| Open source is a technical detail. One can see a less drastical change that will have the same effect. 1. Update the laws so that the shenanigans of the companies are finally named as they are: - Retroactively removing a feature is stealing from the owner. - Deleting bought digital content is also stealing from the owner. - Spying on a user is an unlawful search. 2. Make these transgressions be investigated by the prosecutor's office, so that a citizen only needs to report it to them and not figure out how to get a class lawsuit going. This will allow security researchers to do their job. 3. Classify devices with unpatched and unpatcheable security bugs as "unfit for use" and eligible for a full unconditional refund, and extend warranties on them to, say, 15 years. 4. Obviously, make any kind of security research legal and protected from intimidation by the companies. |
The fundamental problem lies here: you haven't actually bought anything useful. You didn't buy content, you bought a license, and that license is merely "you might be able to view content in a very specific way for an unspecified amount of time that is completely at our discretion".
You still have what you bought when they revoke the license, it's just in a different and less useful state.
That whole system needs to be crushed into dust to make a real difference. Make it so that buying a license to content isn't a thing - that you are now actually buying content - and all of the things that come with ownership will follow.
But I don't see any viable path to that happening. A sightly more possible outcome would be to have a minimum standards/requirements for digital content purposes - a set of required rights/restrictions/components for any digital purchase the all licenses must incorporate or cannot compromise on.