[ryandrake]

This is why I advocate both 1. Not tying anything important to you to access to an online account that you don’t host yourself, and 2. Not spending money on digital goods that require further permission from a company to use.

People look at me like I’m wearing tin foil, yet these things keep happening where someone’s account gets suspended or they lose access to $1000 of “purchased” digital goods, and they act all surprised that this could happen!

If it’s not on your computer it’s not yours. And even if it is on your computer, but you need to activate it, it’s still not yours. Don’t complain when your access suddenly gets revoked—you should know better by now.

[reymus]

But it terrifies me that you say it like it's nothing and like this digital "purchasing" thing is something new (I am not disagreeing, on the contrary.)

I have avoided and have never bought anything digital for those reasons, but it really is depressing that these things have not been solved by now.

[ryandrake]

It should be terrifying! You’re handing your hard earned money to a company in exchange for access to something narrowly defined in a 100 page Terms of Service document, written by company lawyers, giving them tons of escape clauses, with no input from you. You’re smart to avoid the trap, but unless other people do also, in large numbers, nothing will change.