Before my uncle flew back to Angola, he handed me a PlayStation One, complete with games. I was young. He was leaving. The console was the thing that stayed.
That was a handoff: physical, permanent, mine. Twenty years later, I "bought" a song on Amazon Music and started thinking about what ownership actually means now.
Once upon a time, this would have exclusively been physical media. Now, it's permissible to access digital media only as long as the platform has the licence to distribute it.
My friends and I spent years on Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 — a game I paid for, played obsessively, and one day could no longer download. The licence between Marvel and Capcom lapsed, and the game vanished from every marketplace. It came back eventually, when a sequel renewed the deal. But the principle was set: something I bought could simply stop existing because two companies renegotiated a contract I was never party to.
Will the PlayStation Network still exist if I hold onto my PS4 for 15 more years and turn it on? What will still be playable? Will the SSD have deteriorated? Is there a legal way for me to interact with the content I have paid quite a lot of money for just 20 years later? Even if the SSD is still good, and I have games on physical discs, will they even be playable without the marketplace, considering how many games come out needing day-one patches?
What about movies and music? It's the same. Many who read this on release would remember that a major music distributor removed their entire content library from TikTok. Others may have experienced looking at a post on Instagram where the story has been muted because the song, selected on the platform itself, had its licence revoked within 24 hours of the post.
We consumers are left to the whims of licence owners regarding when we can access the things we "buy". This is not ownership, and this needs to be addressed.
The first generation of digital owners will soon pass on, and we need to see what will happen to their assets when they do. Every company has shifted to a subscription model, but what about products that are still viable today that were purchased with a perpetual licence? Does this mean that once I retire, I can pass my account on to my child or my apprentice?
If I've purchased a lot of movies on my Amazon Prime, when I reach a certain age, why would I not share my account with my children? I want them to benefit not just from my Prime account but also to have access to the movies and shows I've already purchased on the platform.
The most significant problem is where my "bought" content sits. Today, it's hard to believe that Amazon or YouTube can go down, but there's no guarantee that they will exist in 50 years, let alone 100. We have not thought these things through properly. And we will soon see how much we have ignored when more people pass.
If Instagram truly lasts a century as a product, will our children have access to our accounts as a photo album after we pass? Or will we need a new product to store that data because Meta decides that a dormant account that can't be advertised to is a waste of bandwidth and username?
Will my great-grandchildren be able to read through my thoughts on X whenever they get curious about who I am? Hell, will they be able to read this post if I am not here? If no one pays for my domain anymore? If this server is not protected?
Is this site itself just future lost media?
My uncle handed me a PlayStation before he flew back to Angola. That was twenty years ago. I still have it. I can hold it. My children will be able to hold it, even if it never turns on again.
I don't know what the digital equivalent of that handoff is. I don't think anyone does yet. But I know that every year, the gap between what I've paid for and what I actually own gets wider. And the things I most want to leave behind — the photos, the writing, the proof that I was here and thinking — sit on servers I don't control, behind accounts that will outlive me only if someone else decides they're worth keeping.
I sure don't want to buy an album on Apple Music and not be able to listen to it because I didn't have it downloaded when the licence owners revoked access. But more than that, I don't want my grandchildren to go looking for me and find nothing.