"They'll all be too busy with their bread and circuses and the 2 minutes hate or whatever."

Is that really it, though? I mean, that seems really weird on its face... "I'd like to own my own copy of this movie rather than just stream it, but I really have to get back to hating Republicans." That doesn't seem all that plausible.

Personally, I am happy streaming things I don't care to own. At this point, most of the things I watch, I want to watch once. The world is so abundantly overflowing with good video content that I have little reason to return back to something. Those few things, I frequently will buy. Some of my "season DVDs" I'm quite glad I hung on to... some of them were on Netflix for a while, but are no longer, and are still fairly expensive to buy.

If the stream services went away, ultimately I'd be slightly inconvenienced.

Music, by contrast, I tend to listen to a given track/album that I like quite a bit, and I take possession of. YMMV. I'm very music oriented compared to most people.

And Stallman's arguments about software are yet again something different; there are reasons for having the source and using open source that have no media equivalent, because software isn't just media, it's a machine.

> Is that really it, though?

Largely.

> I mean, that seems really weird on its face... "I'd like to own my own copy of this movie rather than just stream it, but I really have to get back to hating Republicans."

That's beause you are assuming that, e.g., political identity fights are an alternative to economic concerns, rather than forces which shape the cogntive filters that determine the perception of the nature, cause, blame, and appropriate response to economic disappointment.

I think the argument would be more along the lines of, "I marginally dislike the concept that I no longer own these products, but I absolutely hate the other team, which therefore deserves my attention to a much greater degree."

They're not necessarily related semantically, but in terms of allocation of attention (a finite resource), they are competitive.

>"I'd like to own my own copy of this movie rather than just stream it, but I really have to get back to hating Republicans." That doesn't seem all that plausible.

That was actually a perfect summary of /r/technology

Sometimes it's just not worth it to own everything. Renting makes a lot of sense for a lot of people. Blockbuster et al were doing this forever ago. If you only cared to watch/use something once; renting it made a lot of sense, and still does.

renting at blockbuster made sense. You could watch a movie unlimited times within a 5 day period for $1.99, versus purchasing the video for $29.99.

renting at Amazon Kindle doesn't make sense. You could pay $9.99 to rent a digital version indefinitely (or until Amazon loses the rights to rent), or you can pay $6.50 to buy a paperback version that you have second sale rights to.

Right, but then this paperback takes up physical space. Having boxes and boxes of books is probably really nice for some people, and sounds nice in the abstract, but it's a right pain to move around! I'd rather have PDFs than any residual "second-sale" value.

I agree especially with stuff like DVDs, and music media etc. It does make a lot of sense, until you get to bigger more important things.