I agree with the sentiment implied by the author, but I would reword it slightly. If you don't have the freedom to share something, you don't own it.
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.
Just pirate it. They can't tell you this but there's a quagmire of rights, licenses, agreements, treaties... and you can untangle this Goridan Knot by just pirating, especially media, for your own use.
There are pixel perfect 4k drm-free rips out there made by people who poured thousands of hours into understanding codecs. They will work on any platform, forever, you can stream them or play offline.
These rips can be 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.
believe it or not, but pirated copies can be better a thousandfold than what paying customers get.
whenever I want to play Deathloop, I download it from torrents despite "owning" it on Steam, all because Denuvo really likes my SSD, and whenever I want to go online, then, well, yeah, I have to suffer. still, not regretting the purchase, cuz this money went to Arkane.
Sony's one sentence notice is pretty grim considering how much money they made from these sales (sorry licensing).
From September 1, 2026, due to our content licensing agreements, you will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal, and it will be removed from your video library.
Thank you,
PlayStation Store [1]
At least in 2023 it was two sentences and then they somehow negotiated new licencing arrangements after the massive backlash 10 days before the end date. [2]
Guess we'll see if this clawback has the same backlash.
I purchased it, and you're taking it away? Then either I didn't actually purchase it (despite the word appearing in the notice), or you're stealing it from me.
This article is quite right, but there's even more to it than that. Why should we need to hold ANY kind of relationship with the seller/provider of an article we bought? You certainly don't need a bookstore account to buy a paperback book. Nor do they get to keep your contact information. You get your article and a ticket. They get your money. End of story.
Goods / services. You probably need a relationship to use a warranty.
The tension is that digital goods are somewhere between. Especially when the delivery mechanism is streaming, and/or DRM keys that need to be renewed.
Sure, many people want a one-time download with no promise or obligation to re-deliver it in the future. Then again, many people don’t want the burden of caring for bytes for the rest of their lives and prefer to download on demand.
This whole thing is basically just “different people want different models of commerce for digital content”
Dog eat dog Amped album is not present on Apple music and I suspect several streaming platform, and Remedy never again is not present on it as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(album)
It is important to weigh the transient nature of any purchase. A physical copy may be lost, damaged, stolen, become unusable due to lack of hardware, or just start to take up enough space that you decide its time to let it go.
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.
Physical things take up space and degrade over time. In a world where operating systems and software control licensing owning physical media is barely better than digital except for potentially reselling it.
Enjoy something when you enjoy it, however you enjoy it. In the end you can’t keep anything but that.
I recently passed on some of my favorite books to a nephew. Probably nobody will break into his house and take the books off of his shelves when a license agreement expires. I'd like to be able to do the same with GTA 6 if it's good, but it looks like that would require hacking.
Unfortunately many game disks only contain a downloader nowadays and you often need to bind them to an account to play. Plus the version on disk without updates is probably buggy. Baldur's Gate 3 Collector's edition is an example that has a disk, but isn't really any better than a Steam key.
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.
It's disgusting how a previously open platform for gaming (PC) was turned into what it's become with Steam. Young people either don't know or don't care that it used to be the norm to buy and install a game without a middleman "service".
I bought a Kindle copy of Steven Baxter's novel Ring. One day, I decided to re-read it and downloaded it to a new device.
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.
> Streaming services rent you access. Digital stores sell you a license that can be taken away. Physical media gives you an object that is yours, offline, and in your hands.
>
> Physical media can be given away, inherited, or found at a thrift store decades from now. A digital license becomes inaccessible when an account is closed or deleted. A vinyl record or printed book can remain usable across generations.
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 some cases, even if you hold it you don't own it.
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).
For what it's worth, if it was a PS4, they only require internet access the first time a Blu-ray is played. And, I don't mean the first time a specific Blu-ray is played, but the first time any Blu-ray video is played.
