11 ms·

The case for physical media ownership

• smusamashah 3mo ago
  Doesn't license of some media asks you to destroy the physical copies in certain cases? It's all in the license.
• evrydayhustling 3mo ago
  > A Blu-ray disc, game cartridge, or printed book cannot be remotely erased, edited, or deactivated. It is a physical object you can own, resell, lend, archive, or play offline indefinitely. Isn't this untrue with surprising frequency? Decoding devices phone home, come under new copyright laws, etc etc etc.
  • mr_toad 3mo ago
    Blu ray discs can only (legally) be played in licensed devices, and some of the decryption keys can and have been revoked.
    • zephen 3mo ago
      Key revocation only affects future disc releases.
      • microgpt 3mo ago
        AIUI every disc is mastered with the latest revocation list. When your device sees that it is revoked by any disc, it bricks itself.
        • zephen 3mo ago
          > When your device sees that it is revoked by any disc, it bricks itself. Do you have a citation for that? I don't believe it, partly because I can imagine the sort of class action it would engender. There are reports of bricked players on the internet, and unbricking, but those mostly seem to have been caused by bad firmware updates. The wikipedia page on AACS only mentions revocations affecting future content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Access_Content_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Access_Content_System
          • ssl-3 3mo ago
            AFAICT, you're right. A standalone offline player that can play Movie A today will be continue to be allowed to play Movie A forever. Subsequently-purchased movies B, C, and/or D may or may not work (because of shenanigans like key revocations systems), but Movie A still plays fine even after these later titles have been introduced. It's ugly, but it's not quite a brick. The ugly part is shaped like this: A person buys a new movie and it doesn't work. They can't return the movie to the store because it's been opened, so now they're left with a disc they can't use and with less money than they had before. (Solutions include figuring out how to update the player's firmware if it's still supported, spending more money on a newer player, or becoming an Amish leatherworker and forgetting about all of this nonsense for the rest of their days.)
            • microgpt 3mo ago
              Possible solutions include small claims court. You can't refuse a refund for a defective product just because you had to open the box to find out it was defective.
              • zephen 3mo ago
                Yeah, the distributed responsibility might make this difficult, but maybe not impossible. Is the disc defective because it doesn't play in a labeled player, or is the player defective because it doesn't play a labeled disc? Can the licensing body be held responsible? In point of fact, you'd probably get your money back in small claims court just by suing the store, with evidence that your player plays other discs, just not this particular disc. Unfortunately, that doesn't really fix the problem, so much as show that an angry-enough consumer with time, energy, and money, can usually get a token of recompense.
                • microgpt 3mo ago
                  I think by default it's whichever one you bought later. The judge may tell you it's the other one. But it doesn't matter because either way the store has to issue a refund.
• blfr 3mo ago
  Just pirate it. They can't tell you this but there's a quagmire of rights, licenses, agreements, treaties... and you can untangle this Goridan Knot by just pirating, especially media, for your own use. There are pixel perfect 4k drm-free rips out there made by people who poured thousands of hours into understanding codecs. They will work on any platform, forever, you can stream them or play offline. These rips can be freely distributed to friends and family, your kids will be able to play them, they're easy to back up. Physical media are a legacy solution. And it doesn't stop you from getting a revocable or whatever other license the creators prefer to fund their work.
  • maciuz 3mo ago
    Exactly. I pirate eBooks and buy a physical copy when I come around to reading them. Unrelated to the content: Claude really likes tags
    • warumdarum 3mo ago
      You wouldnt train a llm to swede movies...
  • bpavuk 3mo ago
    believe it or not, but pirated copies can be better a thousandfold than what paying customers get. whenever I want to play Deathloop, I download it from torrents despite "owning" it on Steam, all because Denuvo really likes my SSD, and whenever I want to go online, then, well, yeah, I have to suffer. still, not regretting the purchase, cuz this money went to Arkane.
  • ryukoposting 3mo ago
    When buying isn't owning...
  • ryandrake 3mo ago
    Another thing that always needs pointing out: that ad-free, copyable, unencumbered, pixel perfect 4K drm-free rip with multiple language audio streams, hand crafted accurate subtitles, chapter tags, and embedded poster art cannot be bought from the movie industry at any price. That's why piracy is a product problem, not a price problem. The industry refuses to produce and offer the superior product, so regardless of the price, piracy is the only way to get it.
• drooby 3mo ago
  I mean.. this claim is just untrue. "Owning" something is a social construct defined by law. Our entire society exists because we own things we cannot hold, that is, intellectual property. What this post is actually pointing out is that intellectual property that has transferrable physical representation has more value to the consumer. And intellectual property that does not have transferable physical representation has more value to the producer. Reselling or gifting a book you've read to a friend is wholesome.. it feels good. Truly.. but every time we do that we also take from the artist.
  • andai 3mo ago
    >our entire society exists because of intellectual property Are you sure that's true? If so, in which century did it start being true?
    • drooby 3mo ago
      There was a touch of hyperbole ;) we live in the Information Age after all.. but to answer your question, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution Which empowered Congress to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Scientists and the artists and their "exclusive rights" have built quite a lot over the centuries.
    • jfengel 3mo ago
      From the beginning. Ownership is intangible. It exists only because of the collective consent to laws. The difference between ownership of a physical object and ownership of an intellectual one is a matter of conventional. It's easier to define ownership of an object that is excludable, but that's human convenience, not a physical law.
      • TacticalCoder 3mo ago
        Some dogs have a concept of items belonging to them. Early humans had weapons and, with our lizard mind, things wouldn't go well when neanderthal B considered neanderthal A's weapon was now is. They also had "homes": caves/camps that belonged to them. Fighting physically for ownership predates fighting judicially for ownership. To the extent that you can "own" another animal: the ownership of a female by a male is definitely a thing in the animal kingdom. And before the first law was ever written, human slavery (estimated to be at least 4000 BC, with mentions in the first law ever written) did exist too. Ownership predates the law that later on codified the concept of ownership.
• CodesInChaos 3mo ago
  Unfortunately many game disks only contain a downloader nowadays and you often need to bind them to an account to play. Plus the version on disk without updates is probably buggy. Baldur's Gate 3 Collector's edition is an example that has a disk, but isn't really any better than a Steam key. On the other hand you can back up a DRM free download, like the games on GOG, despite these being a purely digital download. So overall I don't think the physical form matters that much compared to DRM.
  • add-sub-mul-div 3mo ago
    It's disgusting how a previously open platform for gaming (PC) was turned into what it's become with Steam. Young people either don't know or don't care that it used to be the norm to buy and install a game without a middleman "service".
