This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on the enormous
negative reaction to Sony announcing the end of physical media for
games, and the broader issues of physical media vs. streaming, etc. As
always there may have been minor wording variations from this script as
I presented this report live on air.
- - -
So indeed Sony has triggered quite a backlash and brought a spotlight
onto an issue that goes far beyond gaming and actually impacts most of
us, often every day. Sony decided they'd no longer manufacture
PlayStation games on disks for games released from January 2028
onward. After that they'd only be available as digital downloads. In
fact they said that they've already started repurposing their disk
factory in Austria for this change.
And man did the gaming community backlash hit immediately. Angry
users, petitions, all kinds of negative reactions. But right now it
doesn't seem like Sony is going to budge on this. And the reason this
matters to so many people is that with physical media you know it
can't just become "unavailable" someday at the whim of a media
company. Disks can be carried over to someone else's house to be
played, or can be traded or often bought used. But when you don't have
the physical media, all you usually have is effectively a "license",
you don't actually own anything.
And this kind of dilemma also applies to music, and videos like movies
or TV shows. While you can still often get CD or DVD or Blu-ray disks
for much content, most of the big media firms would likely love to
kill this off. They want you to access everything via non-physical
methods that they can control. That means everything from arbitrarily
cutting off access, increasing prices, including ads in previously
ad-free content -- or more ads when ads were already present, and so
on. This is a real world situation that many users have already
experienced, when they lost access to streaming video content that
they had previously purchased.
You've probably seen on video sites how for some content you're
offered a choice between "renting" it and (in theory) "owning" it,
with owning of course being more expensive. But what do these terms
mean in the real streaming world? Well, renting usually means you
watch the video once, or perhaps some set number of times, during a
specific time period. Owning typically means unlimited views without
time restrictions, but that usually is only the case so long as the
content provider makes that particular content available at all, and
doesn't one day remove various content from the available library,
perhaps saying that they no longer have a license to make it
available. In most cases, this means that even though you thought you
"purchased" that content you will no longer have the ability to view
it. On the other hand, if you had purchased that same film or other
content on a physical medium like a disk, you would typically have a
perpetual ability to enjoy it, at least as long as the physical media
is in playable condition.
The underlying concepts in this battle between physical media vs.
digital downloads and streaming are two-fold. Obviously not
manufacturing and providing physical media simplifies distribution for
the media company and will generally be viewed as more "high tech".
But a big part of this decision-making by these firms is simple greed.
They want to control every aspect of the content and to the greatest
extent possible limit your flexibility in accessing it.
They've largely wanted to stamp out the used market for content ever
since the invention of the phonograph -- all the way through to video
cassettes, CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray disks. Now they have the
technological means to accomplish their long-sought goal, by
eliminating physical media entirely.
We can see something similar happening in the software industry.
Software that used to be a one-time purchase (whether on physical
media or via a one-time download) is now frequently marketed only on a
"subscription" basis, where you have to keep paying for continued
access to the software that you're depending on. Various of Adobe's
current software policies are an example of this behavior.
However, recent surveys suggest that some content consumers have been
paying attention to this situation. While physical media for most
content now makes up a small percentage compared with digital delivery
and streaming, there are signs that when a choice is available the
preference for physical media and one-time purchases has been
gradually increasing, as more and more people are feeling gouged by
the content and streaming firms.
Making your thoughts known about this to these firms -- through your
decisions about how you spend your money for content, like perhaps
considering choosing physical media when you can -- definitely seems
like an idea worth considering. How much impact this would actually
have in the long run is very much an open question. But if consumers
passively accept higher prices, more ads, and ever less flexibility in
terms of how they can actually use these kinds of content, we can be
pretty sure that the media and streaming firms will continue their
process of squeezing us all as much as the market will bear. Perhaps
something to think about the next time you want to watch a movie,
BEFORE clicking that mouse!
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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