I Have Ongoing Concerns About When Physical Media Disappears and We Don't, "Own," Our Digital Media

An assortment of news stories got me thinking of that phrase, "You will own nothing and you will be happy." Lots of things are now subscriptions or services. You don't own your movie, you have a membership with a streaming service that offers it. You don't own a record/tape/CD, you can stream it for a monthly cost. Your game pass renders games unusable if you stop paying...but you can buy a digital copy you do, in fact, own, right? Well, as of March 2026, it seems PlayStation has implemented a method to disable games from working if you don't connect to the internet with a digital game (that you supposedly own) at least once every 30-ish days. This wasn't announced or anything; people just noticed it and are hot pissed. Gamestop is taking advantage of this PR blunder, of course. Not all games have physical copies, however, which raises concern. This new PlayStation fiasco also makes me think about comics people read online and how hard it can be to get a physical copy of certain…