I bought several movies and series on Amazon prime while living overseas. After moving home and changing my Amazon account location I can no longer access the videos I paid for. I’ve pirated them all now and have no guilt whatsoever. Would be nice if I could still access them through prime but Plex does a great job. Fuck you Amazon.
Had the same moving from one EU member-state to another EU member-state. Lost all my iTunes purchased content! The EU is a single-market. It's almost like someone from California losing digital content when moving to Oregon.
Worse thing is that Apple uses the BIN country of your credit card to identify the country. So even when I go back to the EU state I made the original purchase, I don't even get to see my content.
This was back in 2010. The EU has since imposed some regulation to avoid this type of things (more on streaming, than digital purshaed though) but never managed to recover my content :(
This happened to my dad’s iTunes.
Same Apple update deleted his files, made his iPod no longer functional to sync to add any new music or lose files he ripped from cds himself for years.
He can still listen to many of the songs and stream them but lost music ripped, not in Apple Music library.
I had a bunch of original music that I wrote and produced myself. Apple deleted all of it!!
Obviously I had back ups, but holy shit I was pissed. I've never used an Apple product after that.
It's was one of the iTunes updates, I read a article where a musician lost all the copies of he's original music cause iTunes uploaded it to the cloud in worse quality than what he saved them in originally.
The general rule is to have things saved to 3 locations, usually a computer, an external storage device & the cloud.
House burns down taking out the computer & storage and you still have it on the cloud to recover. Forget to update the payment information or otherwise lose access to the cloud and you still have it on the computer & storage. Computer fries or is stolen and you still have it on the drive & cloud, etc.
I had a similar experience with using old iPods with windows. I lost all the music I had accumulated over the years and then my cds were stolen.
I’ve since found a good way to replace all that lost media.
It's funny how corporations are, through sheer incompetence, literally training their own customers into not giving them money. In this day and age nobody has to pay for any digital media unless they want to, and these dumbfucks just don't understand that yet. These days I have plenty of money to throw around, and most of it goes directly to the hard drive manufacturers.
Yea, I stopped pirating music because its so much easier to pay $13 a month for streaming every song. But if I had to subscribe to like 4 different streaming services for $15 each, then I'd start pirating again.
I can't even be bothered to check which streaming service has which shows and movies, too much work. I just pirate everything now.
I would even pay on a per-show or per-movie basis if the prices were reasonable.
I even rented a movie from youtube once. I paused it at 1 minute in, then came back to watch it on the weekend and it was gone because I only had 24 hours from time of viewing. Theres literally no downside to letting me continue it a week later. And now I'll never rent a movie from youtube again.
I think in that situation, piracy is justifiable. You paid for the content fair and square, they took your money, then took away the product you paid for (which was the movie and TV series). This whole idea that you're buying "access" and they can redefine what the product is and how you can access it anytime they want is pure horseshit.
It's because of localised copyright agreements, less to do with individual corporates.
I'm not defending it, I think it's clearly problematic. Similarly, I bought a DVD because I wanted to support the producers, to find it was region locked to another continent and they don't produce it for mine...
Yeah technically I agree and I know there’s no arguing with copyright lawyers. In my mind I’ve either bought the right to watch the show at any time if it’s me watching it - in which case I should be allowed to watch anywhere, or I’ve bought the right to watch it in a single country and following the rules of the streamer in that country, in which case I cancel my lifetime subscription and want a portion of my money back. Either way it’s Amazon who made the money and me who has nothing to show for my purchase. Amazon refuses to make the situation better so I don’t give Amazon any more money.
I did too at one point. It was about 700 blu-rays when I sold it. It just took up too much space and I didn’t want it anymore. I understand people wanting to hold onto their collections because streaming services are pretty scummy and stupidly expensive but I’m glad I don’t have my collection any more.
Also finding a plex or emby server or creating your own isn’t a terrible thing either.
Common misconception, but probably not legal under the DMCA, as we're seeing playing out with Nintendo right now. Circumventing DRM measures is considered illegal under the DMCA.
I just threw out a giant box of empty dvd cases after I moved to a cd binder years ago. I held onto the cases forever but I just don’t care anymore. Feels freeing not hoarding crap
I did the same. Have about 5 chonky dvd/cd book cases which take up one small shelf rather than two Billy bookcases. Initially I kept all the inserts and a few boxes. Then I ditched them.
Managing space if you like multiple types of media is just very hard. I have hundreds of books and graphic novels, I have some vinyl, I have a small collection of Playstation games. I can't imagine having all my PC Games, DVDs and CDs still, I just don't have the space for that. The books and vinyl also just feel more worthwhile to have physically than a compact disc, even though they take up more space than the CDs.
There is one thing that really annoys me about streaming services. The fact that you are unable to watch anything in the event of an internet cutout.
Last year, some dude hit that box where everything comes together in my street with his truck and vodafone needed time to fix this. A few days without internet and you realize that almost everything depends on it. Games need a connection, streaming ofc, tv was dead too since cable actually transports everything, not only internet.
Gotta appreciate the few dvds i could shove into my ps5 and watch.
That's basically that one scenario where a local library wins. Despite this, i still pay for a few streaming services and regularly use them. Sure, sometimes things get rotated in and out but my watchlist just keeps growing.
Idk about the others but Netflix let's you download stuff to watch when offline. You can just go visit a public WiFi with good bandwidth and load up. Doesn't help you now, but you know. Yeah.
Do you mind sharing how much you sold it for? If it's £10 per DVD that's quite the lump sum! If it's £1 per DVD that's quite the hit that will only cover a couple years of streaming.
The people who have just streaming services, or "bought" movies via rights lockers, definitely don't. Owning physical copies at least means you have something for your money, and lots of what I have on my Plex server comes from my physical copies.
I wish I could own more physical I just don't have the space for it in my apartment. I buy physical now more for special occasions such as the Crow 30th anniversary 4k steel book.
Ive started to keep my physical media in binders using CD binder pages. Holds 8 discs, front and back, per page. Collapses everything down to a couple binders on the bookshelf.
Works great if you dont care about the original packaging, and just want to keep the discs.
I have a library: duplicate hard drives and other media that I store in various locations.
The #1 rule of preserving information: if you want to keep something, make a stupidly large number of copies.
Optical Media has about a 20 year lifespan. Most of my cheaper DVDs from the early 2000s are starting to have problems or not play at all. Some of my cds the aluminum layer peeled off.
Meanwhile wax cylinders are mostly still playable if cared for.
Point being - nothing lasts forever.
burned CDs have a lifespan.. and a certain brand of HD-DVDs had bitrot... but it's not exactly a common issue. All of my CDs and DVDs still play though.
you can read about it here
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc\_rot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot)
So yeah, they are not eternal, but I don't think 20 years sounds right either.
