(Originally Posted on May 1st 2024)
I was surprised to see that stores are no longer offering physical copies of movies and music. Instead referring to their digital fronts for customers to acquire a license of the product. Licenses do not equal ownership. Licenses permit access to an object/product but can be revoked, expired, or invalidated at any time by the issuer. But keeping that in mind, what does ownership mean?
Well, to me, it means having complete control of an object/asset that can be utilized anywhere at any time. Now lets take that into a digital space. Platforms are always active but the creation that a user makes is not necessarily under the rights of the creator. The platform holds the authority over that creation on their platform. Spending time, effort, and thought creating on a platform doesn’t ensure that the creation will forever be on the platform or tied to the creator.
This is why it’s becoming more crucial to realize what an ‘asset’ is in the term of a digital space. Any posts made on a platform are a history of the user and can be pointed back to for any reason. It’s important that those ‘assets’ be saved by the user as the platform has no investment in saving these publishings and can delete them anytime at their whim.
I am so focused on the importance of ownership that I first publish my thoughts/postings on a Blockchain(Hive), then I post it on my Personal Blog(Here), before spreading it out to Medium or possibly Twitter(X). There are multiple points of origin I can point to that show myself as the original creator and I have proof that I am the owner.
Ownership and its definition, I think, will have to be constantly brought up as the meaning behind the word and its relation to a person and a platform change over time. For better or worse.
– Helpful Advice:
– Have a space for personal creations that can be tied to oneself.
– Download the Metadata/data from platforms in case the platform decides to remove postings or even delete an account
– Always try to be in control of creations