Independent U.S. research on digital ownershipMethodologyCorrections
KeepWhatYouBuy.orgDigital Ownership Project · Est. 2024
About & methodology

About Keep What You Buy

How this project decides what to publish, how states are graded, and how we handle corrections.

Mission

Keep What You Buy is a US-focused education and research project for digital ownership consumer protection: the right to keep, get refunded for, or receive offline copies of digitally licensed purchases — games, video, and music — when platforms revoke access.

We are the research and resource layer, not a campaign. The incident database and state tracker exist to give activists, journalists, consumer organizations, and state legislators verifiable ammunition. Groups like Stop Killing Games run activism in the EU/UK; we document the US picture and make it easy to cite.

Methodology

Three rules govern everything published here:

  1. Every factual claim traces to a source. Incident profiles list their sources, and source URLs get archive.org snapshots at ingest as link-rot insurance. No sources, no publish.
  2. Human review is absolute. Drafting is machine-assisted, but nothing is published without a human editor verifying claims against sources. Anything inferred rather than sourced is marked UNVERIFIED in the draft and resolved before publication.
  3. Neutral, factual tone. We document company actions, never company intent. We do not editorialize inside incident profiles.

State grading methodology

Each reviewed state receives an A–F grade for its digital purchase protections. The grade reflects statute on the books, not enforcement vigor, weighted as follows:

  • Disclosure — does state law require sellers to disclose that a digital “purchase” is a revocable license? (CA AB 2426 is the template.)
  • Restitution — does state law require a refund when a paid digital good is revoked?
  • Continuity — does state law require an offline copy, end-of-life patch, or equivalent when access ends?
  • General consumer protection hooks — strength of the state's UDAP/false-advertising law as applied to digital goods.

A state with all four is an A; disclosure-only lands around B; nothing beyond a generic UDAP statute grades D–F. Ungraded (gray) states have not been reviewed — we assign no grade without a completed review. Full scoring notes appear on each state's page as reviews complete.

Corrections

We maintain a public, dated corrections log. If you find an error, email corrections@keepwhatyoubuy.org with the page URL and the source that contradicts us. Verified corrections are fixed and logged.

Who runs this

Keep What You Buy is an independent research project operated as an LLC. It is not affiliated with any platform, storefront, or publisher. The site is funded by reader donations and clearly labeled affiliate links on educational pages only — never inside incident profiles. Sponsorships, if any, are always labeled.