Buying some old ass DVDs
In November, I discovered my new audiovisual addiction: The Shield, an FX police drama set in a fictional neighborhood in Los Angeles. It’s a seriously underrated gem that, unfortunately, is only available through Sony One, a shady Prime Video add-on service that, at least in LATAM, mostly delivers bizarre movies and obscure shows (But they have The Raid, you need to watch this).
I binge-watched the first season and, to my surprise, got a notification saying that the first two seasons were about to be removed from the platform. After that, I couldn’t find the show anywhere, legally or illegally.
This wasn’t the first time I felt completely let down by streaming platforms. Before that, I tried to watch Amélie (2001), and Netflix simply said: nope, you can’t. You need to upgrade your plan.
The thought of drop streaming isn’t new in the web. All over YouTube, you can find countless people abandoning Netflix, HBO Max, and others, and going back to Blu-rays, DVDs, and CDs. The core issue is always the same: ownership. You don’t buy movies anymore: you buy permission to watch them. Even if you “buy” a movie on Google Play, nothing prevents them from deleting it from your library. Ownership is no longer about consumption; it’s about preventing big corporations from erasing the past.
So, like any "normal" human being, I bought a box set with all seven seasons of The Shield in a used stuff marketplace and a DVD drive to use with my laptop.
My computer is a ThinkPad running Linux. Getting the DVD to work was kind of annoying, but it was absolutely worth it.