TIL I don’t own my thoughts :(
The case for physical media ownership
21–30 of 392 posts
Re: The case for physical media ownership
#22I 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!
Re: The case for physical media ownership
#23I 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 obsess…
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.
Re: The case for physical media ownership
#24Physical 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.
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.
Re: The case for physical media ownership
#25Physical 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.
Does having a hard drive full of mp4s count as holding it?
Re: The case for physical media ownership
#26Sony'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/
[2]: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/
Re: The case for physical media ownership
#27however - 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.
Re: The case for physical media ownership
#28This 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.
Re: The case for physical media ownership
#29I 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!
There are also things you can hold and not own!
Re: The case for physical media ownership
#30Just 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…
Exactly. I pirate eBooks and buy a physical copy when I come around to reading them. Unrelated to the content: Claude really likes tags
You wouldnt train a llm to swede movies...