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Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

I buy physical media and rip them into a digital library. Subscription based digital media is great, but they can yank the rights at any moment.

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Judging by how the gaming industry is going, I'm afraid the subscription model will only expand more in the movie industry as well, until all physical media is considered a legacy format. There will likely never be a successor to current Bluray media.

Studios will love this as they can cut costs on manufacturing and distribution, while forcing consumers into their subscription service.

At that point piracy will be the only way to consume content without any restrictions.

I mostly didn't care about games on physical media but recently I saw "collector's editions" steelbooks that have plastic inserts for disk but contain only download code. I mean, it is probably a natural step after "golden disk" is literally unplayable and downloads 30GB patch on day of release.

This has already started; I think even the new Call of Duty basically has a disk option, but the game isn't really on it. It's basically just a verification and you have to download the game. I don't have the game, but I think I've read that somewhere.

I think you've just defined the balance of freedom with fair capitlaism...The artist(s) presumably gains revenue from your purchase, but you gain vastly more flexibility to consume however, whenver, and as many times as you wish the art produced. Kudos!

Including if you’re in another country. I owned a movie on Vudu that I wasn’t able to stream in Canada due to licensing rights.

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