On Physical Media

So unlike my previous rants I'm choosing to cover a topic I have less "passionate" thoughts on. I mean I still have some feeling on the state of the world but this time I'll be more passionate: more fun.

On thing I've become more knowledgable on is how little we (as in society) have been paying to creators of media. A subscription service costs (we'll use pretend numbers here) 15$/month per service. If we assume that 50% of the costs go to paying the distributors of said media - I can't source a proper number for the percentage - Then you are paying 7.50$/media you watch in any given month. Lets say you watch only 10 movies or the time equivalent in a single month, if that gets distributed evenly you effectively paid 0.75$ for each piece of media. Meanwhile the cost of a CHEAP Blu-ray of any given movie is about 20$ therefore you paid for a twenty-sixth of a movie. Even if only 10% of the $20 was profit they'd be making nearly triple over the subscription profit.

On Ownership

With subscription services or digital storefronts YOU DO NOT OWN A SINGLE THING. Most levels of ownership found on digital storefronts usually provide you a form of licence to watch/play whatever. However you do not own the piece of media. At best you own the files and even then if the storefront disappears you lose ownership rights and therefore using said files may or may not be piracy (depends on if you own the files through said platform or own the files themselves). I feel like I don't need to explain subscription services stealing other shows or having the rights expired and nobody caring to keep it on any platform whatsoever. Its entirely possible for one of your favorite shows to just disappear for awhile or even possibly forever.

In unrelated news, but still relevant to the topic of this article. Sony will eventualy stop production of disks for the Playstation 5. This has not been a major motivator for me but I thought that it'd be a shame not to point out.

Books

One of the problems I have with being on a computer is that it tends to be a tool of distraction. This isn't neccessarily bad, my hobbies tend to not be mindless and require introspection and/or research, but my own desire for knowledge tends to distract me into focusing on many different topics and justify it by saying that "I'm learning". Depending on the extent that I can delve into a topic, I may be distracted for a while.