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.

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.

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.

It may not be able to be removed but 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.

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/

https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/windows-gene...

https://web.archive.org/web/20070430070403/https://www.aacsl...

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] along with lots of other things into the memory hole of the digital dark age.

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.

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.

Regardless, I definitely think the all-u-can-eat, 24-7-365, instant, ephemeral media has run its course and has become... tiring?

https://delistedgames.com/oxenfree/

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Enjoy something when you enjoy it, however you enjoy it. In the end you can’t keep anything but that.

* 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.

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).

>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?

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.

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.

Frank Herbert, Dune

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.

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.

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 .

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kenne...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_Act_of_1965

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency

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.

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.

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.

Isn't this untrue with surprising frequency? Decoding devices phone home, come under new copyright laws, etc etc etc.