We’ve been users of Google Play Movies for years, finding it a good streaming service. Lately, as we scroll through our digital library, we realised we’ve amassed a considerable number of titles. Fortunately, the service grants us library sharing privileges (to a handful of people).
It’s convenient to have the library available on smart phone and the option to cast content to a nearby television. No need to load discs into drives, nor shelve hundreds of DVDs or Blu ray discs. Clean, just the way we like it.
However, what happens to our considerable digital library when we expire? A physical hard-copy library can be given away, but a digital library is locked away behind an account.
We went Googling for an answer,
- https://www.zdnet.com/article/choose-what-happens-to-your-google-account-when-you-die-or-simply-stop-using-it/
- https://www.androidcentral.com/how-prepare-your-google-account-when-you-pass-away
- https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/digital-assets-and-death-who-owns-music-video-e-books-after-you-die.html
but, several articles later, we didn’t find the exact answer to our question: can our library can be permanently passed on to someone of our choosing? No luck there.
Licensing
Whether it be Google Play Movies or iTunes, the licensing arrangement seems to grant streaming viewership to an individual. That license is non-transferable. When we die, so too does our library. That’s a shame. On Google, account holders can nominate executors to recover and preserve important data over a three month grace period. That includes access to our digital library, but that’s no permanent solution.
Purchased licenses are bound to our accounts. Provided the account is kept alive, so too is the library… 🤔