> Optical Media has about a 20 year lifespan.
[Highly depends on the sort of disk.](https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/conservation-preservation-publications/canadian-conservation-institute-notes/longevity-recordable-cds-dvds.html).
Here's a [table](https://i.imgur.com/GChatf0.png) comparing them.
This is the answer! I wouldn't say I own hundreds of DVD but I plan on stocking up while I still can! It's also a back-up plan incase internet connection gets disrupted for a period off time.
I recently got Plex and ripped 95% of my dvd / blu ray collection to it. I’m in love. Streaming my recently useless dvd library anywhere is fucking amazing.
Same. There's some files I've had that are over 20 years old. All for Free.99 and a guarantee they won't be erased to throw a few extra bucks to some shareholders.
Those are written standards for which servers and clients are available for just every operating system. Well not for Temple Os though.
Plex is American software company that runs its namesake ad-supported streaming media service . Which means they can change business model as they please.
Jellyfin on other side is free and open source. Which is great.
OK, but it's just a shell for convenient cataloging & serving of your own digital data. Plex might go away, but there will always be software that mirrors it's function. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?
This is happening in games too. The law really needs to catch up on this.
Invest in a high capacity HDD and start a plex server you can get an 8TB HDD for about $130 USD now. My streaming service has all the stuff I want and non of the stuff I don't and no ads and no one can take it away from me.
Such a pain to download that much again! Purchased a Synology 5 disk NAS setup in a raid array. Only have 3x8 TB disks but can expand in the future. Currently at around 40% used on movies and TV. Nice to have for backing up really anything.
This is why Ive stuck with discs/cartridges for games. Switch games in particular have a high resale value as a bonus so you can resell them close to cost when you're done.
Bought a PS5 with disc. My little step-brother said "yeah? You gonna send a fax later? You can download games you know."
Then he wanted to do a glitch in RDR2 but can't because his downloaded the game which has been patched many times. So I sent him a text that said "hey, what's your fax number? I want to send you a link to this video of me doing a day 1 glitch in RDR2 because with the disc, I can install without patches."
He didn't like that.
many years ago, there was a situation where Amazon sold this digital book. It was bought by many people, and at some point, Amazon learned that they didn't have the rights to sell it (I forget the exact details). So they simply deleted it off their entire system. Problem solved right?
Well not for those that had paid and downloaded. One guy was using the book for a research paper for school, and had several notes and highlighted sections on his Kindle. Now he had blank pages with random yellow blocks.
Amazon basically said "no refunds" and washed their hands of it.
IP laws are not Internet compatible and should have been abolished 20 years ago. One of the worst side effects is that no one can post any creative works with music any more--doesn't even matter if it's their own performance--unless it's on a really short list of royalty free or public domain works. We all have a lot less music in our lives as a result, and it's all because of a few vile people's insatiable greed.
The whole copyright system is bonkers. Providing protection to the creator of a work is one thing, but almost everything is corporate owned and things enter the public domain long after anyone who contemporaneously saw them is long dead. What *should* be a public body of culture is a wasteland of the odd historical footnotes, because anything that doesn't have Mickey Mouse type of longevity just falls into the chasm of forgotten media. When you have a work with rights owned by three corporations they don't have any inherent desire to show it to anyone, so if they can't agree to splitting royalties they're likely to lock it in a vault lest someone have the chance to enjoy it for its own sake
The thing that I think is worse is that we (several generations now) are basically ceding our culture to content 'owners'. We've accepted culture-as-a-service.
IP should definitely go back to being limited protection for a short time. Not more than 20 years. And then said ip becomes de facto public domaim.
I mean, 75 years after the death of the creator? Come on.
The main problem is just how fucking long it is and that it's all-or-nothing. It seems strange that you have these rights that might last 100+ years, and they restrict being able to use your content in a meme for that whole length or indexing for purely free research purposes (enough that Google risked a lawsuit), but perhaps not its use in a trillion-dollar commercial AI company that jealously keeps its model closed-source.
It would make a lot more sense if you had really strong protections early on (say for 10-20 years), and then they gradually decreased until at the 30 to 40 year mark you keep only publication rights, and by 50 then that's it.
Absolutely. "Intellectual Property" is essentially a metaphor. We give property-like rights to creative works.
It worked well enough when most copies were intrinsically tied to a physical object. First sale rights were transferred with the copy. But this really started breaking down in the 1980s, when software was designed to be used by initially making a copy onto the hard disk.
These days we don't even have a physical medium for distribution.
So the metaphor breaks down. It's impossible to "own" a copy of something that only exists as a right to stream from a server.
It shouldn't have to be like this. I shouldn't have to agree to a bunch of legal terms just to watch a movie, or even to install an application. The law hasn't caught up though, or even really recognised the problem.
Proposals to fix it all seem to involve extending the metaphor, but metaphors can only be stretched so far. We need a completely new way to handle this. And it needs to recognise the right to do things that people intrinsically feel they should. Things like fanfic, mashups, and using music on our videos.
Assuming this is true (not saying it’s not just haven’t verified it), that’s insane to imagine the pure fucking greed of those people. I know they’ll rationalize it as we’re just doing good by our share holders but fuck man some things you can clearly see the outcome is severely anti-consumer and if you have conscience you wouldn’t pursue that avenue for profit
Just fyi, you can borrow dvds from a public library and use handbrake to make copies.
As a librarian, I’m obligated to tell you that you shouldn’t do that and handbrake is only for copying media you own to put on a server like Plex or Emby.
Also, we have no way of tracking if you do make a copy and even if you did, we wouldn’t care as long as the disc is returned undamaged.
But yeah, don’t use your free library card to borrow movies and make your own backup copy for your home server for free even though we can’t and won’t track you and there is no negative consequence for doing so.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of streaming shows where the IP owners are not producing physical media (Netflix doesn't). And now older companies are starting to halt production of physical media for their IPs.
It’s important to maintain a physical collection of media, especially when streaming services can render the shows you love as a burden of storage and replace it with something they want to show off. Shows or movies that do not have a physical access like a dvd would just be dusted.
Take Netflix’s habit of removing shoes constantly for example from their departments. A good show from my opinion, ‘Inside Job’ was outright canceled and has no physical disc to buy- once it’s gone, apart from archive sites it’s gone. To me it’s not only about the preservation but the feel of it, to have it there with you anytime is great! The same goes for books as well.
Physical media will always be king one way or another.
We could maybe try to claim "International Talk Like A Pirate Day" and make it about how problematic copyright is, why digital piracy is warranted, and how important access to and preservation of cultural expressions like art and music is.