My guess is that Sony didn't want to pay the licensing fees for every PS4, so, the first time you play a Blu-ray, it connects to Sony to get a license. From then on, you can play them without internet.
however - we can be idealistic - but when the rubber touches the road, a lot of things happen.
indie games only exploded due to being digital only, if Indies were to publish physical copies they would go out of business or they would be less of them.
a lot of people complain about amazon - but It has provided an avenue for out of print books to continue being sold - through on demand printing. yeah physical products gets extinct too.
the era of the cheap dvd movie financed a lot of independent films - streaming killed that.
so like everything in life - you win some, you lose some.
My ps3 disc reader os broken and the only games i can play are digital games. At anyppint they can shut down the servers and the game that i boight wont be available anymore
I mean.. this claim is just untrue. "Owning" something is a social construct defined by law. Our entire society exists because we own things we cannot hold, that is, intellectual property.
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.
Do we really take away from the artist? In what way?
The obvious answer is that you take away a purchase the person to give the gift would have made. One could argue that there is also value in propagating someone’s art and potentially increasing the artists customer/patron base. Think of it as advertising or to put it in the context of a drug deal, the first hit’s free. The gift recipient may then go on to buy another work from that artist and even pass on the one they were given to someone else, continuing the cycle.
I’d also argue that there isn’t widespread agreement on reasonable compensation for artists. Personally, I don’t consider artists to be special enough in the context of people that make and produce goods, that they should get unique treatment. Why does a family deserve the financial benefits of trademarks and copyrights decades after the artists death. That’s just one example, but in a time when many’s artists view their livelihoods to be at risk because of AI, it’s not popular to engage in any debate that undermines the artist in any way.
From the beginning. Ownership is intangible. It exists only because of the collective consent to laws.
The difference between ownership of a physical object and ownership of an intellectual one is a matter of conventional. It's easier to define ownership of an object that is excludable, but that's human convenience, not a physical law.
Some dogs have a concept of items belonging to them. Early humans had weapons and, with our lizard mind, things wouldn't go well when neanderthal B considered neanderthal A's weapon was now is. They also had "homes": caves/camps that belonged to them.
Fighting physically for ownership predates fighting judicially for ownership.
To the extent that you can "own" another animal: the ownership of a female by a male is definitely a thing in the animal kingdom.
And before the first law was ever written, human slavery (estimated to be at least 4000 BC, with mentions in the first law ever written) did exist too.
Ownership predates the law that later on codified the concept of ownership.
There was a touch of hyperbole ;) we live in the Information Age after all.. but to answer your question,
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution
Which empowered Congress to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
Scientists and the artists and their "exclusive rights" have built quite a lot over the centuries.
It's a bit more subtle than that, I'm afraid. In many instances lately, physically owning a product no longer means that you own it: the fact that BMW tried to introduce subscriptions for heated seats, VW blocking out Graphene users from connecting their phones to their cars, Insta360 asking you to install their app to use their camera, which does not need to be connected to a cloud service to function, bambu labs trying to shutdown open source projects, the list goes on - that's manufacturers openly denying you from owning the products you paid for(and can hold).
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.
I don't buy the strange fascination with owning physical things.
The other side of this is something no one speaks about: Spotify, youtube made it possible for me to listen to _any_ music from anywhere. This kind of profound open access to art should not just be dismissed. The concerns about price increase are laughable because without spotify I wouldn't be exposed to this music in the first place.
I think the 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.
With Qobuz (lossless music streaming), you can both pay a subscription and buy individual songs, without DRM. You then own those, supposedly forever (at least good luck getting my songs out of my backups, or preventing my airgapped/offline computers from sending them to my stereo amp).
I think it's a good middle ground: you pay a subscription, artists at least get a little something (the biggest issue for artists is the unlimited amount of fully AI-generate slop music), and you get to have actual DRM-free files.
Ripping physical music CDs to bit-perfect FLAC files --and automatically verifying with online databases of other people's rips that your rip is instead bit-perfect-- is kinda a big thing in the audiophile world too.
