I honestly find this unbelievable and amazing. You have never rewatched a video, or re-read a book? You've never lent a movie or a book to a friend? You've never used a movie or a book to job your memory and spark a conversation with someone?
There is value in all of those things to me, not to mention the value of being able to watch a movie or read a book whenever I want, regardless of my current state of subscription to netflix/hulu/xfinity/cbs/amazon prime/hbonow/etc.
Having these physical DVDs or whatever really is a very mild burden, but even that mild burden is larger than the mild benefit provided, people just like having their DVDs on their shelf because of the intrinsic value of owning "stuff".
Have I rewatched every video I own enough times to offset the cost of renting it for each time I've watched it? Overwhelmingly "no". Not even close. Rentals of even new things are a couple bucks, DVDs are often $20 or more. I'm quite free to lend stuff out too, but it's still <1 on average and even if you include "every lend == the full cost to buy it on launch day" I'm still in the negative. Most people I've run into who would be interested already have it or have already watched it.
Add in that the stuff I do rewatch is relatively old and rent-able for dirt cheap, and it's even more "no". There are a literal handful I'd buy, that's it.
Same pattern with books, except that odds are pretty good that the library has a copy of it :) And even slightly not-super-famous books are pretty likely to be new to people I lend to because there are so many. (technical books are another matter, they're frequently not in libraries, but there too I've only reread a couple that are meaty enough to actually justify more than one pass)
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Books I still keep buying, especially since much of what I read for fun is somewhat old and available for extremely cheap. But I haven't bought a movie in... a decade? And I feel zero desire to do so.
I'm not sure re-watching or re-reading anything is really limited or granted by owning...
Lets take netflix for example. If there is something on netflix that i want a friend to see and they don't have netflix, i can just bring my phone/tablet over to their house and cast the show to the TV and watch it there or they can pay a few bucks and watch the entire series in a month.
I don't have to collect anything, store anything, remember who borrowed what and quite honestly there is enough content on a few select services that i don't need them all and i'm quite content in having so much new stuff to enjoy that the need for having a favorite to watch over and over is sort of history for me.
I watched the shit out of goonies as a kid becasue it was only 1 of 5 movies our entire family could own. Had we had on-demand everything that habit would have been a non starter for me. That doesn't mean i don't love goonies to this day and that i won't ever re-watch it but i may only re-watch it when it makes a round again on netflix and magically shows up as available - and i think that kind of experience to me is much better than feeling i owe myself to watch it because i'm moving it, storing it, seeing it, shelving it and having it occupy my life in some way.
If we can ignore ethics for a moment, piracy still provides a superior product than rentals because pirated objects don't lock you into particular ecosystems nor does it prohibit you from using the product in any way.
Given the choice, I don't want to have to buy an apple, android, or windows phone/tablet just to download movies to watch while camping or something. I would rather have the freedom to do whatever I want with the things I paid for.
For example, i don't buy from itunes or google store if they restrict me to those marketplaces. But i do subscribe to netflix and hulu because they don't give a crap where i login from.
piracy isn't ownership either... even if i pirate shit, i have to provide a service akin to that netflix provides to be able to watch it on my tablet/tv/phone or on the road
Amazon Kindle doesn't own the content of the books to be able to censure them, they can't legally censor or edit books that weren't censored or edited by the writer/publisher.
Also, there are dozens of ebook stores - a vast competitive market to choose from - not to mention many libraries have ebooks and print books available and interlibrary loans are awesome to get things you want even if not available locally.
Now, services like Kindle or Steam deciding to revoke access to prior purchases is a potential Big Problem...but as of yet, it remains just that: potential. And at least in theory, there are government agencies that are charged with protecting against abusive behavior towards consumers (obviously actual results there are somewhat mixed).
...unless they somehow pissed off Amazon and lost their account. Or the publisher/auther pissed off Amazon and got taken down. Or...
Different strokes I guess?
Likewise, a book's value is not in the paper and binding, but the content of the writing. I concede that I have an attachment to the exact copies of my favorite books, but I don't feel like I should. The important things are the what I take with me from reading, not the physical books themselves.
I'm tired of consumerism, I'm tired of articles complaining about the change of paradigms since the baby-boomer generation. I'm not going to consume media in the same way a middle class worker from the 70's or 80's did. A subscription service lets me listen to any song I can think of on a whim while driving in my car, not limited to the selection of CD's I can jam into a binder. If the apocalypse hits and Amazon Web Services goes down I'll start buying CDs again.