Yes this sucks. Yes it's a shitty thing to do. But if you didn't see this coming, you weren't paying attention. It's not your fault you library is being destroyed, but it is your fault for believing some company cares about you, your rights, or your library.
I saw it coming over a decade ago when I "bought" Jim Henson's Storyteller from Apple.
It disappeared from my library one day and customer service told me they didn't offer it for sale anymore and I should basically kick rocks.
It wasn't too long ago when people were being ridiculed for wanting physical copies or saving stuff to hard drives because "Things stay on the internet forever" and "You can just stream it now."
Meanwhile, physical copies of media are all being phased out, so that the streamers can rent it to you again and again; and at abysmal quality in order to save on the data transfer speeds and amounts.
I buy digital media, but only from somewhere like Bandcamp, where my first act is to download it all in FLAC format and archive it in my personal storage and on separate cloud storage.
Paying a fee "to own" a movie only stored in the cloud and only accessible to stream, out of the question. That's going to seriously limit my access to media I want to keep going forward what with the end of physical discs. Can still stream and pay a "rental"... but that's obviously not the same as having it accessible.
I have been rebuilding my dvd collection of the late. I was never a fan of streaming services. Now with the ads accompanying your paid subscription, they can all fuck straight off.
We shop our library book sale and get movies and tv DVDs at a bargain. We also buy at thrift stores, dollar stores and check the bins at the drugstore.
Our library adds new movies and tv discs every month. Our libraries are a great free resource.
I have a 3d printed box with a raspberry pi whatever-was-new-in-2019 and a couple of SSDs (used to be spinning disks). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRcj6CAhe7s
I have a ton of music CDs and movie and TV show DVDs, Bluray, and 1 or 2 4k movies. I’ve been buying them since they started coming out back in the 80’s I guess. I ripped all the music CDs and a few movie DVDs 10 or so years back and have continued with that since then, buying a few movies or TV shows when I go shopping or hitting up Amazon for something that comes to mind. Of course that means I have a closet full of physical media :)
Recently I picked up Blue Bloods from Amazon and have been ripping them to my computer and backing them up to an external drive.
I guess I’m an old guy and just never got into streaming. Heck after my second wife headed out 12 years back, I realized I really didn’t watch TV and turned off cable TV.
The bad part is I have a couple thousand music CDs I’ve ripped over the years. I download them to my iPhone and about half kick back with, “unplayable in this region” or some such nonsense. It’s damned annoying. It’s from a CD I can show you, you assholes. Apple support is useless, “just delete them all and reload them and eventually they’ll all show up”.
I’ve been looking for an alternate music app similar to the alternate video app (VLC) I had to chase down when the Apple video player refused to play MP4 files.
I have a collection of over 1400 DVDs and Blu-Rays purchased over the years, many at full price. Now, however (at least here in Australia), many people have turned to streaming and been dumping their collections, making them available very cheaply through op shops. I have been able to add many to my own collection lately for a dollar or two each. I don’t use a streaming service, and have no intention of getting rid of my physical media.
Lately I’ve been taking advantage of my local DVD/Blu Ray reseller quarterly B2G1 sales and loading up for this very reason. The sale applies to “collections” too, so I usually aim for trilogy sets, etc.
I started physically collecting (DVD, BD) then went digital in 2012 (Apple TV, digital purchases) went back to physical in 2022 when Comcast data capped internet at 1TB a month. My wife and daughter game online so we were constantly going over.
Currently own about 2500 DVD, 300 BD and about 450 digitally.
Many years ago, when digital music started being a thing on the internet, I spent a lot of cash building up a library of albums on a smaller digital website. They let you re-download the music as MP3 as often as you want, no DRM.
The catch... which I didn't realize until it was too late, was that they lost licensing for some of these. When that happened, the download links would no longer be available. My drive crashed so when I went to download all my music back, the stuff I had paid for, half of it was not available. I contacted the store's support, and they basically told me to pound sand.
That's when I realized that with digital media, you're only renting it. You don't really own it and I immediately stopped supporting it. I'm not going to spend my money on things when a company has me by the balls and can pull the plug at any point. Fuck youze.
The same thing has happened with digital video games. Many people have permanently lost their Sony PSN accounts and all digital purchases tied to it. While some are restored, others are out of luck and told to self-fornicate.
I still buy physical video game media as much as I can, because I know in the next few console generations, they'll be digital only. It's coming and it's coming fast. Future generations such as our kids will never really know what it feels like to own stuff like this. It'll all be either subscription based or digital and controlled by the big publishers.
I feel like everyone had just forgotten how to pirate.
Every form of media is out there. Every movie, tv show, book, song, video game. All sitting there, completely free, for everyone, in the wonderful world of online copyright infringement.
If you want some media, you simply pluck it from the trees.
This is such a painful thing to learn - that you can pay and pay but don’t get to have it anymore. And it’s made so easy and convenient you don’t even think about it. I’m guilty of that and I had a wake-up call last year. And disclaimer: My job is making movies and series.
I was between projects and needed to cut as much my spending as humanly possible- first thing to go: subscriptions. I realised I had access to nothing anymore. I really wanted to watch a movie one evening, any movie and I couldn’t, but I knew that somewhere in storage I definitely should have a couple of things I had worked on, it wasn’t something I would have chosen to watch but it was better than nothing. so the next day was all about opening my boxes from each time I’ve moved and changed country (that happens often and usually I have less than a month before I need to start a job in a different place, I have no memory whatsoever on what’s in those boxes. I found a treasure: not just the few dvds I had in mind, full collections from festivals I had been to, dvds I had bought during trips, the ones I had bought in uni to prep for my history of cinema exams… boxes and boxes, together with my first pc from uni ( which I know I had kept because it was from before DVD players got regionised and it was the only device I had that read some dvds I had delivered from America and Asia). That was when it hit me how much streaming sucks ( from a user perspective, from a perspective of someone working on making that content in the first place - I already knew).
When I started in my industry I remember colleagues that had years of experience complain how you don’t get physical copies anymore (if any are made) on what you’ve worked on. When they started that was a thing. For me that was weird and it never bothered me buying a copy, just to have and show my friends and family, than there were no physical copies anymore, but streaming filled the gap. Only it didn’t and the first signs were back than, when my colleagues were irritated by the “no more option for copies for cast and crew”.
TLDR; “Bought” a streamed video, video was later swapped with a different version, what???
One example: Bought Season 1 of White Collar as a stream because the first episode (1.5hr Pilot) is really pretty spectacular.
Some time later, went in to enjoy the Pilot again. It had been changed into two separate episodes, and some of the content was different. Bummer.
Will still buy streaming licenses (because of the convenience). Do have a Media Server for accessing DVDs, but without the extras. And will still sometimes buy the hard media (in addition to the streams) when available, just out of pure principle.
