Lease or Own?

[Jimmu]

For a while now there has been a move away from buying toward leasing a license to view digital content and the same can be said for hardware - with more recently Apple considering iPhone hardware subscriptions to consumers directly. Do you prefer this type of model or would you rather own your content and/or device?

For music and media I prefer the subscription model and think it suits my needs much better. When it comes to hardware I’m not completely sold yet but would be open to the idea potentially in the future. So long as I’m happy with the terms of any potential agreement in terms of a subscription service then I could probably be convinced to change.

 

[Dizzi]

I think i prefer to own it i think....

 

[Terminus]

I am of the opinion that if you cannot purchase a tool like the newer Adobe software outright and have to pay forever to keep it (and thus paying even more), that piracy is absolutely fine. I am firmly against paying monthly ransoms, let alone to greedy companies (that make a lot of their money from university contracts anyhow).

It's a purely greed-based tactic, and allows the company to cut you off at any time for economic warfare (such as Adobe cancelling Creative Cloud subscriptions in Venezuela).

When it comes to something like Spotify or Netflix, I'm a little more ambivalent, just because that isn't the *only* way to get music or TV shows. I still don't like it, especially because psychologically you think you're not paying that much and let the subscription stands, and all of a sudden you've spent over $100 a year on something you used for like a week total.

 

[~Kilza~]

I would say own rather easily. I would rather have control over any sort of hardware/software/what have you than have a company be able to take it away from me any time they so choose, as well as not wanting to keep paying for something monthly or yearly rather than just being able to buy it one time outright.

 

[TheGreatCthulhu]

It depends on the item in question. Also depends if the payment plan is fair.

 

[M107]

It ultimately depends on the media, but I tend to like a hybrid of both with an emphasis on ownership simply because having that media means it's not subject to someone else's rules on what you do with it.; though certain streaming services can save on me having to rely on storage space where I don't really care to keep it long term and I don't have to worry about syncing it across devices.

As far as hardware goes, a subscription model seems really wasteful. I'd rather the manufacture create a decent product that I can use for 5+ years without replacement but this obviously goes against the capitalist mantra of "perpetual growth to the end of time" and so you have planned obsolescence instead where cell phones for instance don't have an accessible battery anymore, right down to software updates which purposefully create performance penalties for older devices

 

[Dio]

I think that any kind of software should be for sale outright. I know Terminus mentioned Adobe.

It used to be the case that you could buy Adobe Photoshop for instance and then it would be yours to use for life but now you can't actually buy it. You get to use the software for a year and then have to pay again to continue using it.

It is not good to have these ongoing costs especially if software is part of a person's livelihood. The company can then hold the person to ransom and extort them.

I see it as perfectly reasonable to pirate the software in this case.

A lot of people lease cars they can't afford now in my country and I just think it's stupid. If you destroy it then you still have to pay for it and then you end up with nothing when the lease ends. I never heard of leasing phones but that's just as stupid. People are bound to break them and end up having to pay the full cost anyway along with the months of leasing they did first.

I think some subscription services can be worth it like Xbox game pass. It's super cheap and you get to play loads of £50 games. It saves hundreds of pounds.

As for TV streaming. I like Netflix and it has a good selection of shows so I subscribe to it but there is Amazon prime and now Disney + and I don't think many people want to have all these subscriptions on different platforms. It's likely gonna be, pick one and then pirate the good shows from the other two. It should all be integrated and simple with one interfacs. Because unlike Switch and PS4 where you cant really pirate ones games onto the other it's really easy to obtain shows on one device without paying for them and if producers make things difficult for consumers then the eyepatches and hooks are gonna be coming out.

 

[(◕‿◕✿)]

Leasing software (and even worse, hardware) is literally just a corporate scam to make more money on already overpriced garbage and then hoodwink the user out of being able to hold them responsible for producing broken trash because you didn't read the 3.688 page EULA that says the leasing of broken products is mandated by law. It's literally 21st century snakeoil but worse because it has a toxic effect on the entire industry and then more and more developers realize, hey we can sell our garbage to people as a lease and then not have to do anything or be held responsible but also make more money in the long one.

This is literally one of the problems with everything "modern".

 

[Vanessa28]

When you lease things you pay way more than if you would have bought something. Especially with software like Adobe. Membership is around 12/13 euro a month and the software never will be your own. In some cases it sounds very attractive but when you put 1 and 1 together it's not that attractive at all.