    • doginasuit 3mo ago
      That argument has been harder to make with time. A couple years ago I made the difficult decision to get rid of some old game copies. I wasn't realistically going to use them ever again, and the sentimental value for me is entirely about the memory, not the media. Part of my steam collection is nearly as old and it is on track to greatly outlast. It is also significantly easier to own and use in just about every aspect, even if it is technically just a revocable license. Beyond that, Steam and the digital media model allowed a great many people to publish games that wouldn't otherwise have been able to publish games. It made the indie world of games possible. It also did more than anyone to bridge the platform gap between windows and linux.
      • cube00 3mo ago
        I'm really worried about what will happen to Valve when Gabe retires. I can see a bean counter making a very convincing case that it's cheaper to go back to Windows and avoid all this Linux reverse engineering gubbins which isn't bringing in an immediate profit, especially when they're giving away all theirs efforts by open sourcing Proton.
• andai 3mo ago
  https://xkcd.com/1150/ https://xkcd.com/1150/
• ForceBru 3mo ago
  > Streaming services rent you access. Digital stores sell you a license that can be taken away. Physical media gives you an object that is yours, offline, and in your hands. > > Physical media can be given away, inherited, or found at a thrift store decades from now. A digital license becomes inaccessible when an account is closed or deleted. A vinyl record or printed book can remain usable across generations. Right, so "they" can (and do) take away your purchased content basically at any time. You don't even purchase the actual content anymore. Is anyone actually doing anything about it? How successful are they? The only well-known way of actually owning your content seems to be piracy.
  • ghaff 3mo ago
    Or, for certain content, buying the CD, DVD, or book.
  • 1313ed01 3mo ago
    It bothers me that my large collection of legally bought, drm-free, works (ebooks and digital games, mostly) will basically transform into illegal warez for my heirs, as I understand the law. They can still legally watch my DVDs, read my printed books, but my collection of tabletop RPG PDFs, GOG games, etc, they may as well have downloaded from some shady torrent site? That does not feel right. Especially not since many things I bought, like from Humble Bundles, have not been available drm-free since, and may never be, so all legal drm-free copies will expire as the generation that bought them passes away?
• QuiCasseRien 3mo ago
  > The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it. Frank Herbert, Dune
  • mc32 3mo ago
    So like large asteroids have absolute power over us? I think we do what we want come hell or high water.
  • orbital-decay 3mo ago
    I can destroy my smartphone in a second, yet I still don't control it.
    • Forgeties79 3mo ago
      Yes you do, you control your access. If you destroy it, you’ve lost access.
• simianwords 3mo ago
  I don't buy the strange fascination with owning physical things. The other side of this is something no one speaks about: Spotify, youtube made it possible for me to listen to _any_ music from anywhere. This kind of profound open access to art should not just be dismissed. The concerns about price increase are laughable because without spotify I wouldn't be exposed to this music in the first place. I think the obsession with owning it physically is because of many reasons 1. a sense of identity forms when the access to own things has barrier - a whole niche/hobby forms with owning vinyl that is separate from the art itself 2. there is a sense of loss of agency when the art you like is taken away from you - this unpredictability is one of the few reasons I agree with the article 3. subscription services allow normies access to all the same art that you might have had access and dilutes your own identity 4. owning tangible things is just nicer - there's no better way to put it Overall there's a tradeoff that subscription services give vs what they take away. I'm not very obsessed with art enough that I need to purchase them physically. Personally, youtube is all I need.
  • jgorn 3mo ago
    I'm going to take a safe bet and guess that you are quite young. If you grew up in any past era where owning a physical 'thing' was the default, you naturally feel the inherent lack of ownership in a digital version of that same thing. If you grow up in a time of mega platforms that can give you almost all of a certain media type for a subscription fee, the idea of lining up at midnight to pay 3x that fee for one plastic disc from one artist/publisher must sound insane and suboptimal. It was a good time though.
    • simianwords 3mo ago
      Would you be able to explain why you liked owning things that isn't already explained by my points 1) 2) 3) 4)? I'm guessing its just a feral fascination of owning a physical thing rather than an abstract thing which was my last point. But I think it is that but with a combination of limited supply - owning something even physical, if it is abundant, defeats the purpose.
      • 3mo ago
• ermantrout 3mo ago
  My ps3 disc reader os broken and the only games i can play are digital games. At anyppint they can shut down the servers and the game that i boight wont be available anymore
• foobarbecue 3mo ago
  I bought a Kindle copy of Steven Baxter's novel Ring. One day, I decided to re-read it and downloaded it to a new device. It had changed from the English edition to the German translation! Amazon eventually admitted that this was some kind of glitch, but they were uninterested in fixing it. I got a refund, but there was no way for me to read the book.
  • stavros 3mo ago
    Arr, aye there be!
    • AnimalMuppet 3mo ago
      No need for piracy. Since they gave him a refund, he could just buy a copy. If they refused to refund his money, then... yeah, it does make you want to hoist the black flag, doesn't it?
      • stavros 3mo ago
        Since he already owns a copy, I don't think he can buy another, unless it's a physical book.
      • foobarbecue 3mo ago
        There is actually no legally available English version of this ebook now, so if you want the ebook piracy is the only option. Presumably Amazon still has the rights to sell it, but due to a technical glitch and disinterest, they aren't.
• threetonesun 3mo ago
  Physical things take up space and degrade over time. In a world where operating systems and software control licensing owning physical media is barely better than digital except for potentially reselling it. Enjoy something when you enjoy it, however you enjoy it. In the end you can’t keep anything but that.
  • delichon 3mo ago
    I recently passed on some of my favorite books to a nephew. Probably nobody will break into his house and take the books off of his shelves when a license agreement expires. I'd like to be able to do the same with GTA 6 if it's good, but it looks like that would require hacking.
  • ThrowawayTestr 3mo ago
    Does having a hard drive full of mp4s count as holding it?
    • carra 3mo ago
      If they have no DRM, I would say it does!
  • ralusek 3mo ago
    Given my memory these days, I can't keep that either.
  • rhinoceraptor 3mo ago
    Discs can rot, but I would still take a large blu-ray collection over a large MKV collection stored digitally. The odds that your entire blu-ray collection will all rot are much lower than a catastrophic data loss. And most people are not good enough sysadmins to keep a collection of digital files from being lost over decades. And even more so when the digital files are pirated, which makes them more or less fungible, they can be redownloaded so investing in backups is not a priority.
