Today, the Internet Archive, alongside a coalition of public interest organizations, library groups, and consumer advocates, supports Senator Ron Wyden’s call for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to protect consumers in the digital marketplace. In a letter to FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, we urge the Commission to clarify what constitutes a true “sale” of digital goods. In an era where digital purchases can vanish without warning, true sales are exceedingly rare. The public deserves transparency and, ultimately, the same enduring ownership rights they expect when buying physical items—the rights to use, preserve, and transfer.
Real-world examples have shown how easy it is for these rights to be undermined in the digital marketplace: from Amazon’s deletion of Orwell’s classic 1984 from Kindles, to Microsoft’s closure of its ebook store, to Sony stripping purchased Discovery shows from users’ libraries. These incidents expose the gap between consumer expectations of a sale and corporate practices that fall far short of true ownership. When companies advertise a “sale,” but retain the power to revoke access, it is not just misleading—it erodes public trust, undermines libraries’ ability to preserve access to knowledge, and harms everyday people who believe they are purchasing something permanent.
Our message to the FTC is clear: if digital goods can be deleted, disabled, or restricted after purchase, they should not be marketed as “sales.” With strong federal guidance on what it means to truly own digital products, consumers, creators, libraries, and the public can enjoy a more trustworthy and transparent digital future.
Read the full letter urging the FTC to stand up for digital ownership rights here.
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In a letter to FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, we urge the Commission to clarify what constitutes a true “sale” of digital goods.
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There is a corollary to this: physical devices that are wholly dependent on being able to “phone home” to servers maintained by the manufacturer in order to work. Ask Jibo* owners, Revolv smart home hub** purchasers, and Sony Dash*** adopters how much use they have gotten out of these things lately.
“Owning” a physical device means very little if the manufacturer can render it useless overnight by shutting down the servers it needs to talk to, failing to provide needed software updates, or Just Plain Deciding they don’t feel like supporting it anymore…so starting tomorrow, they won’t.
At present, I am not aware of anything that protects consumers from manufacturers who decide to render the device they have just bought (or rather, *thought* they just bought) useless for any reason or no reason at all. If society is going to define what constitutes a sale and what doesn’t in the realm of digital media, telling manufacturers that they are obliged to support a physical device for a minimum of X number of months/years after they sell it to a luckless consumer might not be a bad idea either.
*https://www.wired.com/story/jibo-is-dying-eulogy/
**https://www.wired.com/2016/04/nests-hub-shutdown-proves-youre-crazy-buy-internet-things/
***https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Dash