Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by supernovae on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @05:52PM (#17762251)

I have MUCH more access to all the worlds books, movies, television shows, music libraries and documentaries by paying for a service or using the library then I would ever have in trying to own it.

I'm not sure re-watching or re-reading anything is really limited or granted by owning...

Lets take netflix for example. If there is something on netflix that i want a friend to see and they don't have netflix, i can just bring my phone/tablet over to their house and cast the show to the TV and watch it there or they can pay a few bucks and watch the entire series in a month.

I don't have to collect anything, store anything, remember who borrowed what and quite honestly there is enough content on a few select services that i don't need them all and i'm quite content in having so much new stuff to enjoy that the need for having a favorite to watch over and over is sort of history for me.

I watched the shit out of goonies as a kid becasue it was only 1 of 5 movies our entire family could own. Had we had on-demand everything that habit would have been a non starter for me. That doesn't mean i don't love goonies to this day and that i won't ever re-watch it but i may only re-watch it when it makes a round again on netflix and magically shows up as available - and i think that kind of experience to me is much better than feeling i owe myself to watch it because i'm moving it, storing it, seeing it, shelving it and having it occupy my life in some way.

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Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by smhost on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @06:31PM (#17762489)

You're more arguing the differences between digital and physical technologies than you are arguing the merits of ownership as such.

If we can ignore ethics for a moment, piracy still provides a superior product than rentals because pirated objects don't lock you into particular ecosystems nor does it prohibit you from using the product in any way.

Given the choice, I don't want to have to buy an apple, android, or windows phone/tablet just to download movies to watch while camping or something. I would rather have the freedom to do whatever I want with the things I paid for.

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Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by supernovae on Wednesday August 15, 2018 @12:31PM (#17767322)

I don't have to care for that by choosing services that don't vendor lock me in.

For example, i don't buy from itunes or google store if they restrict me to those marketplaces. But i do subscribe to netflix and hulu because they don't give a crap where i login from.

piracy isn't ownership either... even if i pirate shit, i have to provide a service akin to that netflix provides to be able to watch it on my tablet/tv/phone or on the road

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