Why don't people like to own their own data anymore?
 

why does it seem like people are perfectly fine with not physically owning their own data?


With all the cloud services and their popularity, it seems like people have lost sight of how important it is to physically own their own data and personal information. For instance I'm sure there are lots people out there who would rather have the .avi or .mp4 copy of a movie in their possession rather than have an amazon or netflix movie subscription (with access to that movie) but I can't say that I know many people like this -_-

Don't they understand how few pros and how many cons there is to this? There's no independence!


Someone explain this to me.

Some people encrypt their data before shipping it to the cloud. Some old fogies (hand in air) don't use cloud at all. Not many of us left as you say.
As for streaming services, I tend not to use them. When I want someone to know what I'm listening to I'll tell 'em - in the meantime I'll fire up my CD, or the flac I've ripped down to my (non-connected) player.

Troglodyte me is ... ;)

Convenience.

Besides, in the 1970s we didn't have our own movies either and still led fulfilling lives. And records got scratched with time.

This.

Cloud is shared data among devices. I personally find it very convenient to have data in iCloud so my devices can all see the data. Anything sensitive I encrypt before pushing to the cloud. Wherever I am, I can get to my data. I cannot count how many times this has been useful. Cloud for my photo collection is indispensable.

I also have a NAS where I have home movies and music I've ripped. I still purchase CDs because I have a relatively high end audio system and have no way to stream to it (yet). As for movies, I don't care about "owning" any of them. I have a ton of DVDs and BluRays but also subscribe to a few streaming services. It's cheap and makes me happy.

The technological landscape has evolved over the years and I like to keep up. I take precautions as best I can but love the convenience. We have moved from using the candle to the lightbulb, to LED bulbs. I am not about to go back to the candle...

I wouldn't do it. But then I'm very old-fashioned, as everyone here knows. Also I don't have big data-storage requirements. Most of my hard drive is empty!

One thing that frightens me is all those stories you hear about celebrities whose phones upload their photographs to the cloud once an hour and then those photographs get stolen (including the sex videos that they made with their partners just for the fun of it).

btw all those cloud storage servers are generating a huge amount of carbon dioxide.

I use Google Docs for misc stuff that really doesn't matter, just quick write ups and such. That and my gmail are the limit of my cloud usage. At one point I used to try to keep stuff encrypted on the cloud but somehow (can't explain) lost my key and... well then it was useless. Now I just keep good backups + snapraid that is synced daily on my media server. Does me just fine. I don't stream generally either. I own all of my media and keep it on my server and viewed / listened to via Kodi. Admittedly part of my usage patterns is that my internet where I live isn't exactly high bandwidth. Buffering pisses me off.

The wife.... Hulu wins.

The reason those celebs had their accounts hacked was because of bad passwords, not because of the security in the cloud infrastructure.

A cloud solution is cheaper in some cases than getting the hardware and software and maintaining it. For Business it is. Also, you don't have to "learn" anything. Very important to many people, not asking them to "learn" something and keep up. Lots of desktop users are on Microsoft machines, "it" has to do it for me, nuff said.

I think that is true. Once you have it, you can play it anytime. Content also comes and goes. All it takes is a licensing dispute, and nflix/amazon will remove the content. Little usb external drives are cheap now.

Something else to think about. Ripping a DVD with libdvdcss and making a video file out of it is illegal, you are violating copyright law. Can you keep a .iso backup of it? Not sure. If you have ripped DVD's or CD's stored online, can you get prosecuted for it? "They" have the proof.

Then there is finances. If you are out of work, like millions this last year, and you can't afford to use netflix or amazon prime, then what? Where I live, this time of year, if you don't have backup, then you might as well not have a TV. I've never seen another time when there was so much absolute nothing on over the air tv.

I like to understand how it works, just so I know. Even if I don't use it.

IMO, as far as movies, why would you want to own any movies released in the last 20 years? Sure, there's some good ones to watch, but RE-WATCH? No thank you.

I have always understood that ripping discs you have bought is legal as long as you don't pass the copies on to anyone else. Ripping a disc that someone lent you is piracy. And what you get from an online store is lent to you, basically. It isn't your property.

Apparently that's true of Kindle books too. I heard of someone who quarrelled with Amazon about something or other, and all the books he thought he had bought disappeared overnight. He still had his Kindle device but there was nothing on it any more.

The Brits are making some darned good detective/crime/police drama's They are worth a save and rewatch. Plus after 5 or 6 years, I've forgotten some of them.

Another reason to "have" a video. You ever sit in a hospital or medical office for 1 1/2 - 2 hours waiting for someone to have outpatient surgery? And they haven't any public wifi?

Or sit in a garage for an hour waiting for your car to be fixed, and no public wifi?

Or have to sit for 5 boring hours at the inlaws, while your spouse and Mom take off to the clothing store...Nice to have a video that you can copy over to your tablet.

If I know that I am going to have a long wait somewhere, I take a book.

What? A book? What's that?

Oh, don't you know? They used to pulp wood and press it into sheets and then print on them. You know, like computer print only it was usually smaller. And the print-outs were bound together so that you could carry them around. So quaint!

I don't understand it either even though I have family members (children) who seem comfortable with -- as one wag put it years ago -- putting their critical data on someone else's computer.

It's likely a generational thing and/or a tendency for people to lease rather than buy/own. (After being told a couple of times in every commercial break on TV that leasing a car is better than owning one. Or everything that's good in life is available by subscription only.) Or maybe Microsoft didn't really make computers easy to use after all. ``Let Jeff Bezos take care of my data; he must be really smart because he's so rich.''