First off, I refuse to apologize for the horrendous cover image – I spent a long time making it. I will, however, apologize for the fact that I’m only now noticing the Over the Shoulder is off center. Whoopsie-doodle. Oh well, I’m not going back to fix it now! It’s fine, it’s not even physical media – it could disappear at any time. And then nobody has anything to worry about!
So, ummm…segue achieved. The reason I’m here is to talk to you all about the horrors of “digital ownership” of media. I’m being slightly dramatic, yes. But only slightly. See, when you buy digital media (this is for sure true of movies and music – books I’m not as sure on), you’re not really buying anything. You’re simply paying a retailer for use of a digital asset for as long as they hold the rights to host it. You would have probably seen this recently after the big to-do with the Playstation store deleting a bunch of users’ “owned” content.
If you’re a hoarder of all things media like me, this probably isn’t news to you. You’ve probably been watching your digital content getting slowly stripped away for years. Like, why did John Wick 3 disappear but fucking Tammy or that god-awful Night at the Museum sequel just won’t go away no matter how much you want them to?! The answer is because (and I speak from the mouths of digital retailers here): fuck you. That’s why. Because they don’t care.
I mean, I still redeem my digital codes, and I’ll still pick something up digitally once in a while if it’s cheap. But I don’t count it as something I own, unless I also own it physically.
And then, once in a while if you’re reeeeeeeally lucky, there’s what I’m going to call the Double Whammy Fuck You from a retailer – for example, I just bought the entire Supernatural box set on Blu Ray. It came with a digital redemption code. And that code is expired. It was only good for ONE YEAR after the box set was released. So if you didn’t buy that thing with a serious quickness (and the MSRP on that, in case you’re wondering is $299.99), no soup for you. I’m sorry – one year is an insanely short window for redemption on something that pricey. Especially when they make the “digital code” advertisement part of the packaging. You gotta look at some mighty fine print to see that you have a calendar year from release date to redeem that. And if you look around just the littlest bit, you’ll notice a lot of people went to the distributor to see if anything could be done, and apparently there is “nothing they can do.” WB, the owners AND distributors of this show, can do nothing. My ass. I hate it here.
So anyway, I guess all this ranting is to let you know that by purchasing digital media (and I’m proof positive you can have a boatload of it contained in a small space) you are not only ensuring that you’re not just flushing your hard-earned (I assume) money down the digital drain, you’re also becoming a conservationist of media. Because sometimes, when stuff disappears, it for really-real disappears. It gets lost in the ether, and now that movie, or book, or album just becomes lost to time. And that sucks. So be a conservationist! Help save the media you love from being sucked into the void! Preserve the things you care about to ensure they aren’t lost to future generations. Pass that Are You Afraid of the Dark? box set on to your grandchildren in your will!