    • dd8601fn 3mo ago
• axegon_ 3mo ago
  It's a bit more subtle than that, I'm afraid. In many instances lately, physically owning a product no longer means that you own it: the fact that BMW tried to introduce subscriptions for heated seats, VW blocking out Graphene users from connecting their phones to their cars, Insta360 asking you to install their app to use their camera, which does not need to be connected to a cloud service to function, bambu labs trying to shutdown open source projects, the list goes on - that's manufacturers openly denying you from owning the products you paid for(and can hold). There's another side to that as well: many people (contentiously or not) realized that when something is free, then you are the product. Now look at penai, anthropic, google, etc. Anyone that has basic GCSE level math skills can work out that their pricing does not cover their costs. Some people are in denial about it, some don't care and some truly believe that they are not the product cause they pay what is effectively a symbolic subscription. Or all three, but still, you are paying for something you don't own. I don't come from a wealthy family and when I was a kid, all the software I used for making dumb games like flash, photoshop, etc were pirated. Same with music and movies. Eventually I switched over to Linux and open source projects. When I grew up and could finally afford those things, it only felt right to pay for a netflix subscription, spotify and whatnot. But due to the vile invasion in my personal space and the 0 guarantee that I'll have access to my favourite song the next morning, I got fed up and went back to self-hosting and pirating(to a degree). One of my best friends is a musician and I know that spotify is a big f-u to most artists since they have a winner-takes-all policy which makes me feel a lot less guilty. And frankly, if it is something I enjoy, I'll just head on over to the artist's website and buy a digital copy as a form of gratitude(even though I have often already downloaded the music): an album which I had very high hopes for dropped yesterday, I listened to it, liked it, downloaded it and bought a digital copy about an hour ago. Despite having it on my navidrome library since last night. At the end of the day, the artist will get a better compensation that way compared to what they'd get if I was listening to them on spotify, even on repeat. So while the author has the right idea, sadly it's only part of the story.
  • deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
• brookst 3mo ago
  TIL I don’t own my thoughts :(
  • deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
• functionmouse 3mo ago
  I don't like this sentiment. There's plenty of things you can hold but you don't really own. You're probably holding one right now!
  • Rohansi 3mo ago
    There are also things you can hold and not own!
  • CharlesW 3mo ago
    [Deleted note about submitter editorializizing title]
    • cemdervis 3mo ago
      For transparency: That was the previous title of the page. I since changed many things on that site and reworded some fluff. Cheers.
• cube00 3mo ago
  Sony's one sentence notice is pretty grim considering how much money they made from these sales (sorry licensing). From September 1, 2026, due to our content licensing agreements, you will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal, and it will be removed from your video library. Thank you, PlayStation Store [1] At least in 2023 it was two sentences and then they somehow negotiated new licencing arrangements after the massive backlash 10 days before the end date. [2] Guess we'll see if this clawback has the same backlash. [1]: https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/legal/psvideocontent/ https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/legal/psvideocontent/ [2]: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/
  • archerx 3mo ago
    That “Thank you” comes off as a strong “Fuck you”.
    • Henchman21 3mo ago
      As an ex-Sony employee, that is deeply held cultural belief: Sony doesn’t do anything wrong. It is absolutely a fuck you.
      • deleted 3mo ago
        [deleted]
      • nik282000 3mo ago
        It drives me nuts that Sony makes some of the absolute best cameras on the market while being douche canoes in every other aspect. Bambu Labs has definitely taken that lesson to heart in producing great hardware that crushes consumer rights.
        • autoexec 3mo ago
          Disney is the same way. They hire some of the most talented and creative people on Earth to make wonderful works of art and then act like complete assholes in every other aspect of their business.
• dzonga 3mo ago
  however - we can be idealistic - but when the rubber touches the road, a lot of things happen. indie games only exploded due to being digital only, if Indies were to publish physical copies they would go out of business or they would be less of them. a lot of people complain about amazon - but It has provided an avenue for out of print books to continue being sold - through on demand printing. yeah physical products gets extinct too. the era of the cheap dvd movie financed a lot of independent films - streaming killed that. so like everything in life - you win some, you lose some. & yeah - if you can't hold it - you don't own it.
• carra 3mo ago
  This article is quite right, but there's even more to it than that. Why should we need to hold ANY kind of relationship with the seller/provider of an article we bought? You certainly don't need a bookstore account to buy a paperback book. Nor do they get to keep your contact information. You get your article and a ticket. They get your money. End of story.
  • brookst 3mo ago
    Goods / services. You probably need a relationship to use a warranty. The tension is that digital goods are somewhere between. Especially when the delivery mechanism is streaming, and/or DRM keys that need to be renewed. Sure, many people want a one-time download with no promise or obligation to re-deliver it in the future. Then again, many people don’t want the burden of caring for bytes for the rest of their lives and prefer to download on demand. This whole thing is basically just “different people want different models of commerce for digital content”
    • carra 3mo ago
      > The tension is that digital goods are somewhere between. That's the thing. If they are truly goods, they cannot be in between! Otherwise they are being handled as services and as such they will be terminated at some point. So unless we redefine the word, a true "purchase" can never depend on future actions from the provider (like renewing some DRM).
      • brookst 3mo ago
        So no purchasing a warranty or service contract?
        • joquarky 3mo ago
          Who still purchases a warranty a la carte? Hasn't it been clearly established for at least a couple decades now that all of these are de facto scams?
    • 3mo ago
• dijit 3mo ago
  In some cases, even if you hold it you don't own it. I tend to purchase a lot of blu-rays, in fact if I don't buy the movie on Apple iTunes then it's almost always the case that I buy the blu-ray; then once I have the blu-ray I go to the torrent sites and download a version of the movie. Why? Because I earn enough money that I feel like I have no excuse not to buy my media: but I also want it to be my media; and torrenting is more convenient than using blu-rays. The blu-rays have one more major benefit than iTunes or the torrents though: if I'm ever without internet or my NAS dies... well, I can just dump a disc into my console and watch whatever movie I was going to watch anyway. One time I was moving apartments, there was no internet and I hadn't set up my computers yet; decided to watch a movie with my girlfriend, grabbed a disc and set up the playstation. Lo-and-behold... it didn't work. Why? -- not because the disk was broken, not because the playstation had broken: but because I didn't have internet access. The playstation has to connect to the internet to play blu-rays. I didn't know of this because I always just used torrents and had the disks as a "license"... So I tried my laptop: no dice either, VLC refused to play, Linux had a really bad time. I tried with my macbook, of course no macbook came with a blu-ray player, and the one I had needed two USB-A slots, so it was a ball-ache to get the thing hooked up and I finally got something working by hotspotting my phone and googling around. Anyway, what the fuck. It was at that moment I realised; even physically owning things isn't actually owning them anymore. I still don't technically pirate, but I no longer feel even the slightest derision for those that do, and I work in the entertainment industry where piracy puts people out of work (I've seen it).
