The difference is who gets to decide its lifetime.
Whether on paperback, Blu-ray, or a server’s drive, all media is physical. The difference is who owns the access and therefore its lifetime.
When you own a book or optical disc, it is yours to enjoy for as long as you’re interested. When that media lives “in the cloud”, in other words on servers owned by corporations, that access is measured in years. This is true even for titles you “purchased”.
There are perks to this model including reducing landfill and being able to enjoy it from your phone. There are also drawbacks, like requiring at least one monthly subscription (Internet) if not more (Disney+).
Yet there’s another downside I want to speak to, and that is cultural amnesia.
One library vs. many
Under modern digital distribution arrangements, content only lives in a single library owned by a corporation. In the before times, if any library got rid of a movie or book, those titles continued to exist elsewhere. No longer.
When Disney pulls original productions from its streaming services for a tax write off, and no law-abiding citizen can watch those productions. When Netflix ends support for 87 million devices, no one can watch movies on those devices they own.
It’s the same video game land. PC gamers have long dealt with DRM servers going offline. Now Sony is moving to a digital-only model for their new console, while shutting down the stores for their old ones. It’s killing retro gaming.
At least when libraries burnt down in the old days, copies continued to exist in private collections and other libraries. No one owner could extinguish access for every other party and exact a cultural lobotomy for financial self-interest.
NFB
I had a brief exchange this past week with a representative from the National Film Board of Canada.
I’ve been collecting historically-important trans artifacts and was trying to get a copy of 2013’s My Prairie Home and 2024’s Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story. Unfortunately, the latter was only available via streaming. That is not a copy; that is an agreement for temporary access.
The representative assured me that the NFB’s mandate would ensure continued access to the title:
It may be reassuring to know that NFB.ca operates differently from commercial streaming services. As a publicly funded cultural institution, the NFB’s mandate is to preserve and make Canada’s audiovisual heritage accessible to the public. Much of our collection is available free of charge, without advertising, and is not dependent on the popularity of individual titles to remain accessible.
Correspondence to me from a representative of the National Film Board
The truth is, they can’t guarantee continued access no more than Canada Post could assure the continuation of its services nor CBC access to shortwave broadcasts. All it takes is a single government to shift priorities.
The only guarantee that I will have access for as long as I want is for me to have my own copy. However with the demise of optical formats and streaming as the only option, copies are de facto outlawed. You can have a DVD or a Blu Ray. You cannot legally have a copy of a copyrighted movie that was exclusively streamed.
Thus it’s illegal for me to have a copy of Jackie Shane but My Prairie Home is fine because its DVDs still exist.
Solutions are possible
There are solutions.
First, the NFB could make the works they fund available not only via streaming but downloadable too. So that the culture can persist even if they do not. It also allows Canadians to watch their movies in regions with unreliable Internet.
Second, we could have a copyright regime that says that when copyright owners cease in good faith to make their products accessible, they become public domain after a grace year.
This would breathe new life into retro gaming.
Third, every work being sold could have an unencrypted/un-DRM’ed copy sent to Library and Archives Canada. Upon entering the public domain, Library and Archives Canada could then disseminate it at no charge.
Fourth, copyright protections regardless could be reduced to a maximum of fourteen years after initial publication, as it once had been.
Or not – there are endless ways we could improve things. What we cannot do is accept the status quo.
Parliament doesn’t have to submit to fear mongering from the Mickey Mouse lobby nor the American politicians they bribe. We can have a digital world without executives getting to wipe from our collective consciousness the creative endeavours so many of us contributed to.