They don't own anything. It's just a pointer and length. They don't allocate/deallocate.
Imagine you go to a library and insist on borrowing "My Cousin Rachel", but they don't have it. "Oh I don't care whether you have the book, I just want to borrow it" is clearly nonsense. If they don't have it, you can't borrow it.
> D doesn't distinguish between a string and a string view.
In C++ std::string owns the buffer and std::string_view borrows it. If there is no difference between the two in D, then how is this difference bridged?