I’m weirdly upset that Netflix discontinued its Blu Ray and DVD business. It was inevitable of course. When I looked up their two businesses, which had been separated when streaming because so much bigger than the physical branch, the difference was something like 36,000,000 in streaming sales to 500,000 in rentals.
Funny that Blockbuster once had a chance to buy them but declined. Netflix put every local video rental
store out of business, including Blockbuster. Miss Kim’s used to be one of the best on Bleecker Street but that also succumbed after Netflix took over. But there are several other reasons that this is a sad day. I just sent my two last rentals back, even though they said we needn’t bother. Then I downloaded my entire rental history which goes back to 2009 I believe. I rented over 670 dvds. And the first one was The Mudge Boy with Emile Hirsch. I vaguely remember it but I have no idea why it was my first rental. But the Blu Ray unit had over 120,000 movies to choose from and I’m going to go through that list and see some of the stranger ones I rented. The streaming service has about 20,000 titles and because of the problems with the streaming business that haven’t been worked out in the capitalistic way we do thing, they’re always losing titles.
The much more ominous and pernicious and some would even say corruption of the entertainment industry is that they have always hated the fact that the law treats physical property as your own property. You may not show it for profit. You may not copy it for profitable reasons. But you can give it to someone. Loan it to someone. And you can play it over and over as many times as you want. The law does not treat “streaming” or whatever Itunes is as property. It is now their property and theirs alone. When I looked up the user agreements for music on both Amazon and Itunes, it was clear that you were allowed to play the music you bought on up to 4 devices for Itunes and 9 devices for Amazon. If you needed to change your computer or device, you had to get the new machine reauthorized by Apple. So now they’ve done the same to movies. And it’s like Disney’s “vault.” There are movies that are never going to be released ever again by Disney because they are embarrassed of the racism that was pervasive in their earlier works. Mickey Mouse, in fact, is a caricature of the black faced minstrel — especially with the gloves and shoes. Song of the South has never been released on any platform and won’t be. This is how the entertainment corporations have taken away people’s right to own entertainment and retained it for themselves — giving us permission to see it. Or hear it.
It angered me so much back when I used to buy Blu Rays that they would put on the box “Download your digital version,” when in fact, all you were allowed to do with “your” digital version is watch it on an app — one of the worst ever made — called Ultraviolet. I went along for awhile, until one of the studios deleted all the movies that were in my library and refused to put them back. That’s when I started copying the dvds I ordered from Netflix. Burning them to my hard drive. I have more than 450 movies on my passport drive (it’s a 4 terabyte drive I think, or maybe 8). But I’ll miss The DVDs and Blu Rays. The ones I bought are all going into storage because I’ve burned them to my computer library and can watch them from there. I imagine some day, well into the future, I’ll throw them out.