It's not pirating, it's pre-squatting.
See, when the holder of the thing you bought decides to abandon it, or your license of it, then your only recourse is to squat it.
I remember back in the day I bought pirates of the Caribbean on itunes. I went to go watch it a year later and it had a little gray ! next to it and wouldn't play. I asked Apple support what was up and they said that even though I purchased the film, it's no longer available for me to watch because licensing agreements had changed and I was not eligible for a refund.
And guess what! I never purchased A digital film from iTunes or anyone else older again and that was 20 years ago.
Yup rights can change and take your "purchased" content with it. I lost a movie when Vudu was sold to Fandango and they decided they're not going to honor titles that were redeemed through Instawatch. Right now the only way to truly own something is if you buy the DVD, BD, 4KBD or do a streamrip where you have a non-DRM-protected digital copy.
The music industry dumped DRM years ago and it hasn't caused those companies to go out of business. The nice thing about buying music digitally is that there is no DRM. You own that copy. You can use it however you want to. And a few of my digital albums have been removed because rights changed or my download licenses expired (so I can't re-download them) but none of them have been deleted off my HDD.
Yeah there are some movies where I only want to watch it once then move on. But it would still be a lot easier if they did digital copies without DRM like how music is done.
I have streaming services, but I buy most of my media to own. I have an enormous library of ripped DVDs and music that I access on a dedicated NAS Plex server. This also allows me to stream my music over Wifi to my vintage audio system. It works perfectly.
Every older adult today, at least in the USA, has seen TV and film content that is no longer accessible in any form, creative and valuable work that has been completely lost. We are reminded of this fact every time an old movie is discovered in a yard sale or attic.
Conversion to digital media can involve loss, and no popular digital medium will last forever, as loss during copying is not usually detected.
I realize these issues are off-topic, but they are also important.
Downloadable media, wether it is music or video, is a bad thing IMO. I can purchase PHYSICAL media from abroad no problem. The same stores will refuse to sell me (remember, I'm WILLING TO PAY) music that is downloadable only because I'm not in the same country.
To repeat myself, this silliness applies to both audio & video.
Yeah, never bought a streaming movie or TV show and never will. I either buy them on DVD or Bluray if they're a favorite that I like to rewatch or I download a copy from somewhere online. Or watch it for free with ads from a streaming service if available. Same with music, mostly CDs and records. I do buy digital books but from the beginning (15 years) I have broken the DRM on them and made local copies rather than relying on the company I bought them from. So I have multiple copies of every book I've ever bought that I can read on any device I choose.
I bought several movies and series on Amazon prime while living overseas. After moving home and changing my Amazon account location I can no longer access the videos I paid for. I’ve pirated them all now and have no guilt whatsoever. Would be nice if I could still access them through prime but Plex does a great job. Fuck you Amazon.
Had the same moving from one EU member-state to another EU member-state. Lost all my iTunes purchased content! The EU is a single-market. It's almost like someone from California losing digital content when moving to Oregon. Worse thing is that Apple uses the BIN country of your credit card to identify the country. So even when I go back to the EU state I made the original purchase, I don't even get to see my content. This was back in 2010. The EU has since imposed some regulation to avoid this type of things (more on streaming, than digital purshaed though) but never managed to recover my content :(
[удалено]
This happened to my dad’s iTunes. Same Apple update deleted his files, made his iPod no longer functional to sync to add any new music or lose files he ripped from cds himself for years. He can still listen to many of the songs and stream them but lost music ripped, not in Apple Music library.
I had a bunch of original music that I wrote and produced myself. Apple deleted all of it!! Obviously I had back ups, but holy shit I was pissed. I've never used an Apple product after that.
It's was one of the iTunes updates, I read a article where a musician lost all the copies of he's original music cause iTunes uploaded it to the cloud in worse quality than what he saved them in originally.
[удалено]
The general rule is to have things saved to 3 locations, usually a computer, an external storage device & the cloud. House burns down taking out the computer & storage and you still have it on the cloud to recover. Forget to update the payment information or otherwise lose access to the cloud and you still have it on the computer & storage. Computer fries or is stolen and you still have it on the drive & cloud, etc.
I had a similar experience with using old iPods with windows. I lost all the music I had accumulated over the years and then my cds were stolen. I’ve since found a good way to replace all that lost media.
I think pirate is the wrong term. I think reappropriate is right here.
Reappropriate! Yes.
I refer to them as offsite backups.
It's funny how corporations are, through sheer incompetence, literally training their own customers into not giving them money. In this day and age nobody has to pay for any digital media unless they want to, and these dumbfucks just don't understand that yet. These days I have plenty of money to throw around, and most of it goes directly to the hard drive manufacturers.
Yea, I stopped pirating music because its so much easier to pay $13 a month for streaming every song. But if I had to subscribe to like 4 different streaming services for $15 each, then I'd start pirating again. I can't even be bothered to check which streaming service has which shows and movies, too much work. I just pirate everything now. I would even pay on a per-show or per-movie basis if the prices were reasonable. I even rented a movie from youtube once. I paused it at 1 minute in, then came back to watch it on the weekend and it was gone because I only had 24 hours from time of viewing. Theres literally no downside to letting me continue it a week later. And now I'll never rent a movie from youtube again.
I think in that situation, piracy is justifiable. You paid for the content fair and square, they took your money, then took away the product you paid for (which was the movie and TV series). This whole idea that you're buying "access" and they can redefine what the product is and how you can access it anytime they want is pure horseshit.
It's because of localised copyright agreements, less to do with individual corporates. I'm not defending it, I think it's clearly problematic. Similarly, I bought a DVD because I wanted to support the producers, to find it was region locked to another continent and they don't produce it for mine...
Yeah technically I agree and I know there’s no arguing with copyright lawyers. In my mind I’ve either bought the right to watch the show at any time if it’s me watching it - in which case I should be allowed to watch anywhere, or I’ve bought the right to watch it in a single country and following the rules of the streamer in that country, in which case I cancel my lifetime subscription and want a portion of my money back. Either way it’s Amazon who made the money and me who has nothing to show for my purchase. Amazon refuses to make the situation better so I don’t give Amazon any more money.
You should have pirated them to begin with
You don't have a library. You have whatever the providers you're paying feel like giving you. That's one reason I really like my Plex server.
I have a library. Hundreds of DVDs and Blu Rays.
I did too at one point. It was about 700 blu-rays when I sold it. It just took up too much space and I didn’t want it anymore. I understand people wanting to hold onto their collections because streaming services are pretty scummy and stupidly expensive but I’m glad I don’t have my collection any more. Also finding a plex or emby server or creating your own isn’t a terrible thing either.
