"Let yourself be surprised." -- Sarah Braunstein ("Early Web's Magic"/New Yorker)
______
Over too many years I was a loyal (too loyal) customer of one of the evil empires, Comcast (aka Xfinity). As part of the huge monthly payments they extracted from me, I purchased, or thought I purchased many of my favorite movies.
You know the ones. Casablanca, Charade, Pink Panther, Witness, Hunger Games, Sound of Music, Wizard of Oz, Love Actually, It's a Wonderful Life, and so on -- somewhere around 50 in all.
I paid whatever the going rate was to "purchase" them -- $9.99 to $14.99 mostly, I think.
But recently Xfinity redesigned its website, and the option to select "Your Purchases" disappeared from the menu. So I did the only thing any frustrated customer can do, and contacted Customer Service.
That turned into an extended ordeal, starting with the requisite chat with a robot. The robot serving me got tangled up in my request because it had not been programmed to respond to requests for "saved purchases," apparently.
After many such chats, and repeated calls to the customer service phone line, which never yielded a human being, I finally did somehow connect with a delightful fellow on the other side of the world.
I was angry, you know, the righteous anger of a customer who has been cheated, but this gentleman seemed to possess endless patience as he searched database after database for my missing movies.
"They must be here," he insisted. "There must be a way for you to view your movies. They're *yours* after all."
Well, it turns out there wasn't a way and also that they aren't mine, not really.
First, though, I did what I always do in this age of technology. I changed browsers, updated my operating system, searched Twitter, returned to the fruitless robotic chat sessions, tried to reach another actual human being by phone; on and on it went.
Finally, one day, bingo! Using Chrome, I snuck into the Xfinity website, convinced it I was me, and started searching new movies. After a while, under "other options," I suddenly could load my entire library of purchased films once again in all their glory.
I selected one for viewing, probably Casablanca, and bookmarked the site.
That was a month ago. The bookmark has never worked since and I've never been able to replicate the obscure clickstream that yielded my treasure despite multiple attempts to do so.
Recently I just gave up. I guess those possessions of mine, like virtually everything else I once thought I owned, are gone forever.
***
This week my old friend The Nation, also the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S. (156 years) published an essay that provides the context for my bad experience of losing my movies.
"Sell This Book! Corporate publishing wants to turn all readers into renters" is the name of the essay by Maria Bustillos.
"Maybe you’ve noticed how things keep disappearing—or stop working—when you “buy” them online from big platforms like Netflix and Amazon, Microsoft and Apple," she writes. "You can watch their movies and use their software and read their books—but only until they decide to pull the plug. You don’t actually own these things—you can only rent them."
The author is a founder of the Brick House Cooperative, a venture that is proactively fighting against this immoral attempt by corporations to take away our right to own things by selling rentable ebooks to libraries.
This won't get my movies back, of course, but at least it is a step in the right direction.
If you think this is only a marginal issue in your particular life, think again. As my son-in-law with an MBA reminds me, "In capitalism there are only two classes of people. There are owners and there are renters."
When it comes to books, movies, video games, and any kind of software, you my friend own nothing -- you are like me, just a renter.
THE HEADLINES:
* Sell This Book! Corporate publishing wants to turn all readers into renters. (The Nation)
* The Internet Is Rotting -- Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone. (Atlantic)
* Weekend of fear looms for Californians in face of wildfires (AP)
* Dixie Fire Ravages California Towns (NYT)
* Judge orders utility PG&E to explain role in start of Dixie Fire that’s tearing through California (WP)
* Wildfires Rage Across Turkey (AP)
* Greece battles wildfires for fifth day in 'nightmarish summer' (Reuters)
* After Deadly Floods, a German Village Rethinks Its Relationship to Nature (NYT)
* Warm waters further threaten depleted Maine shrimp fishery (AP)
* 'Where are we going to go?' Residents flee as fires reach Athens suburbs (Reuters)
* Yes, the Pandemic Is Bad Again -- Masks are reappearing and return-to-office plans have been postponed. Welcome to Delta’s whiplash. (Atlantic)
* Nothing is predictable with the delta variant — and this surge may not be the last of the year. (SF Chronicle)
* U.S. now averaging 100,000 new COVID-19 infections a day (AP)
* Half of U.S. population fully vaccinated against COVID-19: CDC (Reuters)
* Highly Vaccinated States Keep Worst Outcomes in Check (WSJ)
* How to cancel your flights, Airbnbs and more because of the delta variant (WP)
* Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Continues Despite Coronavirus Warning (NYT)
* Fla. offers school vouchers to families angry about masks; Ark. judge blocks ban for now (WP)
* Amazon orders all U.S. employees to mask up at work (Reuters)
*Italians (Mostly) Embrace a ‘Green Pass’ to Prove Vaccination on Its First Day (NYT)
* Some in U.S. getting COVID-19 boosters without FDA approval (AP)
* Australia suffers worst COVID day this year with millions in lockdown (Reuters)
* As Covid Surges in Florida, DeSantis Refuses to Change Course (NYT)
* Indonesian president says restrictions needed to stem COVID surge outside most populous islands (Reuters)
* Lyft And Uber Prices Are High. Wait Times Are Long And Drivers Are Scarce (NPR)
* Pause on federal student loan payments extended through January (WP)
* College Hasn’t Helped Close the Wealth Gap for Black Americans (WSJ)
* Jobs Surge in July Offers Fresh Sign of Economic Recovery -- The gain of 943,000 was the best showing in nearly a year, and unemployment was 5.4 percent, the lowest since the pandemic began. (NYT)
* U.S. will fly Central American migrants to southern Mexico in bid to discourage repeat crossings (WP)
* Why Is It So Hard to Say Goodbye to New York City? -- Many New Yorkers who left during the pandemic have sought ways to replicate what they love about New York in their new hometowns. (NYT)
* Can Stimulating Brains Lead to Controlling Them? (WSJ)
* Taliban Seize Afghan Provincial Capital Just Weeks Before Final U.S. Withdrawal (NYT)
"Dear Landlord"
Please, don't put a price on my soul
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