First, I have to be honest: I LOVE buying things “digitally”.
I LOVE not having the clutter of so many books and movies and the ease by which I can enjoy both through either my cellphone, tablet, or through my “smart” TV.
I LOVE IT!
…however…
Stories like these make me mighty uncomfortable. From Matt Novak and presented on gizmodo.com:
The title is self-explanatory: Microsoft sold eBooks starting in/around 2017. The service appears to have not done very well and the company decided they were going to stop selling books and, further, delete those that people bought.
Money will be returned by Microsoft to the people who bought these eBooks, just to be clear, and the service seems to have been a flop pretty much from the beginning so not that many people were affected.
However, this does present a sobering thought: What if this should happen with Apple or Amazon? How about VUDU? All my books/graphic novels -and I have a BUNCH of them- are on Amazon. Pretty much all my film purchases are currently being done through VUDU.
What if these services have a problem? What if suddenly all these many thousands of dollars I’ve spent will *poof!* be gone?
Again, I love the digital services. I love the fact that my home isn’t getting filled up with more books and movie boxes.
I love this!
But, seriously, there needs to be some kind of permanence created for these bought items yet I wonder if such a thing could be accomplished, other than downloading your stuff and saving it to increasingly full Hard Drives.