When We Stopped Owning Our Films
(updated July 2026)
For several years now, I have left my last discs sitting on the shelf. I do not use them anymore. At all. They pile up and gather dust on my shelves, even though I have never consumed as many films, series, and music.
Back then, everything accumulated on my computer's hard drive. Today, it mostly accumulates in libraries that don't truly belong to me.
I had bought an album a few months earlier. The vendor sent me, in addition to the CD, a link to download the tracks as MP3s. Result: the album arrived new, then stayed in its plastic case. I had bought the object, but I had consumed the file.
Perhaps that is where the change began.
The interest in buying an album, a DVD, or the entirety of a series was not limited to the content. There was also the fact of owning something. An object that you could store, lend, resell, forget for ten years, and then find at the bottom of a box.
The problem was: where was I supposed to play that disc? In my MacBook Pro Retina? It didn't even have a DVD player anymore. In my Blu-ray player? I never had one. Don't you want me to buy a TV while we are at it?
I belonged to the generation caught between two worlds. I had known physical media, but my devices were already starting to lose what to do with them.
At the time, I thought the shift to digital would simply replace the disc with a file. You would buy a film, download it, and then keep it on the support of your choice. The same content, without the box.
That is not really what happened.
Streaming brought real progress. It is simpler, faster, and gives access to a quantity of content that would have been impossible to store at home. I do not regret the time when one had to choose a DVD, wait to receive it, take it out of its box, and hope the player would still work.
But in exchange for this ease, we have lost some of the ownership.
A film available on Netflix today can disappear the following week. It can change platforms, become unavailable in our country, or require a new subscription. We do not really own the work. We temporarily own the right to access it, as long as the catalog, the contract, and the platform allow it.
And on the video game side, it is even crazier. You can buy a game "individually" and end up not being able to play it because its activation servers have shut down.
Physical media had many flaws, but as long as you owned the disc and a player, no one could take the film off my shelf.
Perhaps that is also why certain formats are coming back. Vinyl has become desirable objects again. Dedicated MP3 players, local files, and even wired headphones are regaining an audience. There is obviously nostalgia and plenty of commercial opportunism behind all this, but that is not the whole story.
There is also the desire to regain some control.
The consumer does not always choose. They choose from what the industry makes available. But when a sufficient number of people continue to buy, repair, collect, or use an abandoned format, this demand can eventually recreate an offer.
In 2014, I was looking for a technical solution. I thought perhaps it was enough to sell the films on USB drives or SD cards. In retrospect, the problem was not really the form of the support.
The real issue was the possibility of keeping what one had bought.
Physical is restrictive, cumbersome, and sometimes fragile. Streaming is practical, immediate, and often more pleasant to use. But one remains with us, while the other can disappear without asking for our opinion.
In the meantime, I still keep my old hard drives close at hand, filled with entirely legal content, of course.
Hadopi, if you happen to read this, you have already fined me 200 euros.
Are we friends now?