PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies From Customers’ Accounts. I personally have seen my digital purchases go into the void when licenses expire or new deals are negotiated. It's not an issue with music since I generally download once and never redownload it. But movies? I "own" hundreds of movies from iTunes and Amazon that can be taken away at a moment's notice. If you can't hold it, you don't own it. https://dervis.de/physical/ I love this site because it breaks down all the real flaws of streaming vs actually owning. Summary Streaming services provide access while terms and licensing remain in place. Digital stores typically sell licenses rather than transferable property. Physical media provides a separately held copy. Physical media can be given away, inherited, or found at a thrift store decades from now. A digital license can become inaccessible when an account is closed or deleted. A vinyl record or printed book can remain usable across generations. These examples represent documented cases, not an exhaustive record. Similar incidents continue to occur. Ownership is clearest when the copy remains under the buyer's control.
Plex server + newsgroups will solve your digital woes. I’ve never been a proponent of buying digital media that lives on a corporate server for the reasons above. At the very least, if that company goes out of business you’re SOL. If they decide to yank media you’re screwed. I ripped all of my CDs to MP3 years ago and gave them to my wife’s cousin, who can’t find them. Sad about that. Lost all my tapes and VHS tapes in Ike. I have my DVDs. My wife likes vinyl so I give her some on Xmas and birthdays. I had some really cool limited and foreign tapes and CDs and even some cool ‘bootleg’ style low budget VHS concert tapes, so I wish I still had them all. Another reason to own hard copies, mostly of books, is because companies will change text on digital. They can subtly change the overtone of books like 1984 and younger people would never know.
Back in the day a fun rainy-day project was going to the Montrose Library (the one next to the Black Lab) with my laptop and raiding their CD collection. Unfortunately, I too lost all of that years ago.
Reminds me of the fight over "right to repair" with vehicles and equipment. I'm looking at you, John Deere.
I'm putting together a new home theater and realized how screwed you are whether you own physical copies or not. If you own physical copies of stuff, you end up like me with probably over 100 movies in SD when society has moved on to HD and UHD, so now you're faced with buying your fave stuff again. I mean, you don't have to, but come on... And I'm sure if/when 8k becomes popular or useful in your lifetime, you'll be upgrading them all again. I just started buying old tv series on dvd/bluray along with 4k/UHD copies of movies and will be ripping them to eventually serve up on a Jellyfin server. So at least I can tell all these streaming services "screw you guys - I will forever be able to watch Welcome Back Kotter, What's Happening!, Sanford & Son, Good Times, Andy Griffith, Gilligan's Island, etc. without having to figure out which one of the stupid streaming services carries it, and then, if they even carry all the episodes!" Sounds like Louis Rossmann and his lifelong war for "right to repair".
The original business hack that is always brought up in every history of business innovation to typify the 20th century was to make everything fall apart (test case being disposable razor blades) after a short period of time so you'd have to keep buying replacements. But planned obsolesence is best for the business, nobody else. The recent 21st century twist on this innovation is to sell everything "as a service" so businesses can have a steady predictable eternal revenue stream and if you stop paying regularly, they can cut you off from the feed. If businesses have their way, you'll eventually be paying monthly fees for access to stuff as basic clean air and drinking water. It's the definition of enshitification - where businesses are so in control of the market that they can ignore what is best for consumers and ignore what is best for their suppliers/manufacturers (no competition), and concentrate only on maximizing what is best for themselves. That's where we are. Weyland-Yutani stuff, but real. The end-point is full on "Aliens" universe corporate gatekeeping of everything for a fee, normalizing permanent corporate extortion as a way of life. That probably sounds pretty alarmist, but it seems to be the inexorable end point that they are driving towards unless someone stops them. They're slow rolling it as much as possible, proverbially boiling frogs so that people don't get duly upset.
That is much of the Business Model of the companies pushing AI services via the Internet with the twist that they are trying hard to avoid compensating the authors - originators of the content that gives the AI knowledge.
I'm an old guy. Back in the day, I never understood why folks built up huge DVD collections when you could rent movie for a fraction of the price. What percentage of a 500+ movie collection are you going to watch more than 3 times? For me, the same thought applies even more to digital movies that people are less and less likely to watch as the years go forward. Games are a different issue.
I was mostly fine with the stream/rent everything economy until I realized that it was all a big ponzi scheme. For 15+ years all these streaming/gig economy tech companies have been telling us they're making everything better, cheaper, and more convenient. All they've actually done is slowly create massive monopolies and once the competition is dead, they raise prices and eliminate functionality. I don't have one but I agree with owning your own library of media. I probably won't go create one with thousands of CDs/DVDs but just the stuff I know I already rewatch/listen to. One thing that I think is coming is that at some point the streamers will start surge pricing. Uber does it, grocery stores are starting it. You pay for a streamer and then the big live events have commercials. Eventually, you'll have to pay a premium to listen to Christmas songs in December or your algorithm figures out you like martial arts and Jackie Chan movies are 2x the price for you.
The settlement resolves allegations that the equipment manufacturer monopolized the repair market by restricting farmers’ access to diagnostic tools and software needed to fix their own machinery. https://www.farmprogress.com/farmin...ettles-right-to-repair-lawsuit-for-99-million Should have been more$
Louis is more known for doing something similar going after Apple and lately Samsung, I guess. There are similar outfits going after "right to repair" lawsuits against Tesla.