I'm going to take a safe bet and guess that you are quite young.
If you grew up in any past era where owning a physical 'thing' was the default, you naturally feel the inherent lack of ownership in a digital version of that same thing.
If you grow up in a time of mega platforms that can give you almost all of a certain media type for a subscription fee, the idea of lining up at midnight to pay 3x that fee for one plastic disc from one artist/publisher must sound insane and suboptimal.
Would you be able to explain why you liked owning things that isn't already explained by my points 1) 2) 3) 4)?
I'm guessing its just a feral fascination of owning a physical thing rather than an abstract thing which was my last point. But I think it is that but with a combination of limited supply - owning something even physical, if it is abundant, defeats the purpose.
> A Blu-ray disc, game cartridge, or printed book cannot be remotely erased, edited, or deactivated. It is a physical object you can own, resell, lend, archive, or play offline indefinitely.
Isn't this untrue with surprising frequency? Decoding devices phone home, come under new copyright laws, etc etc etc.
I agree with the sentiment implied by the author, but I would reword it slightly. If you don't have the freedom to share something, you don't own it.
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.
Just pirate it. They can't tell you this but there's a quagmire of rights, licenses, agreements, treaties... and you can untangle this Goridan Knot by just pirating, especially media, for your own use.
There are pixel perfect 4k drm-free rips out there made by people who poured thousands of hours into understanding codecs. They will work on any platform, forever, you can stream them or play offline.
These rips can be 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.
believe it or not, but pirated copies can be better a thousandfold than what paying customers get.
whenever I want to play Deathloop, I download it from torrents despite "owning" it on Steam, all because Denuvo really likes my SSD, and whenever I want to go online, then, well, yeah, I have to suffer. still, not regretting the purchase, cuz this money went to Arkane.
Exactly. I pirate eBooks and buy a physical copy when I come around to reading them.
Unrelated to the content: Claude really likes tags
You wouldnt train a llm to swede movies...
Sony's one sentence notice is pretty grim considering how much money they made from these sales (sorry licensing).
From September 1, 2026, due to our content licensing agreements, you will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal, and it will be removed from your video library.
Thank you, PlayStation Store [1]
At least in 2023 it was two sentences and then they somehow negotiated new licencing arrangements after the massive backlash 10 days before the end date. [2]
Guess we'll see if this clawback has the same backlash.
[1]: https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/legal/psvideocontent/
[2]: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/
I purchased it, and you're taking it away? Then either I didn't actually purchase it (despite the word appearing in the notice), or you're stealing it from me.
Which is it, Sony?
That “Thank you” comes off as a strong “Fuck you”.
This article is quite right, but there's even more to it than that. Why should we need to hold ANY kind of relationship with the seller/provider of an article we bought? You certainly don't need a bookstore account to buy a paperback book. Nor do they get to keep your contact information. You get your article and a ticket. They get your money. End of story.
Goods / services. You probably need a relationship to use a warranty.
The tension is that digital goods are somewhere between. Especially when the delivery mechanism is streaming, and/or DRM keys that need to be renewed.
Sure, many people want a one-time download with no promise or obligation to re-deliver it in the future. Then again, many people don’t want the burden of caring for bytes for the rest of their lives and prefer to download on demand.
This whole thing is basically just “different people want different models of commerce for digital content”
Dog eat dog Amped album is not present on Apple music and I suspect several streaming platform, and Remedy never again is not present on it as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(album)
It is important to weigh the transient nature of any purchase. A physical copy may be lost, damaged, stolen, become unusable due to lack of hardware, or just start to take up enough space that you decide its time to let it go.
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.
Physical things take up space and degrade over time. In a world where operating systems and software control licensing owning physical media is barely better than digital except for potentially reselling it.
Enjoy something when you enjoy it, however you enjoy it. In the end you can’t keep anything but that.
I recently passed on some of my favorite books to a nephew. Probably nobody will break into his house and take the books off of his shelves when a license agreement expires. I'd like to be able to do the same with GTA 6 if it's good, but it looks like that would require hacking.
