I recently read a very interesting article on the CNBC website that asked the question: what will happen to our digital assets when we die? In a time when more and more entertainment companies are moving towards an online streaming model, people don’t own a physical copy of a DVD or CD like they used to. In addition, with sites such as Netflix, people can choose to watch whichever movie they want without having to buy them, and the article was trying to understand what this will mean for consumers in the long run.
This article really made me think about intellectual property and how hard it is to regulate and measure. People spend a lot of money on digital content in a lifetime, and our digital libraries grow to be an impressive collection. Not that the monetary value of movies and ebooks would accumulate to a large portion of our total assets, but there would be no way of liquidating them if we ever choose to. The article suggested that consumers should have the right to resell digital content, but I’m not exactly sure how that would work. I don’t think that companies would approve of that idea.
So there are many questions being raised regarding the increase in technology, but it is very hard to predict what the implications of our actions will look like ten years down the road. I believe that it is very important to not move blindly and always be looking ahead. It doesn’t look like we will be switching back to hard copies of disks anytime soon, but it is important to think about what we are doing as we continue to move ahead with technology, just as it is with any venture.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102032952