If buying isn't owning, then pirating cannot be stealing. These corporations are literally herding people back onto the seas. I need to go get myself a new flag with a skull and bones, since I tied my boat to the pier about fifteen-twenty years ago.

Well, aren't you quaint. Next thing you'll be asking for is seed corn that you can replant year after year from the corn it grows, heated seats in your cars without a subscription payment, replaceable batteries in your battery powered electronics.

It's always been hypocrisy. The media companies only say what part you actually own based whatever is most profitable to them.

Technically, back in the day, when you bought any music wether it be 8-track, LP, cassette, or CD, you were purchasing a single-user license for the music and the media was just how the record companies delivered it to you. That's why Napster and all the piracy that followed it was/is illegal, because you don't own a license when you copy the digital file.

HOWEVER... Over the many decades I've been alive I've scratched, twisted, demagnetized, or just plain old lost hundreds of LPs, cassettes, and CDs. Do you think if I requested a new copy of the music that the record companies would send me a replacement?

No, they would not. So I obtained digital replacements by...other means.

Now that we're all used to digital copies, suddenly that's been the important part all along.

Beyond the obvious problem of paying but not owning, it's impossible to watch/listen without that data being stored on a massive corporation's server and likely sold to hundreds of advertisers. Last I saw Spotify had over 300 venders they share data with. I've seen sites with over 1000.

So you're not only paying for something you don't own, but you're also paying to have a larger profile in the surveillance capitalism machine.

Listen, me hearties…

Buying is renting, pirating is owning

The starving (and recent gutting) of the public domain demonstrates the institution of intellectual property persists in bad faith. Therefore media piracy is a legitimate means to acquire and consume media.

As the C-suite and its political and paramilitary minions have shown us crime is not about behavior and consequences, but who you are and to whom you bend the knee.

I do, raise the black flag and you can too.

I saved all my DVDs because the pawn/sale price wasnt worth it... So glad I did.

I have no fear that Amazon will come to my house and remove the books I bought. If they were DRMed ebooks, on the other hand, that would be something to worry about.

Only way I feel I can push back is by also saving it locally 🏴‍☠️

It's high time laws protected us from this. Yes, even from High Lord Gaben.

If we buy it, we own it. We can transfer them to other account. Any stores selling stuff must have a plan in place for what happens when the store closes, whether that's transferring ownership to another store, or something involving making files publicly downloadable...

We got frog boiled in the 2010s to accept renting out media. Me and my sandisk Sansa clip still go for walks listening to mp3s. I wonder if devices like this will see a resurgence under the idea that owning it gives you control of your media.

This hasn't bothered me at all. I've been _Arr_chiving a lot lately.

That's what I've been saying for years. If you've bought digital multimedia like movies, TV shows, software, etc from large corpos, you don't own it and you are at their mercy. Contracts can expire and licenses can be revoked. Corps want you to own nothing and be grateful for them allowing you the privilege of paying them for a product or service they can rescind at any time for any reason, because fuck you, that's why.

I still buy new and used movies, games, and all sorts of media. I think with vhs, dvd and Blu-ray combined we’re around 1700 now and still growing. I’ve kept a lot of physical games and systems since I was kid so I’ve had a collection for a bit but with movies it started with not being able to watch Young Frankenstein anywhere. No place to rent or watch even though I had like 4-5 services at the time. I bought the dvd for it and 2 days later it was on Amazon. No more lol

I do! I own CDs and vinyls. I collect mainly CDs because they are smaller and need less storage.

🏴‍☠️

I never built up a CD collection but I now started a digital DRM free local collection. Yes, I am actually buying that stuff (call me stupid if you like) but only loss free.

One of the few disks I own is sadly too corruoted for error free ripping, luckuly I still have it as mp3. That album simply does not wxist online anymore, anywhere. Possibly not even in the darker corners of the net. I think that happens more often than many believe.

100%. I buy physical copies of the books I want to read, because odds are I'll probably keep them and read them again in future. The ebooks I have are files I have been able to download and store on my system (and backed up), so they can't be edited or deleted.

I will always prefer a physical release for a film or TV show over digital-only. Not only do I not have to pay a subscription (and then worry that it's going to get edited or removed), but I get sound+video quality that exceeds what's possible on streaming at present. Plus there's just something nice about having your favourite movies and shows sitting on your shelf to remind you that it's there and something you enjoy, rather than a purely digital library that isn't as tangible or immediately visible.

It's deeply frustrating, too, when there are shows that you just can't buy at all. A few times in the past two years there's been a show on one of our free-to-air TV networks and their online streaming video service that I've enjoyed, but they're only there for a limited time and then gone. Can you buy them on disc or even digital only? No. They are almost as ephemeral as TV from the 1960s when shows were made to be shown once, maybe repeated a few times before rights expired, then gone (sometimes forever, if you didn't have space in your archives).

I mean, you can do that.

But it's inconvenient and expensive and takes up space. So most folks choose not to do that for pragmatic reasons. Physical media still is broad available for books and music. Less so for films and TV shows, but many are still available in physical formats at online retailers.

I have a lot of physical books, like 500+. People tend to be quite negative about it and have so for a long time, because the popular conception is that physical media is stupid and wasteful. A lot of people take pride in owning nothing physical and regard that as 'minimalism' and are more than happy to purchase digital rentals or subscriptions only to further this aesthetic.

But it makes no sense to continue to produce physical media if only a niche audience is buying it, unless the product is niche, cheap to produce and has a high mark up. That's why Vinly works, folks are willing to pay $30 per record and records cost pennies to physical reproduce.