Hard Copy - Disapparate!
Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and others are ending the sale of DVDs and CDs. Books might be next.
I remember when, about 2008-2012, the local box store I frequent stopped carrying DVDs. This was not one of the local Wal-Marts, readers, but it was a place where I was accustomed to seeing DVDs. When I had the money I would buy some there, and there were usually several that were sold out. You saw gaps there all the time no matter the price of the DVD or box set. People wanted the video in hard copy or needed to replace an older or broken set.
Then they disappeared, and the section became books only, with magazines available as well.
Now, since I write novels you can assume I love books. I have never made any secret of this love and lament that it is not shared as much as it once was, according to surveys. Though I am always suspicious of surveys (Mark Twain’s “You have lies, damned lies, and then you have statistics” comes to mind again), it is rather difficult to ignore all the shouting from the rooftops. Additionally, writers in general are having more difficulty than normal finding an audience.
But I also like movies. I have several dozen favorites, with The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars being in the top tier alongside the Marvel films. I also love TV shows like Stargate SG-1, Zoids: Chaotic Century, and The A-Team, to name some A-listers among my favorites. Visual media has a lot to recommend it.
So learning that Warner Brothers was at least thinking about ceasing to put their films on DVD three years ago does not only scare me, it makes me furious. I no longer remember which episode of the (new) Outer Limits series it was, but the installment featured a world where everyone was digitally connected to the internet, which started to cause problems. The digital AI running the internet and providing everyone with information in their very brains as they need it starts having them run through data at a rate they cannot process. Eventually, this overprocessing stresses their minds and bodies to the point it kills them.
The only man unaffected in the story is the one who couldn’t be hooked into the network in the first place because he would have had something like an allergic reaction to being psychically tied into it. He thus had to learn the old-fashioned way and was more or less ostracized because he could not access the internet via a computer connection to his brain. His guardian had to teach him (and learn along with him) the old fashioned way - by reading books.
In order to shut down the AI, the hero has to find the book with the shutdown code. As he tells the heroine (who is connected to the internet and whom he needs to read the code), the worst sin in the world isn’t burning books. It is not reading them in the first place.
While that may seem like an aside, I tell it to make a point. In a conversation with an acquaintance, I stated we couldn’t afford to lose certain companies because they were the ones who kept various cultural items in formats which could be purchased individually and stored in personal homes. Legally that is the only way to do this, though there are less licit options (more on those in a bit).
The response to my statement was, “It’s all over the internet, anyone can find it. We don’t need X company to keep it in circulation.”
Yes, this is true. Except when it isn’t. I have a title for a movie I mean to try and look up (I cannot remember where the list with the title went, darn it), but it is a Father Brown film. One that you cannot find online. It has not been scanned or pirated to the point that anyone can simply download and see it. Neither is the film on DVD. In the parlance of George Orwell’s 1984, the movie has been “memory-holed.” That is, it has been stuffed down a chute to oblivion and may never be recovered.
As of October 2023, Best Buy made it known they will no longer be carrying or selling DVDs. They will not even be selling them on their site, and word on my local grapevine is that at least one of my local Wal-Marts will no longer be carrying physical DVDs on its “real space” shelves. I do not yet have confirmation of that locally, but this article makes me suspect rumor is more than accurate. Granted, in August Wal-Mart seemed to be considering buying Studio Distribution Services to gain a monopoly on the sale of DVDs. But they never confirmed this rumor and thus it remains nothing BUT a rumor. Following Best Buy’s lead, Wal-Mart is cutting out DVDs and may remove video game discs from stores as well.
Before either Best Buy or Wal-Mart made their declarations, at least some Target stores said they were going to stop carrying DVDs. An employee of Target mentioned this on Reddit as well. In the United Kingdom, the store Sainsbury’s said in July of 2023 that they would no longer be carrying DVDs or CDs.
When I posted a list of books and other entertainment items on Upstream Reviews on October 1, 2023, I admitted in the film section that I could not find - while searching on Amazon - a copy of John Wayne’s The Alamo on a DVD compatible with an American DVD player. Searching for Christmas presents, I bought another DVD, this time a (relatively) recent Disney/Pixar film. Finding a DVD that was a good price and compatible with American DVD players took more work than it used to for me to secure a copy of this movie.
Part of that might be explained by this little fact: as of July 2023, Disney has ceased putting their films on DVD and Blu-ray in Australia. The last film they were going to release in the Land Down Under on disc was Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3. After that, everything was going to be available on Disney+ and Disney+ only.
Suddenly, that Outer Limits episode doesn’t seem so far-fetched, does it?