Does having a hard drive full of mp4s count as holding it?
If they have no DRM, I would say it does!
Unfortunately many game disks only contain a downloader nowadays and you often need to bind them to an account to play. Plus the version on disk without updates is probably buggy. Baldur's Gate 3 Collector's edition is an example that has a disk, but isn't really any better than a Steam key.
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.
It's disgusting how a previously open platform for gaming (PC) was turned into what it's become with Steam. Young people either don't know or don't care that it used to be the norm to buy and install a game without a middleman "service".
And if you can hold it, sometimes you still don’t own it.
I bought a Kindle copy of Steven Baxter's novel Ring. One day, I decided to re-read it and downloaded it to a new device.
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.
Arr, aye there be!
No need for piracy. Since they gave him a refund, he could just buy a copy.
If they refused to refund his money, then... yeah, it does make you want to hoist the black flag, doesn't it?
> Streaming services rent you access. Digital stores sell you a license that can be taken away. Physical media gives you an object that is yours, offline, and in your hands. > > Physical media can be given away, inherited, or found at a thrift store decades from now. A digital license becomes inaccessible when an account is closed or deleted. A vinyl record or printed book can remain usable across generations.
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.
Or, for certain content, buying the CD, DVD, or book.
In some cases, even if you hold it you don't own it.
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).
For what it's worth, if it was a PS4, they only require internet access the first time a Blu-ray is played. And, I don't mean the first time a specific Blu-ray is played, but the first time any Blu-ray video is played.
My guess is that Sony didn't want to pay the licensing fees for every PS4, so, the first time you play a Blu-ray, it connects to Sony to get a license. From then on, you can play them without internet.
Why were you watching movies when you should have been setting up your apartment
however - we can be idealistic - but when the rubber touches the road, a lot of things happen.
indie games only exploded due to being digital only, if Indies were to publish physical copies they would go out of business or they would be less of them.
a lot of people complain about amazon - but It has provided an avenue for out of print books to continue being sold - through on demand printing. yeah physical products gets extinct too.
the era of the cheap dvd movie financed a lot of independent films - streaming killed that.
so like everything in life - you win some, you lose some.
& yeah - if you can't hold it - you don't own it.
I don't like this sentiment. There's plenty of things you can hold but you don't really own. You're probably holding one right now!
Note that the silly title of this HN post is the poster's editorialization. The actual article title: "The Case for Physical Media Ownership".
There are also things you can hold and not own!
> The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.
Frank Herbert, Dune
I can destroy my smartphone in a second, yet I still don't control it.
Yes, you control your access.
So like large asteroids have absolute power over us?
I think we do what we want come hell or high water.
My ps3 disc reader os broken and the only games i can play are digital games. At anyppint they can shut down the servers and the game that i boight wont be available anymore
https://xkcd.com/1150/
I mean.. this claim is just untrue. "Owning" something is a social construct defined by law. Our entire society exists because we own things we cannot hold, that is, intellectual property.
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.
Do we really take away from the artist? In what way?
The obvious answer is that you take away a purchase the person to give the gift would have made. One could argue that there is also value in propagating someone’s art and potentially increasing the artists customer/patron base. Think of it as advertising or to put it in the context of a drug deal, the first hit’s free. The gift recipient may then go on to buy another work from that artist and even pass on the one they were given to someone else, continuing the cycle.
I’d also argue that there isn’t widespread agreement on reasonable compensation for artists. Personally, I don’t consider artists to be special enough in the context of people that make and produce goods, that they should get unique treatment. Why does a family deserve the financial benefits of trademarks and copyrights decades after the artists death. That’s just one example, but in a time when many’s artists view their livelihoods to be at risk because of AI, it’s not popular to engage in any debate that undermines the artist in any way.
>our entire society exists because of intellectual property
Are you sure that's true? If so, in which century did it start being true?
From the beginning. Ownership is intangible. It exists only because of the collective consent to laws.