  • protimewaster 3mo ago
    For what it's worth, if it was a PS4, they only require internet access the first time a Blu-ray is played. And, I don't mean the first time a specific Blu-ray is played, but the first time any Blu-ray video is played. My guess is that Sony didn't want to pay the licensing fees for every PS4, so, the first time you play a Blu-ray, it connects to Sony to get a license. From then on, you can play them without internet.
    • dijit 3mo ago
      Doesn’t feel very reliable, the time I needed it- it didn’t work. What happens when those servers go offline? What happens if I reinstall the PS4? Sony was the principle architect of Blu-Ray, if even they can’t build a system that comes with decryption keys then who can? Blu-Ray players don’t have access to the internet, do they? Also, yeah, my PC not working was part of the issue.
• doginasuit 3mo ago
  It is important to weigh the transient nature of any purchase. A physical copy may be lost, damaged, stolen, become unusable due to lack of hardware, or just start to take up enough space that you decide its time to let it go. In real life, as revocable as they may be, my digital purchases have withstood the test of time far better than my physical copy purchases. It matters who you buy from. It is understandably different for something you find value in having a physical collection.
• knaik94 3mo ago
  I agree with the sentiment implied by the author, but I would reword it slightly. If you don't have the freedom to share something, you don't own it. I disagree with the interpretation that it needs to be held physically. Digital ownership is still ownership. I go out of my way to find music on Bandcamp, games on GOG, and rip movies myself using MakeMKV. I wish I could encourage people to continue embracing physical media but most people value convenience over true ownership. And most companies value market capture and "security" over user rights. In crypto the sentiment of "not your keys, not your wallet" is held a core truth, yet people use 2factor authentication and Passkeys without respecting the same truth. I am not arguing against the use of 2factor, but at the same time certain accounts can not be logged into freely without push notifications in Duo or Microsoft. I still don't see a universal ability to export Passkeys, and I believe that's by design. I hope laws catch up to modern technology in terms of digital goods. I can't imagine companies choosing to open up their walled gardens otherwise.
  • nullhole 3mo ago
    > I disagree with the interpretation that it needs to be held physically. Digital ownership is still ownership. I go out of my way to find music on Bandcamp, games on GOG, and rip movies myself using MakeMKV. Files on a hard disk that you own are still files that you physically own. The only difference between those files and, say, a DVD, is that the encoding is more space-efficient.
    • AlotOfReading 3mo ago
      The parent's point is that possession of a physical good is a bright line separation. For digital files, there's a huge difference between [Files you own] on a hard disk, and files [on a hard disk you own]. There are files you can put on a hard drive that you don't own and will ultimately kill themselves when specified criteria are met, like DRM'd ebooks.
      • nik282000 3mo ago
        I would argue that the files on your hdd that can expire or made unusable by some remote third party are as incomplete as a book that is missing half the pages. For example a keepass file without the password/key-file is incomplete, the same goes for Audible aax files that can not be played without per-user 'activation bytes.' You have possession of the file but you never owned its contents.
• teekert 3mo ago
  And if you can hold it, sometimes you still don’t own it.
• Foobar8568 3mo ago
  Dog eat dog Amped album is not present on Apple music and I suspect several streaming platform, and Remedy never again is not present on it as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(album)
• Bender 3mo ago
  I agree with the intent of the article but for what it's worth does not have to be physical. I have digital music and movies that can not be remotely disabled, censored, changed to fit current societies norms. The problem is when the dependency is on servers that belong to someone else or are controlled by someone else. I can self host my own instances of Ampache or just plain old HTTPS with auto-index enabled or SFTP or anything of my choosing. I qualify those as ownership assuming the digital media does not have some embedded code to reference a remote server and anything resembling an embedded license is stripped out. For sure I will hold onto my CD's and DVD's forever. I regret selling off a lot of vinyl.
• mv4 3mo ago
  My personal definition is if you can't resell it, you don't own it.
• geor9e 3mo ago
  As long as we're nitpicking every sense of the word "own", the strongest legal sense means you're the copyright holder, and every sense downstream of that is some lesser license. Buying a disc is a license to view the intellectual property, subject to various restrictions like only showing it within your personal home.
  • ooterness 3mo ago
    If the disc is an abstract license, surely the seller will replace the disc if it's scratched. I already bought the license, so what is the real purpose of the physical token? Somehow the concept of ownership has been twisted to so that obligations only flow in one direction. Rules for thee, not for me.
    • wilg 3mo ago
      The point OP is making is that it's not the concept of ownership that has been twisted, there just never was ownership of media beyond owning the actual copyright. Everything else is licensing.
  • cassianoleal 3mo ago
    > various restrictions like only showing it within your personal home Are you implying that lending the disc to a friend so they can watch in their own home is forbidden? Or taking the disc to the friend's place to watch together?
    • wilg 3mo ago
      No, those aren't the restrictions. But there are restrictions. First-sale doctrine allows lending. But you are not allowed to play the movie in, say, a restaurant, theater, or other public place.
      • cassianoleal 3mo ago
        That's fine, but that's very different from what the post to which I was responding said.
• shantara 3mo ago
  My go to example (that unfortunately wasn’t mentioned in the article) is the removal of a game called Oxenfree from everyone who bought a permanent license for it on Itch.io. This is the most egregious example I’m aware of, as the game wasn’t merely made unavoidable for new purchases, but removed from the players’ libraries. It’s not a theoretical example of what could possibly happen, but an actual precedent. https://delistedgames.com/oxenfree/ https://delistedgames.com/oxenfree/
• al_borland 3mo ago
  I think DRM and streaming are the issues here, not digital vs physical. For example, I can buy DRM free music from the iTunes Store, download the files, and they’re mine. I can play them back on anything that supports the file type, convert the files, back them up, etc. Meanwhile, if I check a book out from the library, I can hold it, it’s physical, but it’s not mine and I can’t do whatever I want to it.
  • win311fwg 3mo ago
    > I can buy DRM free music from the iTunes Store, download the files, and they’re mine. If you hold the copyright they are yours, but most files downloaded from iTunes and similar services are unlikely to be yours. A license to use the content, even where there are few restrictions, is not ownership.
