Why you don’t own the digital content you buy

This is just one of the stories from our “I’ve Always Wondered” series, where we tackle all of your questions about the world of business, no matter how big or small. Ever wondered if recycling is worth it? Or how store brands stack up against name brands? Check out more from the series here.

Virginia Meagher from Tracy, California, asks:

I’ve taken to buying videos as digital editions that stream from Amazon. When my mom passed away, I inherited all her DVDs and VHS tapes, and showed all those Disney films to my kids when they were young. Do I own the digital content I pay for? If something happens to me, can I pass on these digital editions to someone, or do they just disappear? Do we truly own our paid for digital content?

When you buy a DVD or book, you own the physical version of that copy. 

Under the Copyright Act’s first-sale doctrine, you can sell it, give it away, use it as a paperweight or put it in your will, said Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

Not only do consumers have the power to do what they see fit with these materials, but the first-sale doctrine is also financially beneficial for consumers because it stimulates the secondhand economy. 

“You can get things more cheaply, more people get access to them. So someone may not want to pay full price for a hard-cover book or for a CD or for a movie, but they might be willing to pay for a used one at a lower price,” said Timothy Holbrook, a professor at Denver University’s Sturm College of Law.

However, consumers don’t actually own the digital material that they buy. If you’re purchasing a book for, say, your Kindle, you’ve instead obtained a license to use the book, Jenkins explained. 

A company’s terms of agreement will allow you the right to read the digital version of the book, but they’ll prohibit you from selling it. There is no digital first-sale doctrine, Jenkins said. 

In 2012, Capitol Records filed a lawsuit against ReDigi, an online platform that allowed consumers to resell and purchase music files. The courts ruled that ReDigi’s business model was illegal because it involved making unauthorized copies of music files.

Technology known as digital rights management can further control what you do with your purchase. “It might keep you from downloading something to more than a certain number of devices,” Jenkins said. “If you circumvent that DRM under copyright law, you are actually breaking the law.” 

Some companies have infamously revoked consumers’ access to material that they’ve bought– one of the more ironic examples being a case involving George Orwell’s “1984,” a dystopian novel about totalitarianism and surveillance. 

In 2009, Amazon upset readers after it deleted some of the digital editions of the book on their Kindle devices. A company that did not have the rights to these editions added them to the Kindle store, an Amazon spokesperson told the New York Times back then. The spokesperson also noted that these readers received refunds. 

“Anything that you're doing digitally has somebody on the other end who's giving you that access. And that power shift is just tremendous. You don't notice it until you can't read the book that was there anymore,” said Ed Timberlake, a trademark and copyright attorney.

Amazon is still contending with issues over content ownership almost two decades after the “1984” debacle, not just when it comes to books, but film and television as well. 

In early 2025, the tech giant ended your ability to download Kindle books to your computer and vice versa. And later in the year, a customer filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the tech giant, alleging that Amazon Prime Video misleads consumers into thinking they’ve actually purchased a movie or television title even though it can leave the streaming service at any time. 

In the gaming community, consumers are also fighting for continued access to the media they purchased. 

The video game publisher Ubisoft closed the servers for a racing game called “The Crew” back in 2024, leading gamers to file a class-action lawsuit against Ubisoft and launch a movement called Stop Killing Games. The Stop Killing Games movement calls on publishers to implement “an end-of-life plan” that will allow gamers to continue playing a game without further support from the company.

While millions of Americans will continue to stream content and buy digital video games, there’s a reason why some consumers are rediscovering physical media. 

Sometimes it’s nice to own a good old-fashioned hard copy.