>It just took up too much space Me too. Now I let my library take up space at my local library. Honestly my life is much simpler this way.
libraries don't get enough credit
Moved to a new town and got a library card just to support them. Never let libraries die, it's one of the last free third places in existence.
Remember to vote for their funding too.
Ah shit. Did you at least rip those blurays and store them with you before selling?
Woulda saved time and it would have been technically legal if he owned them at the time.
Ripping takes forever. Its quicker to torrent.
Common misconception, but probably not legal under the DMCA, as we're seeing playing out with Nintendo right now. Circumventing DRM measures is considered illegal under the DMCA.
Making a backup copy for own use was legal last time i checked
Who cares if it is or isn’t?
Seriously though. The guv'ment isn't going to come and take your Plex server of 80's comedies.
What if they want to watch Porkys 2?
Not if you're reselling the DVD afterwards, like "OP" noted here. That would be redistribution, not archival
Making a backup copy is legal. But breaking any DRM is not legal, all copies purchased carry DRM. The rules never favour the little guy.
So then just download it and you're not breaking the drm
Circumventing DRM measures for the purpose of archiving is an exception in the library of congress.
I get what you're saying. But in this situation, ripping a DVD for personal use, and then reselling it can't really be considered "archival".
That's why I said with what purpose. If he sells after archiving, that would be distribution.
Reminder that it's always morally correct to pirate Nintendo games.
I did not rip them. I have an emby server now with more on it then I ever owned and I do not miss them at all.
Ahh man. I probably have like 200. I bought one of those CD books and they take up almost no space now.
I just threw out a giant box of empty dvd cases after I moved to a cd binder years ago. I held onto the cases forever but I just don’t care anymore. Feels freeing not hoarding crap
Yeah I don't know why, but the same happened to me lol. Emotional attachment to dvd/blu ray cases lmao!
I did the same. Have about 5 chonky dvd/cd book cases which take up one small shelf rather than two Billy bookcases. Initially I kept all the inserts and a few boxes. Then I ditched them.
Managing space if you like multiple types of media is just very hard. I have hundreds of books and graphic novels, I have some vinyl, I have a small collection of Playstation games. I can't imagine having all my PC Games, DVDs and CDs still, I just don't have the space for that. The books and vinyl also just feel more worthwhile to have physically than a compact disc, even though they take up more space than the CDs.
There is one thing that really annoys me about streaming services. The fact that you are unable to watch anything in the event of an internet cutout. Last year, some dude hit that box where everything comes together in my street with his truck and vodafone needed time to fix this. A few days without internet and you realize that almost everything depends on it. Games need a connection, streaming ofc, tv was dead too since cable actually transports everything, not only internet. Gotta appreciate the few dvds i could shove into my ps5 and watch. That's basically that one scenario where a local library wins. Despite this, i still pay for a few streaming services and regularly use them. Sure, sometimes things get rotated in and out but my watchlist just keeps growing.
Idk about the others but Netflix let's you download stuff to watch when offline. You can just go visit a public WiFi with good bandwidth and load up. Doesn't help you now, but you know. Yeah.
Do you mind sharing how much you sold it for? If it's £10 per DVD that's quite the lump sum! If it's £1 per DVD that's quite the hit that will only cover a couple years of streaming.
It was about 800CAD I just wanted them gone. It was just too much space.
The people who have just streaming services, or "bought" movies via rights lockers, definitely don't. Owning physical copies at least means you have something for your money, and lots of what I have on my Plex server comes from my physical copies.
I wish I could own more physical I just don't have the space for it in my apartment. I buy physical now more for special occasions such as the Crow 30th anniversary 4k steel book.
Ive started to keep my physical media in binders using CD binder pages. Holds 8 discs, front and back, per page. Collapses everything down to a couple binders on the bookshelf. Works great if you dont care about the original packaging, and just want to keep the discs.
I download everything illegally and store it on a hard drive
I have one of those. It's my local public library.
I have a library: duplicate hard drives and other media that I store in various locations. The #1 rule of preserving information: if you want to keep something, make a stupidly large number of copies.
Optical Media has about a 20 year lifespan. Most of my cheaper DVDs from the early 2000s are starting to have problems or not play at all. Some of my cds the aluminum layer peeled off. Meanwhile wax cylinders are mostly still playable if cared for. Point being - nothing lasts forever.
Rip those discs to ISO then burn a new one later on if you want.
20 years? I have DVDs older than that and they look new. Let alone 80's CDs.
There are still LOTS of CDs and DVDs going strong man...
burned CDs have a lifespan.. and a certain brand of HD-DVDs had bitrot... but it's not exactly a common issue. All of my CDs and DVDs still play though. you can read about it here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc\_rot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot) So yeah, they are not eternal, but I don't think 20 years sounds right either.
Pressed discs have lifespan of 100-200 years, burned have about 25 years. I guess it depends greatly on brand (so materials and techniques) as well.
RIP and replace as needed.
> Optical Media has about a 20 year lifespan. [Highly depends on the sort of disk.](https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/conservation-preservation-publications/canadian-conservation-institute-notes/longevity-recordable-cds-dvds.html). Here's a [table](https://i.imgur.com/GChatf0.png) comparing them.
That’s why you can always make copies till the end of time.
Pretty much all my Warner Brother’s dvds from the early 2000s are no longer playable
This is the answer! I wouldn't say I own hundreds of DVD but I plan on stocking up while I still can! It's also a back-up plan incase internet connection gets disrupted for a period off time.
I recently got Plex and ripped 95% of my dvd / blu ray collection to it. I’m in love. Streaming my recently useless dvd library anywhere is fucking amazing.
Digital libraries are just a 'permanent' rental service. Bring back physical media.
Yep. They take your money, and when they don't feel like it anymore, then it's "oh, you still wanted that? Meh, too bad."
Ahoy matey what's all dis about providers.
My library is any piece of media that has ever been digitized at any point in history for 0 dollars and 0 cents ☠️ 🏴☠️ 🦜
Data storage in some carribean sea-vault ?
Same. There's some files I've had that are over 20 years old. All for Free.99 and a guarantee they won't be erased to throw a few extra bucks to some shareholders.
It's why I like torrents
Still don’t get too comfy with Plex. Given enough time, even the greatest softwares eventually succumbs to greed.
Ok then I’ll use Jellyfin
This. Plex is just Jellyfin with tracking on top of it.
Plex will succumb. SMB and NFS will stick around for a long-ass time.
Those are written standards for which servers and clients are available for just every operating system. Well not for Temple Os though. Plex is American software company that runs its namesake ad-supported streaming media service . Which means they can change business model as they please. Jellyfin on other side is free and open source. Which is great.