    • al_borland 3mo ago
      If holding the copyright is the bar, then physical media doesn’t give that either. Buying a physical book doesn’t transfer the copyright to me. I can start producing more copies and selling them, at least not legally.
      • win311fwg 3mo ago
        > Buying a physical book doesn’t transfer the copyright to me. Correct. Who was under the impression that it does? > I can[not] start producing more copies and selling them, at least not legally. Unless you own it. Someone out there will be the owner. Sometimes that might be you; but typically not.
• scuderiaseb 3mo ago
  As they say, piracy is the only true ownership.
• robalni 3mo ago
  It's time we change the economy for digital products and services. * The current economy is bad: The company that can require or lure the most money from people wins. * This would be better: The company that is liked by most people wins. That one change would solve sooo many problems. We could get rid of a lot of laws that wouldn't be needed any more.
  • kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3mo ago
    What do you mean by "wins"? Because if the company is publicly traded, "win" means "value for stockholders", and that doesn't necessarily translate to "liked by customers."
• globular-toast 3mo ago
  Seems the title has been editorialised, but "holding it" is a rather low bar when considering ownership. I think of ownership as having the right to modify or destroy something.
• rich_sasha 3mo ago
  I think DRM is frankly a lot more of a consumer education/rights thing than some kind of outright evil. Buy a DVD for X, or "own" a DRM version for Y<X - why not. It's a bargain I'm happy to strike, or at least I appreciate the option. The issue starts when: - vendors don't make it clear that they can pull the rug - or indeed can pull the rug for no reason. A bank can close my bank account, but not for no reason - and they can't hold on to my money just because. It should be the same with DRM-protected assets - people don't understand the tradeoff they're making. It's like complaining about reckless overspending in credit cards leading to insane interest. Yes, it's partly to do with the product, equally credit cards totally have their use when used responsibly, and a healthy society has people understanding the differences.
  • Telaneo 3mo ago
    > Buy a DVD for X, or "own" a DRM version for Y<X - why not. One the one hand, yes, on the other hand, the DRM-free option is often non-existent (and if you want to include DVD and blu-rays in that pile, because they too do have DRM, just that you can bypass it with ease these days, DRMed media is probably the default). If I could buy a copy for X, a DRMed copy for X minus Y, and a rug-pullable version for X minus Y and Z, then I might even buy the cheapest option every now and then if it's just throwaway. As it is though, a plain DRM-free copy is often completely unavailable (unless you sail the high seas).
    • rich_sasha 3mo ago
      I suppose you can't force people to sell you the license you want. Someone might reasonably develop some land, build flats and only rent them out, no obligation to sell them. But then you regulate what the landlord can and cannot do.
      • Telaneo 3mo ago
        Agreed. If we had regulated and non-insane DRM, we wouldn't be in this pickle.
• locao 3mo ago
  I'm curious what would take for regular people (i.e. people off HN) to realize what is pointed in the article is a real problem. In my experience, every time I mention this I'm labeled as: nostalgic old guy, Don Quixote wannabe, tinfoil hat supporter, pirate nerd who doesn't understand people just want convenience. I've seen people bit by losing access to purchased content shrug and say "yeah, that's bad isn't it? at least I was able to watch it before they removed it". Sometimes I feel that's a lost battle. People were put to boil just like the frog in the anecdote and keep swearing it's a hot bath.
  • xandrius 3mo ago
    The battle is alive and well, pirating has never been easier and of this high quality. Support the creators however you want but go foster an environment around your friends and family that there are alternatives to paying evil companies who will remove your access to content willy nilly.
    • locao 3mo ago
      The problem today it's hard to convince even myself to pay the storage premium, but I 100% agree with you.
      • xandrius 3mo ago
        Premium? Sure things are more expensive but you can get 1TB hdd for 25-30 eur. You don't need an ssd and I'm sure you can find second hand drives even cheaper (or larger). Starting a subscription is money down the drain.
        • account42 3mo ago
          A 1TB HDD doesn't store that many high bit-rate 4K movies.
    • wilg 3mo ago
      You actually have to support the creators however THEY want if you want access, not however YOU want. I suspect you're not actually supporting all the creators of the things you watch via piracy!
• selectively 3mo ago
  [dead]
• arjie 3mo ago
  Usually you create shorthand rules because you want to Have a heuristic to detect things that you don’t want to do lots of thinking for. So the rule has edges it doesn’t match well on and so on. That’s all very well. But was this rule necessary? I don’t need to do a lot of computation in most cases to tell where I land and the edge cases are worsened by the rule. So it’s not helping me make decisions. So I own a DVD but someone (Amazon, the government) can delete something out of my Kindle library. Fine, but I didn’t need the rule to help me with that. It’s very apparent. And then there’s the question of owning not conferring all rights. I own my body but I can’t sell parts of it. Are the embryos my wife and I have made ours? Transferring them without the clinic approving isn’t really feasible. So the word “own” doesn’t mean much to me on its own and I don’t need to use this rule because I can somewhat tell where I have power no one can take from me and where I don’t.
• JumpinJack_Cash 3mo ago
  The sad thing is that it's also true for money. Cash that you can hold in your hand it's yours, whereas the cash that you own at the bank is a IOU subject to the contract that you sign .
  • nik282000 3mo ago
    Cash in hand can be rendered equally worthless by an adverserial government that drives down its value by printing more.
    • JumpinJack_Cash 3mo ago
      That's true but not instantaneously , but I get your point. Gasoline, diesel, bullets, firearms, explosives, water, canned food, lubricants, soil, seeds are the only thing that are truly yours and cannot be taken from you or diluted into irrelevance
• deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
• utopiah 3mo ago
  It's a naive heuristic but if you are a not a technical expert you should provide use this until you understand enough to provide and follow a better one.
• mikewarot 3mo ago
  As a tangent, I'd like to point out that the world is realizing the same is true with respect to Currencies, especially the US Dollar. It used to be better than gold, lighter, easily transportable, and convertible to actual gold coin, up until FDR ended that in 1933.[1] He added insult to injury by devaluing the dollar shortly thereafter. We still had our silver coinage, though... and that lasted until after JFK was assassinated by groups still unknown[2] 60+ years later. The subsequent decision to remove silver from coinage left us without hard money, that we could hold, and instead substituted the "Johnson Sandwich".[3] Worldwide, however, there was still convertibility to gold, at FDR's reduced value. This was ended by Nixon in 1971.[4] Since then, the value of the dollar, relative to gold, has fallen from $38 per ounce, to ~$4000 per ounce today. That's a decline of more than 99%. The only thing holding the dollar up at this point is the PetroDollar System[5] that Nixon helped create in which Oil is exclusively priced in Dollars, and the dollars are recycled into US markets. It's my Personal opinion that Trump is speedrunning the destruction of this system. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy#Conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kenne... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_Act_of_1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_Act_of_1965 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency
• rhinoceraptor 3mo ago
  It seems like more and more people are moving back to physical media, I'm seeing more blu-rays and DVDs at retailers. There are just too many streaming services, each with distinct catalogs which creates two problems: it's too difficult to find specific titles when you know what you want to watch, and it's too difficult to find anything worth watching when you don't. I'm not someone who keeps the TV on in the background, so I'd much rather spend $100 a month on physical media even when I don't plan on watching them immediately, than spend $100 a month on five different streaming services that I barely even use when I did subscribe to them.