There are several problems with this - the first and most obvious being piracy. No one and nothing is or has ever been safe from pirates, it is true, but look for a serious uptick in people downloading copies of these films and burning them to DVD or CD so they can have it in physical form. Given someone literally sued the Tolkien Estate and Amazon for infringing on his fan fic novels (he planned to release seven in all) for “stealing his ideas,” we can surmise that there will likely be similar suits in the future. Yes, they will probably lose, but the lack of physical media being sold by these companies means there will soon be a thriving black or “gray” market in unapproved copies being traded or sold under the table.
Before you cheer and scream “Down with the corporations!” remember that this is not a good thing. It is not a healthy sign or signal for anyone. I have plenty of bones to pick with both the Tolkien Estate and other franchises, just like other fans do. Look no further than the fan fiction versions of the Star Wars sequel trilogy I released here on my newsletter for proof. Yet I am not celebrating the downfall these companies are happily bringing upon themselves. Why?
Many reasons, but chief among them is the fact that this will result - however briefly - in an unhappy loss of culture and knowledge. It might not be much in the grand scheme of things, but consider what we lost when Rome fell. For hundreds of years, the Medieval writers were creating outright fan fiction based around the life of, if memory serves, Alexander the Great because they lost the true history on him. Rome’s fall caused an eclipse of knowledge we are STILL suffering from.
That Father Brown movie I mentioned above has been memory-holed. I don’t know if I can find the list I put the title on, and I don’t know if I can find the film online when others better versed in searching for it couldn’t discover it. How many other things like that are we going to lose when we inevitably stumble, as I believe we will, in this coming year? While I agree with others that we aren’t going to fall like Rome (because no, we are not Rome), I can also tell we’re going to stumble. We’re going to - at best - get our knees scraped. Things will be lost.
I make it a practice to save my files in various places in case my computer goes down. Now I save articles I write here on Substack in case the internet goes down. Because it MIGHT go down, even temporarily, and while I can pull a Mozart and write another whatever once it is back up, what I already had available when it does may not be there when I get back on the web. So I have backup copies from which I can copy/paste online again. It will be tedious and boring but you will be able to read what I wrote all the same. You will not lose what I wrote (and hopefully, neither of us will lose me, but that’s another concern altogether).
How many other writers do that? With Disney and Warner Brothers transitioning straight to digital, one little digital blip could send everything they have done in the last twenty years down the black hole of oblivion forever this side of eternity. Now, while I would dearly like to see Multiverse of Madness get obliterated, what about Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves? What about the only copy Disney has of, say, the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs being destroyed by the company because, “Oh, we have that digitized now”? In other words, what are we likely to lose if the internet so much as blips for five minutes, if not longer?
Short answer: a lot. Too much.
To some extent, I already posted this warning before on my newsletter, but allow me to reiterate it here: BUY MORE PHYSICAL MEDIA. I don’t care if it’s DVDs, CDs, Blu-ray or vinyl, VHS, canvas, or paper. BUY IT. WHILE YOU CAN.
If you are in a position to publish old books out of copyright through Print-On-Demand, republish them.* If you know people who republish out of copyright and out of print books, promote them. ALL of them. Despite what they tell you, physical media is not going to go out of style. Humans are tactile creatures - we need physical things.
Yes, this is where I plug my books. I have four at the moment - Debris*, Contact: Angeles*, and The Guardian Cycle, Vol. 1* and Vol. 2*. Yes, those and other links marked with asterisks are all affiliate links, meaning I get a commission (at no extra cost to you) when you purchase something through them. And yes, all those links go to the paperback copies, not the ebooks. Because if you spill coffee on your computer and don’t have that backed up, or haven’t backed it up since you bought my book, what do you think will have happened to your digital copy of my novel or collection?
I’m no stranger to digital “oopsies.” I’ve lost things before because I hit the wrong key, or answered the standard computer query incorrectly. I have lost things trying to clean up files on my computer. There are a swath of reasons why I have physical copies of my books available in paperback on Amazon. All of them are due to the fact that I know just how fragile digital media can be and too often is, something Forbes mentions in their piece here:
Maybe more notably, many films are not on any streaming services and are unavailable to buy streaming versions through companies like AmazonAMZN +0.1%. These films become entirely unavailable to stream. Films currently unavailable for streaming include James Cameron’s The Abyss, The Pink Floyd Documentary The Wall, 1978’s Dawn of the Dead and many others. Physical versions are available for many of these films. Still, if consumers no longer create a market for DVDs, these pieces run the risk of being unavailable for viewers in what may be similar to previous experiences of lost media.