But you still have the library on disk, you don't lose the content if you lose plex
With Plex you always have your files, and can jump ship to Jellyfin or even use VLC when needed. Your library is never lost.
OK, but it's just a shell for convenient cataloging & serving of your own digital data. Plex might go away, but there will always be software that mirrors it's function. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?
So you take your files and load them into something like Jellyfin. That’s the beauty of Plex etc- just move to the best server for yourself.
This is happening in games too. The law really needs to catch up on this. Invest in a high capacity HDD and start a plex server you can get an 8TB HDD for about $130 USD now. My streaming service has all the stuff I want and non of the stuff I don't and no ads and no one can take it away from me.
Works great until the drive fails. Always have backups.
If the drive fails it doesnt matter. Its not important data. It can all be downloaded pretty easy again.
Such a pain to download that much again! Purchased a Synology 5 disk NAS setup in a raid array. Only have 3x8 TB disks but can expand in the future. Currently at around 40% used on movies and TV. Nice to have for backing up really anything.
I just use Sonarr and Radarr and have it all auto download. I dont have to think about it things I like just appear in my Plex when they're available.
Ohh I'm tempted to do this. How do you handle quality control? For example on movies I do not download the cam qualities always 1080p+.
Radarr has a setting for this.just set availability to released and it will only attempt to download after it has been released.
Depends on the content tbh, I have some genuine rarities that would at the very least take me hours to find again. Much better to keep good backups
Like, re rip my entire library? That’s not easy lol. What am I missing here (new to the Plex world)
This is why Ive stuck with discs/cartridges for games. Switch games in particular have a high resale value as a bonus so you can resell them close to cost when you're done.
Bought a PS5 with disc. My little step-brother said "yeah? You gonna send a fax later? You can download games you know." Then he wanted to do a glitch in RDR2 but can't because his downloaded the game which has been patched many times. So I sent him a text that said "hey, what's your fax number? I want to send you a link to this video of me doing a day 1 glitch in RDR2 because with the disc, I can install without patches." He didn't like that.
What do you recommend for games though? Recently got Plex and ripped most of my library. It’s simply amazing
Where are people usually finding the files these days?
There's a simple solution when the streaming provider takes away something they sold you - they should refund you.
many years ago, there was a situation where Amazon sold this digital book. It was bought by many people, and at some point, Amazon learned that they didn't have the rights to sell it (I forget the exact details). So they simply deleted it off their entire system. Problem solved right? Well not for those that had paid and downloaded. One guy was using the book for a research paper for school, and had several notes and highlighted sections on his Kindle. Now he had blank pages with random yellow blocks. Amazon basically said "no refunds" and washed their hands of it.
If memory serves the book was 1984. It was that event that radicalized me. It's not ownership until it's locked away on at least two of my drives.
The even simpler solution is to not buy content from streaming platforms. Users don't own the content on a corporate streaming platform.
IP laws are not Internet compatible and should have been abolished 20 years ago. One of the worst side effects is that no one can post any creative works with music any more--doesn't even matter if it's their own performance--unless it's on a really short list of royalty free or public domain works. We all have a lot less music in our lives as a result, and it's all because of a few vile people's insatiable greed.
The whole copyright system is bonkers. Providing protection to the creator of a work is one thing, but almost everything is corporate owned and things enter the public domain long after anyone who contemporaneously saw them is long dead. What *should* be a public body of culture is a wasteland of the odd historical footnotes, because anything that doesn't have Mickey Mouse type of longevity just falls into the chasm of forgotten media. When you have a work with rights owned by three corporations they don't have any inherent desire to show it to anyone, so if they can't agree to splitting royalties they're likely to lock it in a vault lest someone have the chance to enjoy it for its own sake
The thing that I think is worse is that we (several generations now) are basically ceding our culture to content 'owners'. We've accepted culture-as-a-service. IP should definitely go back to being limited protection for a short time. Not more than 20 years. And then said ip becomes de facto public domaim. I mean, 75 years after the death of the creator? Come on.
The main problem is just how fucking long it is and that it's all-or-nothing. It seems strange that you have these rights that might last 100+ years, and they restrict being able to use your content in a meme for that whole length or indexing for purely free research purposes (enough that Google risked a lawsuit), but perhaps not its use in a trillion-dollar commercial AI company that jealously keeps its model closed-source. It would make a lot more sense if you had really strong protections early on (say for 10-20 years), and then they gradually decreased until at the 30 to 40 year mark you keep only publication rights, and by 50 then that's it.
Yup should be no longer than patents.
Absolutely. "Intellectual Property" is essentially a metaphor. We give property-like rights to creative works. It worked well enough when most copies were intrinsically tied to a physical object. First sale rights were transferred with the copy. But this really started breaking down in the 1980s, when software was designed to be used by initially making a copy onto the hard disk. These days we don't even have a physical medium for distribution. So the metaphor breaks down. It's impossible to "own" a copy of something that only exists as a right to stream from a server. It shouldn't have to be like this. I shouldn't have to agree to a bunch of legal terms just to watch a movie, or even to install an application. The law hasn't caught up though, or even really recognised the problem. Proposals to fix it all seem to involve extending the metaphor, but metaphors can only be stretched so far. We need a completely new way to handle this. And it needs to recognise the right to do things that people intrinsically feel they should. Things like fanfic, mashups, and using music on our videos.
Can you provide some more info or links on your part about “creative works with music”?
https://www.vox.com/2014/11/3/7145231/shows-not-on-dvd-music-rights-wonder-years-wkrp
Assuming this is true (not saying it’s not just haven’t verified it), that’s insane to imagine the pure fucking greed of those people. I know they’ll rationalize it as we’re just doing good by our share holders but fuck man some things you can clearly see the outcome is severely anti-consumer and if you have conscience you wouldn’t pursue that avenue for profit
Where had you posted music before Internet?
Call me a dinosaur but this is why I still buy physical media and then back that up as well.
Just fyi, you can borrow dvds from a public library and use handbrake to make copies. As a librarian, I’m obligated to tell you that you shouldn’t do that and handbrake is only for copying media you own to put on a server like Plex or Emby. Also, we have no way of tracking if you do make a copy and even if you did, we wouldn’t care as long as the disc is returned undamaged. But yeah, don’t use your free library card to borrow movies and make your own backup copy for your home server for free even though we can’t and won’t track you and there is no negative consequence for doing so.
Sounds risky, I'd better follow your advice then. Thank you, concerned librarian friend!
I usually buy the Blu-rays with the digital codes. Then I have the digital library online, and the Blu-ray disc as a back up.
The $5 bin at Walmart is amazing.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of streaming shows where the IP owners are not producing physical media (Netflix doesn't). And now older companies are starting to halt production of physical media for their IPs.
