MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Now, more than ever, please encourage ph...

Now, more than ever, please encourage physical media ownership...

posted 4 years ago by Oblivioid (1555)
42 replies | jump to latest

...before it's gone.

Yes, digital is wonderful. It is convenient, it takes up zero physical storage space in your home. You no longer need to have huge wooden media racks to hold all your movies, music and/or books. This convenience comes with a huge flaw and risks. It can be instantly edited, or simply erased and banished at the whims of someone who doesn't like the contents. Poof! Gone!

But censorship is rapidly progressing. Owning uncut, unedited, and now banned media is going to be important if you value art and knowledge. Please consider physically owning these things once more. If we have to eventually hide our precious films, books, and, music from the Grammaton Clerics of Equilibrium, then that's what we'll have to do to save our art. But, do it, we must.

[–] moviechatterer (16326) 4 years ago

There is some middle ground.
How about we just own a digital file, to keep at home on a hard drive , or better in the cloud?

The difference being we own it , and once purchsed the seller cant change it.
That way if stored on the net , storage can be reduced.
no plastic no paper no disc to fill landfills
Online storage would be cheap as it can be split amongst many people.
1000 people buy a film , the cloud doesent need a 1000 hard drives , it needs one , and the 1000 people access it.

you can DL it and store at home too , or put on your laptop for off the grid viewing.

[–] kukuxu (5409) 4 years ago

The cloud is great. But have always a copy in a physical drive in your house. Have the best of both: have both.

[–] Oblivioid (1555) 4 years ago

The Cloud = somebody else's server. You don't control that.

[–] moviechatterer (16326) 4 years ago

a safety deposit box is someone else box too.

There'd be tighter rules and contracts for storing *your* film collection , than there currently are for dropbox or facebook - which that they do what they want

I'd have it backed up at home but a lot of people cant be bothered , and a lot wouldnt know how

[–] Terez (236) 4 years ago

I hate "someone else's problem" style environmentalism; the cloud just makes it someone else's problem, and hides the environmental damage from you. Server farms aren't environmentally green and produce much waste in terms of used up HDs that have to be replaced and since they're always on that means their carbon footprint is more significant than a piece of plastic you keep because you want that piece of plastic.

It's quite transparent that you're a strong proponent of streaming, not ownership. If it was YOUR safety deposit box, no one else could stream from it. 1 box 1 person.

No matter how much you lie to yourself, the internet as a whole has a massive environmental footprint. For more people to access the same film at the same time you need more HDs with that film on it, more servers, more backups and all always on and polluting. The internet isn't the solution to Climate Change, it's a major contributing factor.

[–] AnubisRaydeen (7897) 4 years ago

So it's settled. Do all three.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

as my favourite economist likes to say, there's no such thing as solutions - there are only trade-offs.

i'd be very interested in hearing a high level study of whether there's more energy consumed by having server farms than there are in producing millions of pieces of plastic shipped to individuals. i guess it's possible that there may be more energy consumption, maybe even more material consumption, but i'm pretty skeptical of that.

you also have to consider not only all the material and energy that goes into those disks, but all the material and energy that went into blu ray and dvd players, and all the extra energy it took to keep those running.

and it's not only blu rays and dvds that have gone away. look at all the cds that have vanished, no longer produced - instead we get music by having it beamed by electrons. and all the other items that have vanished into our phones and smart tvs and rokus and so on. cameras, radios, clock-radios, all those devices that all had to be produced and all took energy to keep running - a lot of energy in some cases.

it 'might' be the case that there's more energy consumption from streaming compared to buying a blu-ray. maybe. i'm willing to take your word on that if you have a study to back that up. but i wouldn't restrict your scope to only movie streaming. there are lots of other efficiencies from having all those devices collapsed into a phone/laptop/tv.

edit:

just popping back in to post a link to an interview with andrew mcafee from the great econtalk podcast.

his book 'more from less' came out about two years ago, and is essentially about how in the past 20 years or so, material consumption has become decoupled from economic growth in modern economies. the interview's a great listen, and his book is very much worth a read if you're interested.

it's one of the most interesting and least widely known facts about the world-wide economic miracle of the last 40 years or so. not only is the world much richer, not only has poverty collapsed, but in the most advanced economies, we're actually using less stuff. we're consuming less material. we've dematerialized, and that's something really remarkable, really good, and movement away from things like physical media, move towards smaller, multifunction devices is a big part of that.

https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/