one's heirs with digital content, which doesn't convey the same ownership rights as print books and CDs. So what's the solution? Amazon and Apple were mum when contacted, but with the growth of digital assets, Dazza Greenwood of MIT's Media Lab said it's time to reform and update IP law so content can be transferred to another's account or divided between several people."
Blind Trust? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this a case where corporate personhood is a good thing?
Does this mean what you should do is fire up a trust and have the trust purchase all the media? Then the trust lives on (and is ownership transfers or was likely already shared with your intended recipient(s)).
Or is that going to get you in trouble with your trust "sharing" its media with you?
Updated regulation is needed (Score:5, Interesting)
They need to make DRM illegal. Sorry, but once you release something, copyright has always been based on honor. By creating mechanisms to lock down content, it is taking it out of the peoples' hands.
By pointing out that things are "lost" and then correcting the truth to reveal that nothing was "lost" because the notion of ownership was an illusion in the first place proves what has been stolen from under our noses.
Now you have a "license" for particular works on your ipod, but not your car stereo or anywhere else. If you want the same content there, you have to pay again and again. And if for some reason you violate the license terms, you might just lose it all. The point is to note who is in control. Those who are in control are the owners. Since you don't have control over your iPhone or other devices which are locked down, you don't own it either.
These are all truths that people have a hard time accepting.
Re:Blind Trust? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or you could just put your account login information in your Will.
Re:Not all of us. (Score:4, Interesting)
Already have. For definitions of accumulate=pirate.
As to what will happen to it after I die? Doesn't matter. Anybody that I know who wants a copy can have one while I'm alive. It takes three days just to copy the music (granting that's going from average SATA drive RAID to a USB2 external).
Re:Yes, this is a valid problem (Score:4, Interesting)
...and just one of the many reasons I have hundreds of CDs lying around. I've bought some music and videos from iTunes. I prefer buying CDs because they're physical and tangible. Google or Apple can't decide to "close the service" and take all of my CDs away.
Apple can't do anything to your purchased music once it's on your hard drive. There's no DRM whatsoever on the music files. Do with them as you please. Movies can be re-encoded (probably lose quality but for me that's not a huge deal) or have their DRM stripped. Books can have their DRM stripped. I'm pretty sure that it's still legal in the US to strip DRM for your personal stuff and it definitely is in Canada (the efforts of our current government to ban it notwithstanding).
Re:Too personal to be widely desirable (Score:5, Interesting)
My brother died unexpectedly at age 28 and I, 1.5 years younger, boxed up his CDs while we were cleaning out his apartment. I've since merged them with my collection. I find it rewarding and challenging, and sometimes a little nostalgic, to listen and interpret them as my own. On my college breaks I found it intriguing to examine my father's old vinyl record collection too.
The idea of things being "too personal" isn't specific to music or books. Whoever has the job of sorting through the detritus of life will have to work discreetly and sort certain items into the trash or recycling box, while others get highlighted and passed around for closure or utility (often a little of both). Funny things, like cooking with one of his favorite old pans, have turned out to mean more to me than I expected.
I'm still babying the last car he bought... 1999 garage queen with just 50k miles at present. Our oldest brother took his nicely equipped bikes, and rode them for many years. These higher value items carry a different kind of burden for the survivors, as they sometimes feel more like "legacy." It can be very upsetting if you feel your loss being compounded by the legacy being taken away as well. With more an more financial and emotional resources being poured into digital legacy, I can only imagine this will become a bigger issue in the future.
Re:Too personal to be widely desirable (Score:4, Interesting)
The usual way this happens is that they let the family go through the library and pick anything they want, then they sell what's left in a lot at auction to a used bookstore owner. This doesn't work for digital books, which makes digital books no more valuable than borrowing the book from a library or watching a streaming video from Netflix. Without permanence and individual transferability, there is no real value to "owning" a copy of the content, because no one will ever want the entire collection enough to pay any significant amount of money for it. Individuals won't because they won't like everything (and thus will consider parts of the collection as having zero value), and dealers won't because they won't be able to parcel it out and no individual will be willing to pay them much for it (because they won't like everything and...).
For this reason, I try fairly hard not to accumulate digital books, music, movies, or non-transferrable digital software downloads. If there are alternatives, I tend to choose them even if they are more expensive, because those alternatives have actual value beyond the value of their temporary utility.
Re:Too personal to be widely desirable (Score:5, Interesting)
Put another way how many cherished commercial books and albums have you personally inherited? Maybe it's a bad question since people who have, will be more likely to answer. But for me the answer is 0. I can't even get my dad to take an interest in getting his old slides scanned so we can see our childhood photos.
I inherited not more than 5 books from my parents. They were big time library patrons, without enough money after putting 5 kids thru college, to amass their own collection. Turns out a couple of these books have collector value, being first editions which were handed down to my parents from my grand parents. (early Audubon stuff). So, no, most of us don't have huge libraries of stuff handed down.
But that is water under the bridge at this point, and the discussion is about what we can hand down today. I've got an entire wall covered by bookshelves that someone will pick over when I shuffle off. I've got at least as many digital books that they may look at when they find my several nook e-readers laying around.
Hard to say if they might want any of that, but it should be my decision to give, and their decision to receive.
Now as to those slides, its your job to scan them.
He has his memories. He probably never needs to even look at the slides.
You've probably got the skills to scan them, sift them, and save them. He probably doesn't want to waste his remaining hours
moving images from one media to another when he knows you will inherit the entire collection anyway.
Re:First (Score:0, Interesting)
You mean the same metal made up of people who while acting 'hardcore' are sucking the collective dick of the RIAA?
Yeah, thought so.
Re:First (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is: Would you leave your valuable WoW/EVE/whatever stuff to your brother/friend/whoever and risk being killed by them to get your "Phat L00t"?
That would add a new depth to the expresion. "I killed my bro for the l00t!!!"
in 50 years, you'll own nothing (Score:4, Interesting)
we'll no longer have books available to the general population. libraries will have been closed by the "let's eliminate taxes" nutjobs. cassettes, cd's, records will be artifacts from an ancient era. the content creators will own the rights, and you're lucky to have any music to listen to while you read people magazine on your idevice. the future is going to suck.
Re:Not all of us. (Score:5, Interesting)
Like I say, collections develop inertia all there own.
Do I really need a music collection that would take decades to play?
Re:First (Score:2, Interesting)
As someone pushing age 70 with a 30+-year-od-son, let me break it to you gently. Your kids are extremely unlikely to have any interest in the artifacts of your life unless they're readily convertible to cash. Most of my friends are at the life-stage of bitching about having to tidy up after their parents are gone. What has emotional meaning to you has zip to them.
If you want to collect for your own pleasure, and have the time, money, and volume, enjoy. But if you're trying to justify it with leaving it to your progeny, you're kidding yourself. If your stuff isn't museum quality, It'll end up in a landfill.