From the birth of film in the late 1800s through the 1920s, lost films were common. The Library of Congress estimates that 75% of silent films are lost. The use of highly flammable nitrate film until the early 1950s contributed to this issue. While less prevalent, the phenomenon of lost films persisted into the 1970s and 1980s, especially for international films. The BFI keeps a list of the most sought-after lost films, with the number one slot filled with Alfred Hitchcock's 1926 film, The Mountain Eagle.
While films not available for streaming will not be lost in the same way as these early films, streaming services can easily limit the films they provide to audiences. This was a topic of conversation earlier this year as Max removed the animated mini-series Over the Garden Wall on August 31. The series is set on Halloween, and for many fans, it is a fall rewatch. It was one of several shows, including Westworld, Space Ghost from Coast to Coast, Infinity Train and The Gordita Chronicles, that were removed from Max. These shows are all available to watch or purchase on other platforms, but that isn’t always the case, especially when it comes to original streaming content.
Disney+ and Hulu quickly removed Y: The Last Man and Willow. Willow had only been released five months previously. Similarly, Paramount+ took Grease: The Rise of the Pink Ladies off streaming three months after its first season came out. Many of these shows have not been released on DVD; thus, removing them from streaming has made them somewhat of a lost media (at least regarding legal streaming options.)
While DVDs may seem like the answer, sales have declined. CNBC reported in 2019, “At its peak, DVD sales reached $16.3 billion and were 64% of the U.S. home video market. That was 2005. These days, DVD sales account for less than 10% of the total market, with total sales hitting $2.2 billion in 2018.” That is a decline of over 86%. While some critics and movie lovers still purchase physical media, DVD manufacturers may see these numbers as a death knell.
Forbes is being rather generous - the companies are being pushed to phase out physical media in part by ideology, in part by government-induced planned obsolescence, and in part by “futurists’” belief that the future is digital. Because if it is digital, then who is going to be able to find hard proof of misconduct? You can’t make a mistake if you can delete the mistake in the first place, right? Start over on a new, “clean” page. Writers do that all the time. Don’t they?
(I try not to, but I’m only human. I usually save everything I can in case I need it later for some reason. Physical or digital, I’m a packrat.)
My Amazon page is here.* My list of reviews is here, and my list of Upstream Reviews is available here. And do not give me the spiel about “Amazon BAD.” I am well aware of Amazon’s leanings. Have you looked at the prices on other platforms like Lulu? At the political leanings of other Print-On-Demand companies? Amazon is not going to last forever. I know this.
Right now they exist, and if you can use them to save a small piece of culture for the future - well, that’s a pretty good way to put a finger in their eye, isn’t it?
Buy DVDs through these links. Buy hard copies of the books I review and that others have reviewed at Upstream. Do not - DO NOT - rely on digital always being there. The world is an impermanent place. The only reason anything remains remotely extant after thousands of years is that men build it and maintain it, or at least do not knock it down.
We are living in a time when wrecking balls are cheap and the desire to destroy rampant. I am not saying you should give up. No. I’m doing something much harder and much more difficult.
I am calling on you to FIGHT.
Fight for what you love. A true warrior, in G.K. Chesterton’s words, fights not because he hates what is before him but because he loves what is behind him. Do you want your children - or your nieces, nephews, or the children in your neighborhood - to have no idea where they came from? To lose contact with not only the great epics of the past but the “vulgar” or “popular” parts as well? Both have a value. Ask Shakespeare, the “vulgar” entertainment of his day. We think of him as a great poet and writer, the epitome of the English language. But in his lifetime his “betters” looked down on and mocked him because he was a playwright and a popular one at that. All the riff-raff went to him.
We remember Shakespeare. We do not remember very many of his contemporaries. We remember his so-believed “betters” not at all.
Not everything vulgar is without merit. FIGHT! Fight with your wallet. Buy what they want you to forget ever existed and hold it up, so when the dust settles, it will be visible to those of us who must come pick through the wreckage. Keep what they would take from you simply to hurt you, never caring one whit either for you and those who will - God willing - come after all of us are long gone.
It is the least any of us can do, a suitably humble task that will have no reward in this life. But in the next - who can say? We can only hope.
(Also, please remember what the star rating system on Amazon and elsewhere actually means to the algorithm. Writers like me will thank you for it to the point of embarrassing you. That is another way to fight. It gets us noticed and therefore purchased.)
See you in the New Year, readers. Buckle up, and hold on tight. It’s going to be a wild one - one way or another.
Wonderfully written.
You touch on a related problem-- the memory hole.
The film you're looking for isn't available because those who have the legal rights to it haven't made it available; they may not know they have the rights well enough to do so, or the rights might be scattered around multiple possible locations.
I've heard of a lot of authors who are not ALLOWED to have their rights back, but those who contracted to sell the books won't offer the book.
Maybe a solution to the failure-to-make-available-in-physical-form problem will help?