17/09/2026

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Why physical media remains crucial T HE books, CDs, films and video games on your shelf belong there for a reason. You paid for them, you enjoy o Digital copies, subscriptions put consumers at mercy of businesses Ű BY AMEEN HAZIZI Amazon told the outlet that it “purchases books through commercial channels to improve the products and services customers use”.

Rare and out-of-print books deserve better than being torn apart to feed commercial AI systems. Readers need the original works, with their arguments, evidence and context intact. Keep your books and read them critically. You can check what an author wrote without trusting an AI summary to represent it accurately. Physical copies also resist retrospective censorship. A publisher can rewrite later editions, but it cannot remotely alter your paperback. A streaming service can upload an edited film, but the scenes on your offline disc remain. Those copies preserve evidence of what was changed and allow audiences to judge for themselves. Music without another monthly bill CDs and vinyls give you lossless audio without an internet connection, an account or a monthly payment. The album stays available even if a licensing dispute takes it off streaming. Subscription downloads offer no equivalent independence. Keeping access still depends on the service and its conditions. Buying an album also gives you something to lend, pass down or rediscover years later, complete with its artwork and liner notes. Start with the records, books, films and games you would hate to lose. Enjoying them for years should not mean paying indefinitely for permission to return to something you already love.

them and you can return to them whenever you want. That should be an ordinary expectation when buying entertainment. Digital platforms have made it increasingly difficult to take for granted. We have grown used to paying every month for access to things someone else can remove. A favourite film disappears, an album becomes unavailable or a game stops running, and the customer is expected to accept it. Streaming is borrowed access A streaming subscription gives you access to a catalogue the company can change. Films and series disappear when licensing deals expire or executives decide they are no longer worth keeping. Even a platform’s own productions are vulnerable. HBO’s Westworld was removed from HBO Max in 2022. If a network’s original series cannot count on staying available, subscribers have little reason to trust that their favourites will remain. The DVD or Blu-ray on your shelf survives those decisions. You can put it on without hunting through different services or signing up for another subscription. Buying games, renting access Video games make this particularly frustrating. Players pay full retail prices, yet Steam’s subscriber agreement states its content is licensed rather than sold. The purchase comes with conditions

A DVD collection keeps favourite films within reach, even after they disappear from streaming catalogues.

too. Court documents revealed that Anthropic bought millions of printed books and destroyed their bindings to scan them. Amazon, which began as an online bookseller, is doing the same, according to 404 Media. Its investigation tracked a rare book to Amazon’s facility in Las Vegas, where workers reportedly remove bindings for scanning.

paying customers unable to play through its official service. Collectors should demand complete games that run offline. A disc that depends on a server leaves the publisher holding the same power to pull the plug. Keep your books and their words AI companies’ appetite for training material has reached bookshelves

controlled by the platform. Sony has also announced that physical disc production for new PlayStation games will end from January 2028. Earlier disc releases are unaffected, but future releases will lose the option of a physical copy to lend, resell or keep. A licence need not carry an expiry date for access to disappear. Ubisoft’s shutdown of The Crew in 2024 left

A growing digital library can leave players dependent on servers and accounts they do not control. – PICS FROM 123RF

Keeping old books allows another generation to discover stories that publishers have stopped printing.

A licensing dispute may remove an album from streaming, but the record on your shelf remains yours to play.

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