  • NoMoreNicksLeft 3mo ago
    >It seems like more and more people are moving back to physical media, Your physical media should be hard drives. The 20tb drives are at my sweet spot, I don't feel like I'm wasting a bay to put one of those in it. haugene/transmission-openvpn in docker is bulletproof, you'll never get an ISP email. Stream it with Plex/Emby to any device anywhere, yours or friends'. Use RAID for some redundancy if you can afford it. Upgrade and expand. Build a library that will outlive you.
    • account42 3mo ago
      Quality 20TB drives are almost a grand these days :(
      • NoMoreNicksLeft 3mo ago
        Just a few years ago, you could have gotten the three 30tb golds for that.
• titzer 3mo ago
  I have a large collection of DVDs that I've amassed over the years. There's something nice about physical media; the bits are physically stamped into the medium. They're DVD-encrypted but I lawfully extract these bits and view them regularly. When streaming services start on-the-fly editing for content[1] and revoking licenses, they can absolutely shove it up their butts. My old man take is that if a TV show or movie or whatever isn't worth putting onto a physical medium and distributing it to people who will buy it, I won't miss it if--I mean when[2]--it's gone. I mean, these huge movie studios act like pirates are going to ruin their massive profits, when they won't. [1] And yes, they will absolutely on-the-fly, 1984-style edit films and TV shows for content. [2] And it will go [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_dark_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_dark_age] along with lots of other things into the memory hole of the digital dark age.
• TeaVMFan 3mo ago
  Even if you _can_ hold it, you may not own it if the player is internet-connected or even receives a firmware upgrade during maintenance or from a disc. New discs may not play unless you upgrade, and an upgrade can also remove keys, blocking you from watching discs you already have. https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/windows-general/cyberlink-powerdvd-96-aacs-license-key-update-issue/647f2a10f4ccf8a8deedda54 https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/windows-gene... https://web.archive.org/web/20070430070403/https://www.aacsla.com/press/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070430070403/https://www.aacsl...
• markhahn 3mo ago
  If you can't hack it, you don't own it.
• 627467 3mo ago
  If you can't play it you don't own it either. Support of playback of physical media is not guaranteed by the industry. Regardless, I definitely think the all-u-can-eat, 24-7-365, instant, ephemeral media has run its course and has become... tiring?
  • rhinoceraptor 3mo ago
    There definitely seems to be a trend with Gen Z and younger to go back to iPods and physical media. Vinyl record sales are continuing to climb, and CDs seem to be climbing too, now that vinyl records are no longer cheap.
• lIl-IIIl 3mo ago
  Good examples, but this one didn't make sense to me: >Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game disappeared from Xbox and PlayStation stores in December 2014 when a license expired. Players campaigned for years before a remastered edition arrived in 2021. I mean, physical stores can also stop selling a certain game. Existing sold games were unaffected. Why does this matter?
  • Telaneo 3mo ago
    Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game was digital-only, so nobody could buy a copy of the game if they wanted to, since the only places which sold the game stopped doing that, and used copies by definition don't exist. Physical games can still be bought even if stores stop selling them, since the used marked will still be around (the game might be rare and command a high price on the used market, but at least it's possible).
• chrismorgan 3mo ago
  > A 2020 lawsuit raised the same issue, but a California judge dismissed it in 2021 because the plaintiff had never actually lost access to her purchased videos, leaving her without standing. Seems kinda off. They’re pointing a knife at you menacingly and have promised that in a variety of circumstances they will stab you, but because they haven’t actually stabbed you yet, you’re not allowed to complain. Feels like maybe (maybe; I’m not entirely convinced) that threat should be standing enough, just as conspiracy and attempted murder can be criminal matters, and not just a successful murder.
• thayne 3mo ago
  > A Blu-ray disc, game cartridge, or printed book generally cannot be removed from a shelf by a remote policy change. It may not be able to be removed from a shelf, but if it is protected by DRM they can still remotely revoke your ability to consume it, or prevent you from consuming it to begin with (for example geolocking on blu-ray disks). And in some cases a game cartridge, or other medium for software (including games) is either actually just an access key granting access to something on a digital store, or has software that "phones home" and is unusable if it can't contact a server.
  • autoexec 3mo ago
    Exactly. Nintendo doesn't sell physical games at all anymore.
    • cbolton 3mo ago
      That's not true, not all games are Game-Key cards, see https://www.dekudeals.com/switch-2-physical-games https://www.dekudeals.com/switch-2-physical-games
• downsplat 3mo ago
  The point is not about what it means exactly to "own" something, you'll get plenty of noise discussion around that one. But if I care about some piece of digital art enough to pay for it, I sure want a non-DRM copy to sit on my hd at the end of the transaction. If the store won't supply, the pirate sites will.
• cpr 3mo ago
  The same holds true of precious metals, most definitely. If things really HTF, you're gonna want to not be blocked by a closed bank, etc.
• ripe 3mo ago
  Since I don't see it mentioned yet in the comments: In 2011, movie studios created a digital ownership service called Ultraviolet. You could own titles in your "UltraViolet Digital Rights Locker" and access them from multiple devices via third-party streaming services. [1] "The UltraViolet Digital Rights Locker will keep track of all of the consumers’ UltraViolet digital purchases, whether they bought a movie or television show on Blu-ray disc or digital download. UltraViolet does not store the actual content. When a consumer logs in, UltraViolet will verify that the consumer has purchased a film, and will then allow the consumer to stream or download their movies from a participating UltraViolet service." [2] This was an attempt to separate the technology of streaming from the legal ownership of the asset. But Disney never signed on, and the member studios eventually got tired of it for some reason. The whole service was shut down in 2019. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraViolet_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraViolet_(website) [2] Interview with CTO Mitch Singer, https://web.archive.org/web/20110717234132/http://www.homemediamagazine.com/electronic-delivery/six-questions-ultraviolet%E2%80%99s-mitch-singer-20510 https://web.archive.org/web/20110717234132/http://www.homeme...