The difference between ownership of a physical object and ownership of an intellectual one is a matter of conventional. It's easier to define ownership of an object that is excludable, but that's human convenience, not a physical law.
So Neanderthals had copyright law and if they didn't, their society would have fallen apart?
Is that why it did fall apart?
Some dogs have a concept of items belonging to them. Early humans had weapons and, with our lizard mind, things wouldn't go well when neanderthal B considered neanderthal A's weapon was now is. They also had "homes": caves/camps that belonged to them.
Fighting physically for ownership predates fighting judicially for ownership.
To the extent that you can "own" another animal: the ownership of a female by a male is definitely a thing in the animal kingdom.
And before the first law was ever written, human slavery (estimated to be at least 4000 BC, with mentions in the first law ever written) did exist too.
Ownership predates the law that later on codified the concept of ownership.
There was a touch of hyperbole ;) we live in the Information Age after all.. but to answer your question,
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution
Which empowered Congress to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
Scientists and the artists and their "exclusive rights" have built quite a lot over the centuries.
It's a bit more subtle than that, I'm afraid. In many instances lately, physically owning a product no longer means that you own it: the fact that BMW tried to introduce subscriptions for heated seats, VW blocking out Graphene users from connecting their phones to their cars, Insta360 asking you to install their app to use their camera, which does not need to be connected to a cloud service to function, bambu labs trying to shutdown open source projects, the list goes on - that's manufacturers openly denying you from owning the products you paid for(and can hold).
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.
> So while the author has the right idea, sadly it's only part of the story.
The title you're responding to is a poor editorial choice by the submitter, not something expressed by the author in TFA.
I don't buy the strange fascination with owning physical things.
The other side of this is something no one speaks about: Spotify, youtube made it possible for me to listen to _any_ music from anywhere. This kind of profound open access to art should not just be dismissed. The concerns about price increase are laughable because without spotify I wouldn't be exposed to this music in the first place.
I think the 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.
With Qobuz (lossless music streaming), you can both pay a subscription and buy individual songs, without DRM. You then own those, supposedly forever (at least good luck getting my songs out of my backups, or preventing my airgapped/offline computers from sending them to my stereo amp).
I think it's a good middle ground: you pay a subscription, artists at least get a little something (the biggest issue for artists is the unlimited amount of fully AI-generate slop music), and you get to have actual DRM-free files.
Ripping physical music CDs to bit-perfect FLAC files --and automatically verifying with online databases of other people's rips that your rip is instead bit-perfect-- is kinda a big thing in the audiophile world too.
I'm going to take a safe bet and guess that you are quite young.
If you grew up in any past era where owning a physical 'thing' was the default, you naturally feel the inherent lack of ownership in a digital version of that same thing.
If you grow up in a time of mega platforms that can give you almost all of a certain media type for a subscription fee, the idea of lining up at midnight to pay 3x that fee for one plastic disc from one artist/publisher must sound insane and suboptimal.
It was a good time though.
Would you be able to explain why you liked owning things that isn't already explained by my points 1) 2) 3) 4)?
I'm guessing its just a feral fascination of owning a physical thing rather than an abstract thing which was my last point. But I think it is that but with a combination of limited supply - owning something even physical, if it is abundant, defeats the purpose.
> A Blu-ray disc, game cartridge, or printed book cannot be remotely erased, edited, or deactivated. It is a physical object you can own, resell, lend, archive, or play offline indefinitely.
Isn't this untrue with surprising frequency? Decoding devices phone home, come under new copyright laws, etc etc etc.
Blu ray discs can only (legally) be played in licensed devices, and some of the decryption keys can and have been revoked.
Key revocation only affects future disc releases.
AIUI every disc is mastered with the latest revocation list. When your device sees that it is revoked by any disc, it bricks itself.
TIL I don’t own my thoughts :(
Note that the silly title of this HN post is the poster's editorialization. The actual article title: "The Case for Physical Media Ownership".