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Post by thwhtguardian on Aug 15, 2018 9:50:24 GMT -5
Something could happen, but I have faith in those companies I think that's the crux of the argument right there: do you have faith in companies? Personally, I'm of the belief that a company will do what it can to stay profitable, and that taking care of the customer often runs contrary to that. Take the Photobucket Debaucle that, a year later, is still causing devastation to webmasters, bloggers, and even users here. It was no longer profitable to do right by the customer, and so everyone who put their faith in Photobucket got screwed. Even when you are paying money for the service, what responsibility does the company have to you in the event of a massive hack, hardware failure, the company being sold or going out of business, or even just Marvel or DC deciding on a new direction for their digital content platforms? Thus, I don't fully trust ANY for-profit company. The cloud is a marvelous concept. I just wouldn't put my faith and money into it. This is all true... except with it being about faith. From my point of view it's all about rational beliefs and weighing the likelihoods of risk against each other. Big companies have little reason to stay true to their customers in these situations, but is that any more likely to happen than a flood or fire damaging your collection? Can it happen? You bet! I've had the misfortune of both happening to me over the years...but the odds are pretty slim and there's not much one can do to prevent such calamities from occurring so there's no reason to really cause yourself any worry and it's the same with large corporations suddenly changing their policies or losing rights to books. Could it happen? Sure, as you illustrated with Photobucket, but it's not an everyday occurrence by a long stretch and you can no more stop it or protect yourself from it or anticipate it any more than you can a natural disaster...so why worry? On top of weighing risks I have the added benefit of not having to store my digital collection, which is a serious concern for my regular comics, so there is convenience as well. I still buy hard copies of some books, like Hellboy or certain anniversary issues, and almost all my impulse buys are physical but digital is just easier so that's where the bulk of my buying goes these days. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
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Post by shaxper on Aug 15, 2018 10:35:43 GMT -5
I think that's the crux of the argument right there: do you have faith in companies? Personally, I'm of the belief that a company will do what it can to stay profitable, and that taking care of the customer often runs contrary to that. Take the Photobucket Debaucle that, a year later, is still causing devastation to webmasters, bloggers, and even users here. It was no longer profitable to do right by the customer, and so everyone who put their faith in Photobucket got screwed. Even when you are paying money for the service, what responsibility does the company have to you in the event of a massive hack, hardware failure, the company being sold or going out of business, or even just Marvel or DC deciding on a new direction for their digital content platforms? Thus, I don't fully trust ANY for-profit company. The cloud is a marvelous concept. I just wouldn't put my faith and money into it. This is all true... except with it being about faith. From my point of view it's all about rational beliefs and weighing the likelihoods of risk against each other. Big companies have little reason to stay true to their customers in these situations, but is that any more likely to happen than a flood or fire damaging your collection? Can it happen? You bet! I've had the misfortune of both happening to me over the years...but the odds are pretty slim and there's not much one can do to prevent such calamities from occurring so there's no reason to really cause yourself any worry and it's the same with large corporations suddenly changing their policies or losing rights to books. Could it happen? Sure, as you illustrated with Photobucket, but it's not an everyday occurrence by a long stretch and you can no more stop it or protect yourself from it or anticipate it any more than you can a natural disaster...so why worry? Well, no one is going to set a fire or start a flood as a means of boosting revenue, and companies go out of business or change ownership far more frequently than homes burn down or flood. Essentially, I think nature has a better track record than corporations do  |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2018 11:10:34 GMT -5
This is all true... except with it being about faith. From my point of view it's all about rational beliefs and weighing the likelihoods of risk against each other. Big companies have little reason to stay true to their customers in these situations, but is that any more likely to happen than a flood or fire damaging your collection? Can it happen? You bet! I've had the misfortune of both happening to me over the years...but the odds are pretty slim and there's not much one can do to prevent such calamities from occurring so there's no reason to really cause yourself any worry and it's the same with large corporations suddenly changing their policies or losing rights to books. Could it happen? Sure, as you illustrated with Photobucket, but it's not an everyday occurrence by a long stretch and you can no more stop it or protect yourself from it or anticipate it any more than you can a natural disaster...so why worry? Well, no one is going to set a fire or start a flood as a means of boosting revenue, and companies go out of business or change ownership far more frequently than homes burn down or flood. Essentially, I think nature has a