What Does Digital Goods Mean?
Digital goods refers to any goods that are sold, delivered
and transferred in digital form. Many of the most common examples of digital
goods are media files, including music files, video files containing movies or
television programming, branded multimedia files and other similar types of
products.
Techopedia Explains Digital Goods
One of the biggest issues with digital goods is intellectual
property protection. Because digital goods are sold in such a versatile and
transferable format, producers and distributors have to make sure that they are
packaged in technologies that are relatively immune to piracy or illegal
sharing. For example, see the thorny emergence of digital rights management or
DRM wrapping for Apple iTunes files. Many believe Apple went too far in
controlling what devices the files can be played on, although the company
maintains that DRM wrapper technology is mainly to protect IP. These issues
often surround digital goods and their sale and use, and have spawned U.S. laws such as the SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act and other initiatives.
