Terrific! Congrats!

To paraphrase Jeff Winger:

You may have read it, I may have thought it, but I didn’t write it.

For one: ownership. Nobody can take away your DVDs legally.

Second: you can buy 2nd hand. Only the (local) reseller makes money.

Third: you can buy local content…

Fourth: no recurring sales for Netflix & co. And this is huge. Because they use their ARR to get financing, Netflix & co need you to pay monthly. Buying DVDs is much less predictable and does not give them the same financial power.

Fifth: you can lend them. Want to share a movie with friends? They didn’t need their own subscription. You can just lend them the DVD. Again: less sales.

Finally: once you start going this, your discover your local ecosystem. Libraries, associations, forums etc. With doing like this for culture (Books, music, movies), tools, and even expertise.

Buy it second hand. They can have their initial sale a decade ago and no residual income. I’ll buy it from you when you don’t want it or need some cash! Better burn a backup as well before it gets scratched. Don’t accidentally lose twenty backups at your friends houses though.

Well, the DVDs and Blu-rays do not have to be of American media, but if they are, they can be of the several European special boutiques and distributors that can merely license the media you specifically care for. Although I’m sure that there are many American Filmmakers and artists we all still want to support and even increase visibility amongst the current circumstances. This allows one to have that level of targeting and to have specific and personal input, instead of just contributing to giant conglomerates that screw the artists out of fair revenue before moving to screw their costumers at every turn, which is what streaming services are and do.

With physical media, one can also borrow or lend amongst each other at leisure, check them for free from libraries or buy them second hand. This is also about cultural sovereignty and increases the resiliency in communities when it comes to culture. And in times of instability and economic hardship it becomes even more necessary.

Media is like anything else, the more people owning it the better. We don’t want culture to be in the hands of just a few. That is the wrong direction for everything.

But I’m suspect because I’ve never stopped this habit and I prefer European cinema and World Cinema to American in the first place.

I also enjoy going to screenings in my local cineclub. There’s a wonderful sense of community and great discussions to have. And it’s so much cheaper and fulfilling than going to the Multiplex which is impersonal and encourages mindlesness.

If you’re more into TV series, the U.S. does have the monopoly of interest. But I assume this is much more about visibility and a failure of venues to publicise TV series of other places. The absence of TV Series Festivals like Film Festivals that can obtain visibility for them is partially the answer that is missing. But I still remember the craze with the Scandinavian output, which had hits like “Forbrydelsen” (The Killing) or Bron (The Bridge), and both got American Remakes that were quite disappointing in comparison. But the biggest hit that came out of that was probably Borgen. Wonderful show.

But even in English, I much prefer to watch shows coming out of Britain than the U.S. And with BBC, you only need a VPN to access their shows and documentaries for free. It’s public domain there. If you are from the U.k. than this is an unnecessary step.

Some people have suggested that we should push the E.U. to start a streaming service that would make content created by European Public owned Networks and Radiostations available to all countries in the EU for free. It’s already free. It just needs distribution. It’s a great idea. Although the BBC is Brittish and therefore not EU, a deal could probably still be achieved to include them.

Anyway, I will still always suggest for anyone to not get too stuck in algorithmic suggestions of Cinema, Music and Art in General. It gets stale, and doesn’t force us to challenge ourselves in any form and in any new directions. Part of the problem we have in civilization right now is precisely stemming from this lack of broadening personal horizons and challenging individual perceptions that comes with the feedback loop that algorithms reinforce and cause the so called “bubbles” and “echo chambers” that so many like to point out, but so very few actually enjoy breaking out of.

This is the lazy and ultimately wrong way. Sure, it doesn’t hurt, but its actual effect is not very powerful.

If consumer boycotts wouldn’t be powerful, why did the US pass anti-boycott bills? Why is there so much lobbying against consumer boycotts?

Also the US isn’t good at making things. If they were, they would have a positive trade balance with most countries. Instead they have a negative balance and a lot of their exports are crude resources and other low-level refined products from them.

You’re not wrong but you’re wrong when you say “ultimately wrong”.

More than one thing can help here.

And your counter-proposal to “stop fucking around and do stuff” is not so hot.

Better advice: contact your MP’s right now because this hasn’t been ratified yet.

edit:

in general the US rules over the world economically because they’re good at making things

oof. 🤪 Even in the glorified 1950s neither part of this statement has been (generally) true.

I disagree with your statement about quality. For instance, I’d much rather have a German car than an American one. America doesn’t really make things any more anyway, most of it has been outsourced to China or other countries. The manufacturing expertise has mostly left the US. See for instance some of the most recent videos done by Smarter Every Day on YouTube where he talks about how hard it is to make a purely American made product.

What they have in the US is money so they can buy stocks and other things like that, so they make money off of things that others make.

They also make a ton of money off of everybody using the dollar as the global trade currency. That means that they can print a lot more money in the US without it causing as much inflation as it would otherwise, and the money they print are released into the US economy. They basically get to tax the holdings of companies all over the world that way.

Do they? Most founders located in the USA are either heirs of Fortunes or foreigners.

They’re especially good at:

• Financing: they have been printing money line there’s no tomorrow and pumped their stock market

• Marketing: many of us here aren’t native English speakers and yet, we communicate in English. This puts native speaker at an advantage

So no. They don’t do so much better things. They are just reckless their own people for the sake of the economy.

And yes. Not buying from them, especially for things that are commodities (benzin, diesel) or bad for your health (soda, junk food) is actually hurting them.