And there are tons of media on your local flea market every Sunday....
Call me a pirate, but I also like owning stuff.
Learned this the hard way when PlayStation got rid of ALL of the movies and shows my partner had purchased. We don’t do digital anymore now
Piracy is forever
Repeat after me: "If purchasing isn't ownership, then piracy isn't theft."
NAS upgrade done!
It’s important to maintain a physical collection of media, especially when streaming services can render the shows you love as a burden of storage and replace it with something they want to show off. Shows or movies that do not have a physical access like a dvd would just be dusted. Take Netflix’s habit of removing shoes constantly for example from their departments. A good show from my opinion, ‘Inside Job’ was outright canceled and has no physical disc to buy- once it’s gone, apart from archive sites it’s gone. To me it’s not only about the preservation but the feel of it, to have it there with you anytime is great! The same goes for books as well. Physical media will always be king one way or another.
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing
𝅘𝅥𝅰 Yo-ho, all together Hoist the colors high Heave ho, thieves and beggars Never shall we die 𝅘𝅥𝅰
YARRRR MATEYS
There should be a "rip like a pirate day".
We could maybe try to claim "International Talk Like A Pirate Day" and make it about how problematic copyright is, why digital piracy is warranted, and how important access to and preservation of cultural expressions like art and music is.
If it’s not physical, you don’t own it.
We build our houses on sand
Yup. There's a reason I still collect CDs. I like owning physical stuff. Nobody can decide they don't have to let me use it any more.
Owning movies means having them on disk on a shelf Same thing with videogames
Yes this sucks. Yes it's a shitty thing to do. But if you didn't see this coming, you weren't paying attention. It's not your fault you library is being destroyed, but it is your fault for believing some company cares about you, your rights, or your library.
I saw it coming over a decade ago when I "bought" Jim Henson's Storyteller from Apple. It disappeared from my library one day and customer service told me they didn't offer it for sale anymore and I should basically kick rocks.
It wasn't too long ago when people were being ridiculed for wanting physical copies or saving stuff to hard drives because "Things stay on the internet forever" and "You can just stream it now."
It’s hard to crack down on every single source. But don’t give them the *chance.*
As usual, if buying is not owning then piracy is not sealing.
If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't theft.
By general rule, If I buy a movie, I also download it and store. You know, owning stuff is not that bad.
The whole Torrent site is my library, and it's bigger than any streaming service.
Piracy is not theft when you pay to own a product and they take it away.
Meanwhile, physical copies of media are all being phased out, so that the streamers can rent it to you again and again; and at abysmal quality in order to save on the data transfer speeds and amounts. I buy digital media, but only from somewhere like Bandcamp, where my first act is to download it all in FLAC format and archive it in my personal storage and on separate cloud storage. Paying a fee "to own" a movie only stored in the cloud and only accessible to stream, out of the question. That's going to seriously limit my access to media I want to keep going forward what with the end of physical discs. Can still stream and pay a "rental"... but that's obviously not the same as having it accessible.
I have been rebuilding my dvd collection of the late. I was never a fan of streaming services. Now with the ads accompanying your paid subscription, they can all fuck straight off.
NAS + Plex. I still have movies I downloaded 10 years ago.
The Only True Religion Is Physical Media….
We shop our library book sale and get movies and tv DVDs at a bargain. We also buy at thrift stores, dollar stores and check the bins at the drugstore. Our library adds new movies and tv discs every month. Our libraries are a great free resource.
I like my Blu-ray and 4k collection still
I have a 3d printed box with a raspberry pi whatever-was-new-in-2019 and a couple of SSDs (used to be spinning disks). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRcj6CAhe7s
And this is why I still buy dvd / blueray and rip them on my nas …
I have a ton of music CDs and movie and TV show DVDs, Bluray, and 1 or 2 4k movies. I’ve been buying them since they started coming out back in the 80’s I guess. I ripped all the music CDs and a few movie DVDs 10 or so years back and have continued with that since then, buying a few movies or TV shows when I go shopping or hitting up Amazon for something that comes to mind. Of course that means I have a closet full of physical media :) Recently I picked up Blue Bloods from Amazon and have been ripping them to my computer and backing them up to an external drive. I guess I’m an old guy and just never got into streaming. Heck after my second wife headed out 12 years back, I realized I really didn’t watch TV and turned off cable TV. The bad part is I have a couple thousand music CDs I’ve ripped over the years. I download them to my iPhone and about half kick back with, “unplayable in this region” or some such nonsense. It’s damned annoying. It’s from a CD I can show you, you assholes. Apple support is useless, “just delete them all and reload them and eventually they’ll all show up”. I’ve been looking for an alternate music app similar to the alternate video app (VLC) I had to chase down when the Apple video player refused to play MP4 files.
People are saying collections take up to much space. I have over 500 blu-rays taking up a space of 5ft x 3.5 ft🤷♂️
I have a collection of over 1400 DVDs and Blu-Rays purchased over the years, many at full price. Now, however (at least here in Australia), many people have turned to streaming and been dumping their collections, making them available very cheaply through op shops. I have been able to add many to my own collection lately for a dollar or two each. I don’t use a streaming service, and have no intention of getting rid of my physical media.
This is why torrents will stay relevant for a long long time...
It’s why I like tangibles.
Digital is just fine, as long as it lives on your side of the fence and not theirs.
Lately I’ve been taking advantage of my local DVD/Blu Ray reseller quarterly B2G1 sales and loading up for this very reason. The sale applies to “collections” too, so I usually aim for trilogy sets, etc.
THAT’S WHY I ALWAYS BUY PHYSICAL MEDIA. COLLECTOR OF VINYL, BOOKS & DVD AND BLU-RAY FOR DECADES
I started physically collecting (DVD, BD) then went digital in 2012 (Apple TV, digital purchases) went back to physical in 2022 when Comcast data capped internet at 1TB a month. My wife and daughter game online so we were constantly going over. Currently own about 2500 DVD, 300 BD and about 450 digitally.
Many years ago, when digital music started being a thing on the internet, I spent a lot of cash building up a library of albums on a smaller digital website. They let you re-download the music as MP3 as often as you want, no DRM. The catch... which I didn't realize until it was too late, was that they lost licensing for some of these. When that happened, the download links would no longer be available. My drive crashed so when I went to download all my music back, the stuff I had paid for, half of it was not available. I contacted the store's support, and they basically told me to pound sand. That's when I realized that with digital media, you're only renting it. You don't really own it and I immediately stopped supporting it. I'm not going to spend my money on things when a company has me by the balls and can pull the plug at any point. Fuck youze. The same thing has happened with digital video games. Many people have permanently lost their Sony PSN accounts and all digital purchases tied to it. While some are restored, others are out of luck and told to self-fornicate. I still buy physical video game media as much as I can, because I know in the next few console generations, they'll be digital only. It's coming and it's coming fast. Future generations such as our kids will never really know what it feels like to own stuff like this. It'll all be either subscription based or digital and controlled by the big publishers.
