With Big Tech pushing you toward owning nothing and just renting, I offer alternatives to help you take back control. Be happy about that.
One of the first blog posts I ever wrote for this site, way back in 2013, was called “How to defeat the lawn mower army“. In it, I described how there are many things that we buy that we don’t really need, because we rarely use them. For these instances, community-based ownership would do just fine.
A lawn mower is a perfect example. You probably don’t mow your lawn that often, and yet you and everyone else in your community each have a lawnmower. These spend most of their time doing nothing, which is not only a waste of space, but also a waste of everyone’s money.
So I argued that we should cultivate shared resources where it would benefit us, so that we can build community (always a good thing) and save money (ditto).
This sounds pretty nice when in the context of a local community. Unfortunately, Big Tech has decided that they want to get in on this lack of ownership thing too. Not because they want to build community, but because that way they can control and extract more money from you.
You can probably tell how I feel about this.
Nevertheless, there are many ways that you can push back against this seemingly-inexorable push toward owning nothing.
Books
Ebooks are all the rage. They’re easy to carry, and in fact you can carry a million books on your device. You can read them on your smartphone, but there are dedicated devices too, both older and newer.
But you don’t really own the books you’ve purchased.
The famous example is back in 2009 when Amazon removed copies of George Orwell’s Animal Farm from people’s devices. You can’t make this stuff up.
But even aside from that, when you purchase an ebook, you are just purchasing a revocable license to access the book, and that’s all. That means it can be taken away.
What you can do
Well, the obvious thing you can do is to read actual books. Use your local library and read books for free. Buy books on eBay. Check out Goodwill.
If you have to use an ebook, look at the books available on Project Gutenberg, for the classics. (There’s more there than you might think.) Or failing that, make sure to purchase ebooks that allow you to download them in EPUB or PDF format. If it’s a file on your system, it can’t be deleted.
I won’t go too much into legal gray areas, but there are also ways to remove the DRM (Digital Rights Management) from your purchases too. Do some research and see what I mean.
Music
It used to be “1,000 songs in your pocket”. Now it’s zero songs in your pocket.
Have a Spotify account? Great, you have their music as long as they don’t close your account. And you only have whatever they have, and nothing they don’t.
There are many reasons to cancel Spotify. But the biggest reason is that you don’t own anything; you are renting your music library. The music you love, that changed your life, can be revoked.
No thank you.
What you can do
Skip the vinyl renaissance and buy CDs. CDs are so ridiculously cheap (for now) that you can pick up most music for a few bucks.
Don’t want to keep a library of CDs? Rip CDs to your hard drive or phone and then sell or donate the CD.
Don’t have a CD player? Buy a USB drive that attaches to your computer. It’s easy, and the tools have been around for decades now and still work just fine.
You can own your music. And once you have it, you don’t need to pay Spotify a monthly fee.
Movies
Netflix routinely removes movies and shows from its catalog. Thousands of movies aren’t there at all. And some content moves around from streaming service to streaming service.
Netflix, Max, Disney+, Hulu, etc.? Congratulations! We’ve reinvented cable.
So now it’s time to reinvent the VHS too.
The movies problem is similar in scope and solution to music, but with a few differences.
One problem is that there are multiple formats to choose from now, with DVD, Blu-Ray, and even 4K Blu-Ray to choose from. Also, not every movie is available on each format. And the day can’t be too far off when movies may not get a physical release.
And then there’s the issue of special features and other bonuses on the discs, if those are important to you.
Finally, there’s the issue of space. Movies take up a lot of disk space, and if you start to make your own collection and don’t want a stack of discs to deal with, you’re going to need to get crafty.
What you can do
Let’s say you want a movie collection but don’t want a big stack of discs.
With tools like Jellyfin and a little bit of technical know-how, you can create a home media server with your content on it that’s basically indistinguishable from Netflix. The only difference is that it’s your content and can’t be taken away.
Here’s a short but good video about someone who decided to take matters (and movies) into his own hands:
Games
Speaking of media that may not get a physical release, Sony has announced that in 2028, it will stop producing physical media for its PlayStation games.
If this doesn’t matter to you, it should. When media becomes all-digital, it can be deleted or lost.
Take for example, the Nintendo 3DS. Here is a list of 186 “delisted” games for the system that you can’t play anymore.
Now, some crafty people will find a way of preserving these games. Hopefully.
What you can do
In the meantime, buy physical games if you can. Show these companies that this is important, and that people will vote with their wallet.
Beyond that, I suggest you visit Stop Killing Games and support them. Even though I don’t play many games released after 1991, I still think it’s important that other people should be able to do so.
Own everything and be happy
The phrase “you will own nothing and be happy” originated as a utopian ideal, not too dissimilar from my “lawn mower collective” idea.
But it has rapidly become a dystopian reality for many, being forced to rent access to things that they used to be able to own.
This article hopefully gives you some ideas on how you can take back your own control, and your subscription money. While I think people should be able to share lawn mowers, I think they also should be able to buy one if they want.
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