better track record than corporations do I wonder how many California collectors wish their collections were digital instead of physical in the wake of the California wildfires this year (and last year, and the year before, and...), and how many in Pennsylvania with the massive flooding that occurred the past few days, or those in Florida and the Gulf Coast with all the hurricane damage. Mike Zapcic of Comic Book Men had his entire collection of comics and original art destroyed by Hurricane Sandy when it hit NJ a few years back, and he was only one of several collectors in the area who suffered that kind of loss. Natural disasters aren't remote occurrences that only happen once in a while, they are happening all the time somewhere even if it is not in your neck of the woods. Sure companies sometimes go out of business or change policies and if it happens to be one of the companies providing digital comics then yeah, you're shit out of luck, but all it takes for a natural disaster to happen is for the earth to spin on its axis and revolve around the sun creating weather...which happens every moment of every day. And neither of these things are in my control, so I don't worry about either. Again, it's mostly folks trying to rationalize the choice they made as to which format to use to make themselves feel better about their choice. It all comes down to personal preference, and that's fine, there's really no need to try to justify that choice, just make the choice that's best for you because it works for you. -M |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Aug 15, 2018 11:13:40 GMT -5
This is all true... except with it being about faith. From my point of view it's all about rational beliefs and weighing the likelihoods of risk against each other. Big companies have little reason to stay true to their customers in these situations, but is that any more likely to happen than a flood or fire damaging your collection? Can it happen? You bet! I've had the misfortune of both happening to me over the years...but the odds are pretty slim and there's not much one can do to prevent such calamities from occurring so there's no reason to really cause yourself any worry and it's the same with large corporations suddenly changing their policies or losing rights to books. Could it happen? Sure, as you illustrated with Photobucket, but it's not an everyday occurrence by a long stretch and you can no more stop it or protect yourself from it or anticipate it any more than you can a natural disaster...so why worry? Well, no one is going to set a fire or start a flood as a means of boosting revenue, and companies go out of business or change ownership far more frequently than homes burn down or flood. Essentially, I think nature has a better track record than corporations do There's certainly a motive behind corporate changes that doesn't exist in natural disasters but I'm not sure their track records are really all that dissimilar. Comixology's been around for ten years now and I've been buying right along the whole time and I haven't lost an issue yet, in fact in the biggest instance where I fully expected to lose my content( Disney's purchase of Lucasfilms) the company involved(Dark Horse) didn't remove my content. You can't purchase Indiana Jones or Star Wars comics on the Dark Horse store anymore but everything I ever bought can still be accessed there. That's not to say that they might not vanish tomorrow, but it's been a few years since the acquisition so one would think that if they were going to be removed they would have done so already so I'd say the odds of it happening aren't very large. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 15, 2018 11:22:36 GMT -5
This isn't an either or issue. Physical collections can get destroyed. Sad but true. In theory digital collections can as well, whether it be because of a a company going out of business (pretty unlikely with something like Amazon) or a change in formatting technology, etc. You're rolling the dice either way. People are going to buy the format they're comfortable with. At this point I have far less interest in physical books (barring certain special editions by creators I really like) than I ever have before. But that's my choice. I don't expect it to work for everyone.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 15, 2018 15:40:27 GMT -5
I think digital is only a problem if you throw all your eggs into one basket, so to speak. I find that using digital to sample comics, music, movies, etc, before you commit to collecting can be a great boon to even the most hardcore collectors. Right now, the only physical comics I care to keep up with are the Prince Valiant and Carl Bark's Disney collections from Fantagraphics. It's great that everything is collected nowadays, but honestly, not everything deserves to be collected.
When it comes to movies and TV, I only care about owning physical copies of my all-time favorites (Goodfellas, original Star Wars trilogy, Alien/Aliens, Superman I & II, The Godfather, Star Trek TOS & Next Gen, BTAS, Taxi Driver, the first six seasons of Bonanza, etc...yeah my tastes are nuanced...) and even though I've enjoyed most of the MCU movies, I have no desire to own any of them.
The one area that I regret going full digital is music. Outside of my all-time favorite artists that I know forwards and backwards, I find that not having a physical album/CD in my hand causes me to take forever to grasp simple things like song titles, not to mention being almost completely removed from the album art, when trying new bands/artists.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 15, 2018 15:55:19 GMT -5
Roaming a tad further afield than books and funnybooks, physical media doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have an easy time enjoying the media over time.
