this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2026
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Technically, but that's not usually what people mean when they say "physical media".
Too bad, it's physical media, and people acting like "that's not what I mean" contributes to this whole idea that data is ephemeral and like it lives in the air or something. No, it all lives on physical media, on drives, somewhere. Just because Netflix streamed it to you doesn't mean that the movies files don't live somewhere on physical media. Yeah, you don't own it, it's just streaming, but the physical media it exists on still exists, you just don't have physical access to it (well, technically you do, it's just little chunks instead of the full film that live on your PC just long enough for the film to play).
Sorry, this grinds my gears because I think not being clear about physical media including things like hard drives and USB thumbsticks is what contributes to a general lack of understanding of how any of this fucking works and why corporations were able to get away with how they abused "licensing" for so long.