  • cgh 3mo ago
    Maybe not mentioned in the comments, but it gets a full entry in the article.
  • SilverElfin 3mo ago
    What happens after the service shuts down?
    • babuskov 3mo ago
      I presume users lost access to everything.
  • Grosvenor 3mo ago
    Microsoft did this with its "Playsforsure" program. Naturally it got shut down and your media no longer plays.
  • stego-tech 3mo ago
• jolmg 3mo ago
  Tangential, but a few days ago I started some Steam games I hadn't played in some years. I was surprised to be met with updated user agreements, which I had to agree to if I wanted to play the games I bought years ago. These were all single-player games. > If you can't hold it, you don't own it. Didn't some game consoles require online connectivity to play even games in physical media?[1] It's possible for a game disc to require connecting online and forcing updates or even just updated licensing agreements. Correct bright line might be to be able to permanently use it without online connectivity. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/XboxSupport/comments/1682s60/comment/jyt65pl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/XboxSupport/comments/1682s60/commen... > So just to be clear, most games now are not actually on the disc. Most discs just contain a license that tells the store it's okay to download this game. It is Very rare that you can just put in a disc and play these days regardless of if it is on Playstation or xbox but it does still happen.
  • frollogaston 3mo ago
    You don't even remotely own Steam games. Their shitty launcher has to open to let your game run since it checks DRM, and it'll force updates (see gta4). You also can't transfer your license, so no second hand games.
• largbae 3mo ago
  This is a wonderful collection. Portions of this, especially subscription bits, apply to SaaS and AI as it is currently served. Maybe now that B2B relationships have similar risks, more lobbying pressure will come on the side of permanent access to the things we buy.
• CGMthrowaway 3mo ago
  Economics 101 - ownership is a bundle of rights. The basic bundle of property rights includes: Right of possession Right of control Right of exclusion Right of enjoyment Right of disposition Would be nice if this was taught more widely.
• hmokiguess 3mo ago
  Now let’s apply this to money and digital finance
• trelane 3mo ago
  Holding it on your hand is insufficient. Using it may require an external server or certain chosen proprietary software that could be taken from you at any time or itself requiring an external server. The bits you want to own must be entirely self-contained, and able to be screwed using whatever software you may choose, especially open source (though if the format is fully documented so that anyone can create and distribute a viewer, the software need not be open source.) See also, The Right to Read. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
• saulpw 3mo ago
  I'm reading "Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld" by Byung-Chul Han, who has things to say about it. "Things" are naturally possessions to be owned; the non-things that we as a society are moving towards are information to be consumed. If you have a physical book, you can pass it along to someone else, margin notes and dogears and all, but the experience of an e-book is fundamentally different. You might feel like you 'own' the bits because they're on your local computer and have no DRM, but your relationship to the actual item is not one of ownership. Just think about leaving your favorite book as .epub to someone in your will to see how non-sensical that would be.
  • Telaneo 3mo ago
    > Just think about leaving your favorite book as .epub to someone in your will to see how non-sensical that would be. It's not unthinkable to me, but it would have to include your own personal notes or something. The plain example though is nonsense, your're correct in that. That said, what about leaving an entire NAS media collection to someone in your will? Sure, it's just hard drives with bits on them, but it's probably curated and high quality. There's a technical barrier though, so it makes little sense to leave to anyone who isn't already deeply interested, while if you're left with a collection of vinyl or blu-rays, even if you don't actually care about them, the cultural knowledge of what they are and represent is still around.
• joshstrange 3mo ago
  The tags at the start mean almost nothing, there are many cases where they make no sense in the context. The whole page is disorganized and lacks cohesion. Coupled with the fact that there is a mix of different levels of “badness” but they are all presented equally. This reeks of LLM. I fully agree with highlighting this topic, but I feel this page/blog/whatever weakens the argument by being so scatterbrained and using bad examples at times. It would benefit greatly from some kind of “scale” (selling licenses vs stopping sales vs refunding vs lost access). And lastly “If you can’t hold it, you don’t own it” doesn’t make sense at all, I get what they were trying to do/say but many games on disc these days aren’t even the game (just a key that can be revoked) and/or require backend servers for updates or gameplay.
• stego-tech 3mo ago
  I love physical media as a ritual, but loathe it as a storage medium - it's fragile, it rots, and manufacturers can't be trusted to create long-lasting products anymore. Not to mention the fact that UHD drives used to rip modern content are almost entirely defunct, with the remaining few going for nearly half a grand in the current climate. Personally, in light of AI getting a hand-wave on massive piracy for training data purposes, I think we're ripe to redo copyright entirely. Common-sense stuff like barring DRM on content a year after its initial release date, allowing consumers to transcode content freely for personal use, and finally stripping copyright from abandoned (i.e., no longer sold) content such that "lost media" can be freely shared without legal consequence. There's so, so many reforms we need to make to reflect how content works in the modern era, in a way that rewards content creators but creates a more permissive environment for archiving, sharing, and modifications.
  • deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  • NoMoreNicksLeft 3mo ago
    >Common-sense stuff like barring DRM on content a year after its initial release date, That's just bad. How about a better take: if a work is ever released with DRM, in any market (globally, even), that work enjoys no copyright protection. It's immediately in the public domain. You can have copyright protection, or you can attempt DRM protection, but you can't have both and your choice in the matter has consequences. Copyright in the US isn't "intellectual property". You don't own it, you just have a long term lease to exploit it... but the public always owned it and they will return to reclaim it at a future date. DRM is nothing more than an attempt to make sure that it cannot be reclaimed and is invalid on its face. Attempting to use it should be discouraged very harshly under the law. I might even go a step further and define attempts to lobby for the repeal of such a policy as treason subject to the death penalty. Just to keep things fun.
  • account42 3mo ago
    > Not to mention the fact that UHD drives used to rip modern content are almost entirely defunct, with the remaining few going for nearly half a grand in the current climate. Protip: All BDXL drives have the necessary hardware to read UHD discs.
• shevy-java 3mo ago
  The big greedy corporations try to milk the customer here. The US government either tolerates it, or benefits from it via kick-backs. The orange king is the ultimate tool box for others - corruption has never been more rampant than now. I also see the attempts to eliminate physical media or deny right-to-repair, as associated with the age sniffing requirement or the fight by governments against VPNs. They want more control, at the expense of the end user. And they also lie about their goals, although in really stupid ways - age sniffing as fake-rationale to "protect the children", as means to disown and devalue freedom of citizens.