Try listening to an Edison wax cylinder. A lot of record players won't play 78s. Ditto 8-track tapes. Reel-to-reel. Betamax, anyone? For that matter VCRs are, I believe, no longer being manufactured.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2018 9:05:28 GMT -5
Roaming a tad further afield than books and funnybooks, physical media doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have an easy time enjoying the media over time. Try listening to an Edison wax cylinder. A lot of record players won't play 78s. Ditto 8-track tapes. Reel-to-reel. Betamax, anyone? For that matter VCRs are, I believe, no longer being manufactured. Agreed. However how many people still have Betamax tapes anymore? Or 8 tracks? I know I got rid of mine once cassettes replaced them for the car because they definitely were inferior. I do have a lot of VCR tapes from when my daughters were kids. Once our VCR breaks (we still have a combo VCR/DVD unit) breaks we won't be able to watch them. But DVD's (I guess they won't be around much longer) are cheap. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2018 10:11:03 GMT -5
md62, my brother still have 8-track tapes and still playable ... and of course he still has th machine that plays them.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2018 15:21:34 GMT -5
md62 , my brother still have 8-track tapes and still playable ... and of course he still has th machine that plays them. Wow! Most of my 8 tracks broke and needed spliced at some point. Probably because my car player was cheap! |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2018 18:18:42 GMT -5
md62 , my brother still have 8-track tapes and still playable ... and of course he still has th machine that plays them. Wow! Most of my 8 tracks broke and needed spliced at some point. Probably because my car player was cheap! I was at his house early today and he played Days of Future Passed (Moody Blues) for me and I was kind of surprised how well it's holds up all these years. |
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Aug 21, 2018 11:59:44 GMT -5
Roaming a tad further afield than books and funnybooks, physical media doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have an easy time enjoying the media over time. Try listening to an Edison wax cylinder. A lot of record players won't play 78s. Ditto 8-track tapes. Reel-to-reel. Betamax, anyone? For that matter VCRs are, I believe, no longer being manufactured. As an FYI (because I am full of useless facts) the last company to make VCR's stopped their production in 2016 was in Japan. |
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Post by BigPapaJoe on Aug 21, 2018 18:52:30 GMT -5
I think I would be less ticked off if my stuff burned in a fire compared to a company without my best interest in mind shrugging their shoulders, and saying "Yeah I dunno dude" in regards to my purchases inexplicably vanishing one day.
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Post by impulse on Nov 14, 2019 14:52:37 GMT -5
Picking up a rather interesting but incorrectly located discussion that popped up in the "There I said it" Opinions on comics thread... Respect for copyrights generally is a major pillar of our western economy. This isn't to say it hasn't been extended to extremes in some areas, become it's own commodity totally divorced from creators, manipulated by people with technical information on the process of filing itself (Edison) yatta yatta yatta. It's what communism doesn't have. Let's call it bent not broken. Throwing it all out is an extreme, locking everything in place rigidly for generations of descendants closing off opportunity to anyone not inside the walls also extreme. Yeah, I don't think anyone serious is credibly claiming to toss copyright in the bin, but it's certainly gotten out of control in the name of corporate interests and the pursuit of profits over all. It is interesting you say this, and to a point, the declining sales are of their own making. They at least exacerbate it. When the music industry was caught off guard by MP3s and Napster and all, they responded by pulling inward. Fewer risks, making safer music that sounded more and more alike. Less diversity, more genre overlap to the point where it all sounds the same, so fewer people buy it because they already have it. Thus, they take fewer risks and the cycle continues. One positive is that the means of production and distribution are no longer concentrated in the hands of the labels. Anyone with a laptop can create professional sounding music and distribute it to fans. One downside is there is a lot less money to be made in the traditional music industry, but then again, most artists were starving in the old system, too. Technological evolution is just as brutal and cold to industry as natural evolution and selection are to animals. There is definitely a warmth and comfort to the way they sound provided they were mastered for records. You are right on some modern ones sounding awful because if they just take the same super brickwalled mix made for digital and just happen to press it on a vinyl, it still sounds terrible. Stealing is stealing, yes, but copyright infringement is not stealing.  They can both be unethical, illegal and immoral, but they are not the same thing. One thing about the MP3 boom I don't like is that iTunes, Amazon and the like can invade your computer to delete items from your harddrive, you agree to a lot of things with these services and providers, including the ones set up through your library system. Streaming seems to be an alternative to that, but people have had items removed from their cloud or whatever it might be called that is similar at an expiry date they might not have known about. I just wouldn't pay for MP3s of a lot of stuff at this point, nor trust subscription services (anything with those long lists of terms people agree to usually without reading a tenth of) to not delete them. Yes, this is true. I rarely use my MP3 library anymore, but I keep some stuff separate from the library that iTunes manages for that reason. I don't like some other company deciding they know best and messing with my stuff. The streaming services I like, but you need to stay aware that it is a rental equivalent, not a sub for purchasing. I use Spotify for the convenience, but if I want to be sure I have something and not be subject to the whims of a company, I buy a hard copy. I am glad you mentioned this because just recently I have noticed a couple things had disappeared from my drive, and I know it is not faulty (if it was I doubt it would just neatly delete a couple albums.) One I was able to re-download from my Amazon library, but the other (that I've noticed so far) is gone from there as well. I looked through my mp3 orders and there were several that showed an order but no longer showed what it was.
I tried to find some verification that Amazon could do this but my search-fu was not good enough. What's really odd is that I do not have the Amazon mp3 software installed on my computer (I just download the music as ZIP files), so how could they do this? If you can shed any light on this I would be extremely grateful!
I know Apple does this, did not know about Amazon. Good to know. I need to audit and clean up my MP3 collection at some point. Anything unique I will add to my Spotify but still keep a master copy separate. |
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Post by badwolf on Nov 14, 2019 15:04:34 GMT -5
I know Amazon can take away your e-books, but that's a proprietary format that requires their software. I can't figure out how they'd take my mp3s without any kind of direct connection to my PC.
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They can both be unethical, illegal and immoral, but they are not the same thing. 