A few years, I was having a movie night with a friend.
We started off by watching Manhunter , the 1986 crime films that follows an FBI investigation of a string of murders connected to the infamous Dr. Hannibal Lecktor. It was free at the time on whatever streaming service we happened to pull up.
Not content with one film, we opted for a double feature. At my recommendation, we decided to watch one of my favorite films, The Raid , a 2011 Indonesian action film that follows an intense drug raid in an abandoned vertical complex.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t find this film anywhere for free. I don’t typically pay for media online (those streaming costs add up!) but I knew we needed to see this film.
The Raid was available on Amazon Prime at a fair price. I believe it was something like $3.99 to rent for 48 hours, or $5.99 to purchase the film.
At the time, I figured it makes perfect sense to buy the film. “Well, I will own this film forever. It’s definitely a movie I will visit every couple of years. It would be well the extra few bucks,” I thought. So, I clicked purchase and proceeded to enjoy watching propane tank explosions and combatants dodge falling refrigerators while engaged in a nun-chuk brawl.
Streaming is now the dominant avenue of how people watch movies and absorb television. It has long-replaced the VHS and DVDs of yesteryear. Music has followed suit. Gone are CDs and vinyl albums (although these have seen a nostalgic revitalization in recent years) — Spotify and Apple Music dominate as the platforms by which people listen to their favorite artists.
This digital accessibility has its perks. It’s much cheaper overall than an accumulation of individual purchases, and it makes listening or watching on the go simpler than ever. Over 90% of Americans, across all demographics, own a smartphone nowadays. That is a statistic that baffles me, that so many people have access to the unlimited capabilities and access that such a device offers. Imagine telling that to someone even ten years ago. With the touch of a button, just about every song ever written or every moment captured on film is available. It’s stranger than the wildest science fiction written fifty years ago.
Streaming has made content available instantly. People can purchase and amass a large digital collection — or can they?
Like every kid, I enjoyed accumulating things. Whether it was the Goosebumps books still on my shelf or the newest baseball cards, children are drawn to collecting various items. By the age of 13, I had already owned the first 14 seasons of The Simpsons on DVD and owned a boxset of every single episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus .
Once I purchased those DVDs, Best Buy could not barge into my home a year later and take those DVDs away from me. That would be blatant theft. Amazon Prime, Sony, Spotify, Apple iTunes — they can do it without you even noticing.
In July of 2022, Sony announced that it was pulling hundreds of movies from its online shelves . They announced that any already-purchased content would remain available. However, due to “evolving licensing agreements with content providers” over 300 movie titles that were previously purchased by users disappeared.
When you purchase a digital media product, you don’t actually own it. You are purchasing a license to view the content, which a platform can revoke without any repercussions. The Terms of Use that everybody clicks and ignores clearly outlines these provisions. “Entire digital libraries could be wiped clean according to the Terms of Use of these types of online stores,” states the article from Looper. It appears that refunds are not available for victims of this bait-and-switch.
While streaming is so easy, and physical collections can be bulky and expensive, let’s not forget that there can be major advantages for those who still prefer their media via analog than through bytes. I will always prefer handheld books over a Kindle, but that same sort of feeling has never translated to movies and television. Maybe it will one day. Streaming, once seen as an unstoppable force, has now become so fragmented and expensive across so many different subscriptions that it is causing many to pull the plug.
I had the urge to re-watch The Raid recently. And then I paused — with my newfound knowledge, do I even “own” this film anymore?
I logged onto to Amazon Prime, and there was the movie I “purchased” a few years ago, ready to stream on my television set.
Check your digital media collection — will you be so lucky?
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