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Several months ago, as we began mentally preparing to move apartments, my girlfriend nodded toward two gray linen boxes that had long sat untouched at the base of our TV stand. “What’s in those?” she asked. I told her they held my DVDs. “When have you ever watched those?” she asked, rhetorical and correct. She wanted to know if, in the name of optimizing space in our next home, we could dump both the boxes and their contents.

It was a reasonable ask. I couldn’t remember the last time I had even thought about my DVDs; if quizzed on the boxes’ inventories, I might have struggled for a passing grade. Whatever was in there could surely be streamed via some subscription service we already held or else replaced with a digital purchase, and in either case could be flexibly enjoyed on more devices than just the living room TV connected to my Xbox One.

Still, something more than nostalgia made me balk. Streaming requires continued payments to rent access to a library prone to changes beyond my control. Digital purchases come with byzantine restrictions and often rely on that platform’s continued existence and a sustained, quality internet connection. Relying even more heavily on these models felt like a further concession to the powers that already wield such outsize influence over our 21st-century lives, not only through streaming and digital goods but increasingly through the internet-embedded everything around us. Leer más «Share All sharing options for: The erosion of personal ownership» →