Physical Media vs. Digital Media | Hacker News Reader

Physical Media vs. Digital Media

itsjustchronicallyoffline.bearblog.dev

12 pointsspeckx13 comments

It's less convenient for sure, but I miss the days of DVD collections and big binders in the car full of burned CDs. It was a pain, yes, but you knew what you had.

Yes me too, best part of the week-end was going to block buster on friday getting the 2+1 DVD offer.

I've had the same collection of MP3s on my phone for the last decade.

Id argue digital media is still physical media when it simply a portable file. A smaller form, yet no doubt physical.

I think the distinction comes when your the digital media no longer becomes portable. Then it's like a leasing or renting.

Yeah, Hollywood went nuts for DRM under the assumption that just giving people the files would result in mass piracy.

Piracy will always happen. DRM doesn't stop anything. Media is meant to be watched and heard which means no matter what gets cooked up, it can be defeated with a camcorder and a microphone.

About the only other reason for DRM is that hollywood wanted to make it so someone couldn't buy their movies for cheaper by shopping in different regions.

There really is basically no reason in the modern era why we shouldn't be able to buy DRM free media. Even for a premium.

This is just dancing around data ownership.

It's not about physical vs digital, it's about whether you have the freedom to do as you wish with the data you have, or if it or you are in someway beholden to a 3rd party for permission to use it (be it DRM, Licensing, Subscription, Always Online, whatever).

Even more specifically, what does it actually mean when we buy or own something digital?

I don’t care about media – whether it’s on a disc, thumb drive, hard disk, cassette, in the cloud, sitting on a nas, it doesn’t matter - I simply want the rights to use the thing I bought, irrevocably and irrespective of the media it’s conveyed on. I get that physical media is an easy target because traditional physical media requires someone to come into your house and remove or destroy it, but this is one of those issues where treating a symptom rather than the cause will not solve the greater problem.

Owning means your government protecting against others taking your stuff.

There's no any real legislation about digital products, so you don't own digital.

DVDs and CDs are digital media. "Digital" does not mean "rented instead of owned".

Hey, I logged in as you, it really is your password lol.

I thought this was a bit, but then I tried it for myself. It really is his password!

Just kidding, it’s just a bit.

Ha ha

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