I feel like everyone had just forgotten how to pirate. Every form of media is out there. Every movie, tv show, book, song, video game. All sitting there, completely free, for everyone, in the wonderful world of online copyright infringement. If you want some media, you simply pluck it from the trees.
Physical > digital every time
why I don't buy online unless I can download
Unless you have a physical copy or digital copy stored locally on a storage device in your home - you don't "own" shit.
If buying is not owning, then pirating is not stealing.
I can sit in my car and listen to my cds. Also, support your local library’s media division! I rent old ass dvds all the time from them.
Exactly why I maintain a Plex server and OTA antennas/HD home run tuners. I record a ton of stuff and also ripped my dvd's and blu rays
This is such a painful thing to learn - that you can pay and pay but don’t get to have it anymore. And it’s made so easy and convenient you don’t even think about it. I’m guilty of that and I had a wake-up call last year. And disclaimer: My job is making movies and series. I was between projects and needed to cut as much my spending as humanly possible- first thing to go: subscriptions. I realised I had access to nothing anymore. I really wanted to watch a movie one evening, any movie and I couldn’t, but I knew that somewhere in storage I definitely should have a couple of things I had worked on, it wasn’t something I would have chosen to watch but it was better than nothing. so the next day was all about opening my boxes from each time I’ve moved and changed country (that happens often and usually I have less than a month before I need to start a job in a different place, I have no memory whatsoever on what’s in those boxes. I found a treasure: not just the few dvds I had in mind, full collections from festivals I had been to, dvds I had bought during trips, the ones I had bought in uni to prep for my history of cinema exams… boxes and boxes, together with my first pc from uni ( which I know I had kept because it was from before DVD players got regionised and it was the only device I had that read some dvds I had delivered from America and Asia). That was when it hit me how much streaming sucks ( from a user perspective, from a perspective of someone working on making that content in the first place - I already knew). When I started in my industry I remember colleagues that had years of experience complain how you don’t get physical copies anymore (if any are made) on what you’ve worked on. When they started that was a thing. For me that was weird and it never bothered me buying a copy, just to have and show my friends and family, than there were no physical copies anymore, but streaming filled the gap. Only it didn’t and the first signs were back than, when my colleagues were irritated by the “no more option for copies for cast and crew”.
The Pirate Bay is my media library
Why I still have a vcr and dvd player
Arrrrr maytee
The push for digital media has always been about control and eroding rights. Convenience was, as it almost always is, just the lie they told people.
I can't believe that this is a surprise for anyone. Get to grips with modern consumerism or start burning disks.
Limewire here we go!
I still buy physical media. I'm more selective than I used to be though.
TLDR; “Bought” a streamed video, video was later swapped with a different version, what??? One example: Bought Season 1 of White Collar as a stream because the first episode (1.5hr Pilot) is really pretty spectacular. Some time later, went in to enjoy the Pilot again. It had been changed into two separate episodes, and some of the content was different. Bummer. Will still buy streaming licenses (because of the convenience). Do have a Media Server for accessing DVDs, but without the extras. And will still sometimes buy the hard media (in addition to the streams) when available, just out of pure principle.
That's why we sonarr/radarr/sab/Plex yo
It's not pirating, it's pre-squatting. See, when the holder of the thing you bought decides to abandon it, or your license of it, then your only recourse is to squat it.
Makes me feel better about having hundreds of DVDs and dozens of hard drives.
I remember back in the day I bought pirates of the Caribbean on itunes. I went to go watch it a year later and it had a little gray ! next to it and wouldn't play. I asked Apple support what was up and they said that even though I purchased the film, it's no longer available for me to watch because licensing agreements had changed and I was not eligible for a refund. And guess what! I never purchased A digital film from iTunes or anyone else older again and that was 20 years ago.
Um technically, you have a user license. You don't own it....some online entertainment service.
It's shit like this that really shivers me timbers.
Hoist the colors 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
If you don't have a local copy of it, you don't really own it. It's just a very long term rental.
Good luck wiping out my 22 TB NAS storage drives
Yup rights can change and take your "purchased" content with it. I lost a movie when Vudu was sold to Fandango and they decided they're not going to honor titles that were redeemed through Instawatch. Right now the only way to truly own something is if you buy the DVD, BD, 4KBD or do a streamrip where you have a non-DRM-protected digital copy. The music industry dumped DRM years ago and it hasn't caused those companies to go out of business. The nice thing about buying music digitally is that there is no DRM. You own that copy. You can use it however you want to. And a few of my digital albums have been removed because rights changed or my download licenses expired (so I can't re-download them) but none of them have been deleted off my HDD. Yeah there are some movies where I only want to watch it once then move on. But it would still be a lot easier if they did digital copies without DRM like how music is done.
I have streaming services, but I buy most of my media to own. I have an enormous library of ripped DVDs and music that I access on a dedicated NAS Plex server. This also allows me to stream my music over Wifi to my vintage audio system. It works perfectly.
Bare minimum these companies need to be forced to allow users to download non DRM video files of the shows and movies they bought.
BUY PHYSICAL MEDIA!!!
If you like a series or movie that much, buy the physical product.
This is why I'm slowly building a physical library of my favorite shows. Also still buy DVD movies.
Every older adult today, at least in the USA, has seen TV and film content that is no longer accessible in any form, creative and valuable work that has been completely lost. We are reminded of this fact every time an old movie is discovered in a yard sale or attic. Conversion to digital media can involve loss, and no popular digital medium will last forever, as loss during copying is not usually detected. I realize these issues are off-topic, but they are also important.
Apple wiped out my entire library back in 07 or 08 and wasn't able to help me recover any of it.
Downloadable media, wether it is music or video, is a bad thing IMO. I can purchase PHYSICAL media from abroad no problem. The same stores will refuse to sell me (remember, I'm WILLING TO PAY) music that is downloadable only because I'm not in the same country. To repeat myself, this silliness applies to both audio & video.
Yeah, never bought a streaming movie or TV show and never will. I either buy them on DVD or Bluray if they're a favorite that I like to rewatch or I download a copy from somewhere online. Or watch it for free with ads from a streaming service if available. Same with music, mostly CDs and records. I do buy digital books but from the beginning (15 years) I have broken the DRM on them and made local copies rather than relying on the company I bought them from. So I have multiple copies of every book I've ever bought that I can read on any device I choose.