I'm curious what would take for regular people (i.e. people off HN) to realize what is pointed in the article is a real problem.
In my experience, every time I mention this I'm labeled as: nostalgic old guy, Don Quixote wannabe, tinfoil hat supporter, pirate nerd who doesn't understand people just want convenience. I've seen people bit by losing access to purchased content shrug and say "yeah, that's bad isn't it? at least I was able to watch it before they removed it".
Sometimes I feel that's a lost battle. People were put to boil just like the frog in the anecdote and keep swearing it's a hot bath.
It's not a battle that's important to me personally. I think to some extent it's a personality trait, since I feel like I see echoes of this conversation where my Mom wants to hold onto things endlessly "in case" we'll need it whereas I would rather get rid of it. Or my mother in law who takes far more photos than she'd ever be able to look at and worries about how store them all and back them up and so on.
Basically, I don't have much attachment to things so the prospect of losing something isn't such a big deal. Physical things can break down or be lost or stolen after all. Not much different from that to my mind.
I think part of it is also that young people are just not as attached to specific media units, so to speak. It's more like everything on tap, on a stream, curated by algorithms. Things are ephemeral in this way. Years ago, an album by a band was a major thing and you had a limited number of those, you looked at the cover art in detail, read the booklet attentively etc. Owning it was a personal attachment like this. People nowadays don't really want to hoard it this way. Having convenient access on any device is more important than a stash at home.
Also at the end of the day, it's all super first world problems. Oh no, you can no longer play some video game or watch some Hollywood movie... I don't think people will get angry enough about this to care because at the end of the day it's just some entertainment.
The battle is alive and well, pirating has never been easier and of this high quality.
Support the creators however you want but go foster an environment around your friends and family that there are alternatives to paying evil companies who will remove your access to content willy nilly.
The problem today it's hard to convince even myself to pay the storage premium, but I 100% agree with you.
Premium? Sure things are more expensive but you can get 1TB hdd for 25-30 eur. You don't need an ssd and I'm sure you can find second hand drives even cheaper (or larger).
Starting a subscription is money down the drain.
You actually have to support the creators however THEY want if you want access, not however YOU want. I suspect you're not actually supporting all the creators of the things you watch via piracy!
This perspective has been beaten down to death but, just so you know, whenever you went to see a movie at friend's house, you also didn't contribute and were in fact pirating the content.
Creators are often happy that their art is being watched regardless of the source and whether they are making money from it.
https://www.screendaily.com/news/piracy-is-the-most-successf...
Its the money behind them that cares about restricting access to bleed every penny they can out of it.
That’s an excuse, not universally applicable, and not even well supported by your own link.
> Herzog continued. “I don’t like it because I would like to earn some money with my films. But if someone like you steals my films through the internet or whatever, fine, you have my blessing.
He’d rather you didn’t. And I bet you’re not checking every artist. Just be honest and say you don’t want to pay, don’t act like you’re Robin Hood.
People rarely change their habits due to logical arguments, or ideological stances. Real change for normies happens when the current system becomes more painful than the alternative. Even with the potential to lose access to your media, there’s not enough friction yet. More fragmentation and more enshittification will eventually reach a threshold where normies start to find it inconvenient enough to consider an alternative.
The other side of it is people have short term memories. They’ll eventually forget about that time Sony took away their purchased content when there’s something else they really want to watch on the platform. We need laws that prevent companies from using the word “Buy” or “Purchase.” If we want real change, it’ll happen when the verbiage by law is “Rent” on everything and the blinders are pulled off so people can see that they own nothing and rent everything. For now the illusion of ownership is too strong.
The media industry has been training the public to accept whatever they are given, however it is given to them. They want you to pay them forever while giving you nothing but what they choose to give you. "You'll own nothing and be happy" really is the goal.