> That satisfies the definition of "digital only" - every person who has the movie (conceptually speaking) has a digital version of it. This holds true as long as no one tried to print the movie onto paper as an analog image, or export it to VHS or something like that.
The term "digital only" says nothing about being digital versus analog in particular.
> Note that digital does not contrast with physical.
Sure it can.
> I think we can all agree that if you own some coins/tokens/NFTs on Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc., that is a very pure form of digital-only ownership. There is no intuitive physical object that corresponds to the ownership of a digital token.
> Yet, that blockchain database is publicly available and mirrored millions of times; it is not locked up behind a single company. This differs from what you were trying to say, where I interpret your notion of "digital-only" to mean that "the movie studio hosts the file on its server and streams it to you on demand, but you can never download a copy of the movie to keep for yourself".
It's not that the lockup is a fundamental part, but in the streaming case it helps enforce the idea that the movie you get is never properly embodied and only exists in an abstract data pool.
A blockchain has lots of replicas but they're all still abstract database entries. Even a "physical bitcoin" is just the keys and not the entries.
> Ultimately, "digital" just means that the information you wanted is a finite sequence of 0s and 1s, as opposed to some analog signal with infinite variation. "Digital" says nothing about who owns it, how many copies exist, how it is delivered, etc.
I think other uses make sense and fit this context.
The term "digital only" says nothing about being digital versus analog in particular.
> Note that digital does not contrast with physical.
Sure it can.
> I think we can all agree that if you own some coins/tokens/NFTs on Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc., that is a very pure form of digital-only ownership. There is no intuitive physical object that corresponds to the ownership of a digital token.
> Yet, that blockchain database is publicly available and mirrored millions of times; it is not locked up behind a single company. This differs from what you were trying to say, where I interpret your notion of "digital-only" to mean that "the movie studio hosts the file on its server and streams it to you on demand, but you can never download a copy of the movie to keep for yourself".
It's not that the lockup is a fundamental part, but in the streaming case it helps enforce the idea that the movie you get is never properly embodied and only exists in an abstract data pool.
A blockchain has lots of replicas but they're all still abstract database entries. Even a "physical bitcoin" is just the keys and not the entries.
> Ultimately, "digital" just means that the information you wanted is a finite sequence of 0s and 1s, as opposed to some analog signal with infinite variation. "Digital" says nothing about who owns it, how many copies exist, how it is delivered, etc.
I think other uses make sense and fit this context.