When you can't use what you own

When you buy digital content, how long time will it be available? 

Greger Wikstrand wrote about When cloud services disappear and with digital content the problem can be the same. You can't use what you own.

I got this mail from BBC last week and it’s a good description of the challenges with digital media.

Sadly, we have taken the difficult decision to close BBC Store on 1st November 2017. 

Although any programmes you own will still be available to watch until then, from now on we are no longer making programmes available to buy.

Our sincere thanks for being part of BBC Store. We do hope to make the programmes you could only get on BBC Store available elsewhere at some point in the future.

Best wishes

The BBC Store Team

You paid for a digital product, but often, nobody guaranties for how long time you can read it.  For daily newspapers, this may not be a big issue, but for magazines, books, music and film, this is a real issue.

If you buy a physical DVD, as long as you have a DVD-player, you can play the movie.  If you don’t want to have it as a collectable item, then you just rent it for a short period.

With digital media, the line between these two models is a little bit more blurred and customer expectations may not be what the media company delivers.