Well, I spoke too soon and without a complete understanding of the subject re DRM and how it affects me.

It has come to my attention that the courts have decided you will not be able to leave your digital collection to anyone else in the event of death.  Which made me start to think about my rights as a purchaser. Strangely enough I had not really given this much if any thought. If I had thought about what would happen to my downloaded games or books in the event of my death before I might have realized this would be the case.  It was the downloaded books that brought it home to me. 

What point is there in having a collection if it is of no value to anyone other than yourself?  It makes my collections worthless after all the time and money I have spent on building them up.  What a shock this was to me. It's made me re-evaluate my collections and their worth to me. 

I've come to truly understand that downloaded games or books - DRM free or not are merely leases or rentals. DRM merely restricts the length and method of lease.

The books I have on my Kindle are rented only. I thought I was buying them.  They cost at least as much as a paperback and frequently more.  But a paperback you can give away or trade or even sell.  The Kindle suckered me in because I loved the idea of carrying around many books at a time and not having to worry about finding space to put my books.  And also being able to change the font on the screen when my eyes were "challenged".Now that I know it's just a lease they seem too expensive.  I'm going to start borrowing e-books from my library and Amazon Prime and see how that works for me.  It's bound to save me a lot of money.

As for games, I won't be buying them with the idea of collecting them anymore.  I'm going to have to carefully consider their worth to me, how expensive they are and how much I want them.

It's bad enough that you can't own your digital property but when you add DRM to that and they tell you you can only play this game so many times its like adding salt to the wound.

I understand that game developers work long and hard to create a game and overcome many obstacles to get it to market.  I don't want them to lose money on their game.  But the market is changing. It remains to be seen how the majority of  people will react to the different terms being offered.  I'm still figuring that out for myself.

Edit:  On looking at another posting I see that all this has been said and argued before by people who have a better ability to state the problems, reasons, impact, etc.  I'll just shut up now. 

Originally Posted By SharonB (29 SEP 2012 8:24am)

 

......As for games, I won't be buying them with the idea of collecting them anymore....   

Don't change either your attitude about your game collection or what you think you have the right to do with it. This is an on going battle, not the conclusion of one. While things may look gloomy in the US for traditionalists it is far from over. Just because the big companies craft laws and court decsions to their liking does not mean they can't be changed, or that they are enforcible in an actual court of law.

But I agree that this is all very dismal indeed...

Thanks for the support TinCup2.    

Hello There 

I have an enormeous collection of old adventure games and they are all originals.  I do not and have never liked to download games or books unless they are free.  I REFUSE to download games or games that require internet use to use them.  Always had, and now I see it was the right decision. And as far as external memory banks aka cloud computing.  Get yourself an external array of hard drives and back up your data.  I do not post any pictures on any social forum.