Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Licensed for life

As I wandered through my home I spied a stray cd copy of Julian Cope's Peggy Suicide - all alone on a kitchen shelf. I thought: "how many different formats must I own that body of work in?"
I bought it originally as a cassette because that best suited my car-borne life at that time. Later as a CD, later still as a download.
It's easy to assume that now I own it digitally I can do with it as I wish, that I could store it in some vast secure portal somewhere and repurpose as I wish ad infinitum.
Trouble is there are already higher spec digital versions available. And you just know that the quality will only improve - and rapidly.
So how many formats of a body of work are you meant to own in a lifetime? Perhaps this nagging concern - at least for anyone old enough to have a loft full of vinyl - holds us back from buying music and dvds like we once did.
Isn't it time we were able to buy a licence for access to whichever format we want, whenever it emerges, to do with as we wish? That, I might pay for.

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