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Unless you have a DRM-free file in an open format on your own hard drive, these assholes can do whatever the heck they want.

What're you going to do, sue them? Their terms probably require arbitration and forbid class actions suits. And even if you sued and won, you'd probably end up with a check for four dollars and thirteen cents. You're definitely not getting those movies back.

It drives me up the wall how hard it is to actually buy digital creations so that you actually own them. A few places make this possible — Libro.fm for audiobooks, AK Press & No Starch for text. There's not a lot for movies and television, in part because of intense consolidation.

The truth is that the only way to really own a movie is to buy it on a disk and rip it. And much streaming TV doesn't even offer that option. You've seen how many incredible streaming shows have been memory-holed in the last year. Right now, the only way for people to watch those shows involves a tricorn hat and a cutlass.

Truly, the only way to preserve access to culture is archiving lots of copies. Centralization has done so much work to push reasonable archival activities into the margins, by making archival both technically challenging and legally uncertain. And we live in an era of the most impressive information preservation & duplication technology ever made! You can carry all of Wikipedia, thousands of books, hundreds of audiobooks, and movies and TV shows on a tiny SD card.

There's no reason that all the most important works of our culture shouldn't be massively replicated and available everywhere. You shouldn't need Internet access to read a book or watch a show. All of that should be available offline on all your devices. Just like the books on your shelf, but better and lighter-weight and easier to use. mastodon.social/@gamingonlinux/111507402238224111