• softwaredoug 3mo ago
  Can you legally buy a 4k version on a movie and host it yourself? Since physical media can get damaged, seems like that’d be an ideal solution.
• SpacePortKnight 3mo ago
  But the apartments which people can afford has gotten smaller now and also with the rise of the minimalistic culture, I have no space to put movie and games discs. I am ok with renting media. Like most people I don't re-watch movies and re-play single player games often. imo it's just free market at play here which happens to provide value to the companies more than the consumers.
  • farfatched 3mo ago
    > imo it's just free market at play here which happens to provide value to the companies more than the consumers It's not clear that there is large value, to consumers as a whole, to physical media or DRM-free media. I am aware of the benefits, but the few cases of "losing your licence" are a rounding error, unimportant to many, and maybe even better than their success at durably storing their own physical media or DRM-free digital media. I exclusively (?) buy games from GOG. It's important to me. I wish it were the norm, but I just don't think it's actually important to others. Perhaps we might imagine some dystopian future where a temporary licence was the only option, but ultimately media providers face competition from other leisure activities. They are incentivised to make it less onerous, and in practice today, it is!
• wilg 3mo ago
  [dead]
• glitchc 3mo ago
  There's another factor to consider: If what you physically own requires a proprietary platform to play or operate, then you don't actually own it. Sure, the disc with version 1.0.0 of the media/game may be in your possession, but that doesn't matter. The platform can change the rules at any time, requiring an arbitrary number of steps or payments before playing the media, or limiting features through forced updates as soon as the media is inserted. Ultimately, technology cannot solve what is fundamentally a legislation problem. The only way to win this is to ask for laws to change.
• zenoprax 3mo ago
  I think there a simpler way to summarize this list: Digital Purchases are non-transferable licenses to access "content" from a "provider". The terms of the deal are alterable and revocable at the provider's discretion with no obligation to maintain pricing, quality, availability, or editorial/artistic integrity nor must they provide any advance warning of such changes nor is there any legal recourse in case of disagreement. Written out plainly it sounds pretty hostile when compared with an immutable Bluray whose limitations and capabilities are known in advance.
• charcircuit 3mo ago
  This list is extremely biased and only lists negatives and fails to argue anything.
  • aeve890 3mo ago
    You're free to write your own media-conglomerate boot-licking post if don't agree.
• breve 3mo ago
  Disney has stopped physical media sales in some markets: https://screenrant.com/disney-movies-dvd-physical-media-releases-cancelled/ https://screenrant.com/disney-movies-dvd-physical-media-rele... And it has outsourced its physical media business to Sony: https://variety.com/2024/film/news/disney-sony-pysical-media-dvd-blu-ray-disc-business-1235917294/ https://variety.com/2024/film/news/disney-sony-pysical-media...
• monkamonme 3mo ago
  [flagged]
• ashu1461 3mo ago
  Right now even physical things have digital interlocking. Example you might purchase a watch but it requires you to purchase a subscription for it to function. It is just the way most of the things are.
  • 4dregress 3mo ago
    A lot of cars also suffer from this.
• emsign 3mo ago
  Since all the sheep are thinking "why do I need this junk wasting space in my attic or worse in my living room shelves? I need to get rid off it all as quick as possible, so I have more room for my mega inch TV with Netflix and so on...", I get those collection for almost nothing if I'm lucky. I resell the stuff I don't need and even make a profit. Expanding your archive of physical media wasn't easier because of the people falling for the streaming trap.
• antisol 3mo ago
  Cool page, it lists a bunch of compelling arguments. It's always good to see more and more people realising these things and start insisting on actual ownership. Meanwhile, did you know defectivebydesign.org has been around for 20 years now? Makes me feel old.
• dinkblam 3mo ago
  Many things are confused here. Why would you want to "own" media, physical or otherwise? What you actually want is a.) to be able to use the media however you wish. no ownership is required, just download it b.) to give back to the content creator to thank for his creation. no ownership is required here either, you can send him money, go on a concert, etc trying to merge those two points into one (=>purchase the media) is not necessarily the best way as you might end up with something you cannot properly use (DRM, etc) while not really giving that much to the creator anyway (90% for the label, wtf?)
• Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 3mo ago
  UI wise I think this page is brilliantly made. One feedback though: maybe a ToC or dropdown would help see all the points without scrolling?
• dtgriscom 3mo ago
  I have about 2500 CDs in my garage, with all of them ripped to my laptop. I'll never lose access to them. (My only regret is that I can't look through the jewel case covers and booklets.)
• rldjbpin 3mo ago
  the "physical" part is stressed too much. in today's landscape, it is no longer the only feasible way to address the different grievances made by the op. if the content is going to be digital* anyway, despite fitting in on physical media, buying media online without drm is the way to go for most people. the bandcamp, gog of the lot that is. then your responsibility is usually just to download and find a way to self-preserve your collection. physical media is easy on the latter part, but mostly painful on the former. in some cases, it is no longer feasible anyway. the new gta game will be digital-only, and if the nail is not on the coffin yet, this would be the "apple" moment to kill of any major publication ever supporting the medium again. *i.e. all except vinyls which is still the "best" medium available for music
• Blackstrat 3mo ago
  So pirating is the answer? I don't think so. It's unethical and illegal. Buy the physical media of the books, movies, and music that you consume. Quit screwing the creators. I've seen numerous complaints on HN about one's code being stolen. What's the difference?
  • FabCH 3mo ago
    It may or may not be unethical, but I can 100% certainly say it is not universally illegal.
  • Telaneo 3mo ago
    > It's unethical and illegal. I don't think it's unethical. It's illegal on the distribution side, but not if you're just downloading. I don't really care either way, because I don't think it's unethical. > I've seen numerous complaints on HN about one's code being stolen. What's the difference? The 'stealing' in those cases is usually plagiarism; copying someone's work and not attributing it to them. I will happily attribute all media I've ever downloaded to their creators. If that's all it would take to make 'piracy' legal, I would happily do it.
• deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
• NoXPgamedev1 3mo ago
  [dead]
• account42 3mo ago
  > Physical media can have resale value. A finished game can be sold, a film can be traded, and a book can be lent. Digital licenses are usually locked to an account and non-transferable, so the purchase price typically cannot be recovered through resale. More importantly, the resale market acts as competition to the first market sale, lowering prices over time as supply accumulates. Without re-sale publishers can just never lower prices for old digital products or even increase them with inflation or more. This is an underappreciated way in which the copyright deal has been worsened.