I miss the days of VHS and DVD shelfs in homes, for example. If you bought the tapes and had them in your home, no corporate entity could alter those tapes without your consent, monitor how many times you watch them, sell your data to whomever they please without your knowledge, roll out new mandatory conditions to a 'user agreement,' or remove them from your library if/when they like.
I noticed some dumb change in how Dictionary definitions are shown in the Spotlight (ie, overall search my computer function) in MacOS this week. I've turned off all auto-updates, and I didn't make that change or consent to it. But despite paying the full price all by myself for this machine, I clearly don't have 100% control over it. It seems very clearly to me that consumers having control and privacy over their Internet-connected devices is a bygone era.
After Blizzard, the video game company, replaced copies of Warcraft 3 that I and others had paid for in full and installed on our computers that we could play without connecting to the Internet with a lower-quality copy that prohibited offline play - I swore I'd never pay for a video game again*, and 3 years later I haven't backslid on that. I felt so angry, cheated, and robbed by that. (*Edit: my criticism and frustration is really more with larger developers/companies/creators - I appreciate and am happy to support smaller, more independent and libre ones.)
Many people probably won't be bothered by these things, but I am. I don't want to pay full price for something that I don't truly own. I miss the familiarity. I miss the reliability. I miss feeling like it's mine. Dependable. Trustworthy.
Picking my old guitar up again has never looked so appealing. I think I want to go back to investing more time, money, and energy into things that aren't connected to the internet
Like your points and generally agree, but companies deranging their products and adding post-hoc internet reliant licensing is one core message of OP. This has been forced on people on many platforms. Blizzard and WC3 was given as an example by OP. Microsoft is probably the most flagrant example as many people need to use windows for various software, and you need to rip the system apart to kill forced updates or shutdown invasive services.
Yes, which is why I bought Baldur's Gate 3 and not other games. It's not "just" because it's an amazing game, it's also because IMHO the way it has been produced respect its content creator but also the way it's been delivered, respect players.
So when I say be pragmatic I also don't mean to imply to accept any kind of behaviors from software publishers and rather when you can, do pick the good ones, obviously.
PS: I'm also morally perfectly fine with cracking and pirating software trying limit your freedoms assuming you did properly pay for it once, even if it's illegal. I'm wary of enshitification overall.
Yes, 100%. If company is awful enough to the creator then I'd even be ethically in agreement without purchase but just donate direct to creator or whatever. Though risk varies more with legality in the latter case.
Ofc. Always good to choose the source that treats the consumer well. FOSS alternatives are also becoming competitive for lots of things which is great to see.
But where you used to be able to purchase physical media it's practically impossible now. Even physical cases of games or audio-visual are usually just packaging for an access key to stream it. It sucks that we have to rely on market force through user-based action (e.g. Helldivers vs sony). These forces simply don't work against market caps like Microsoft or practically any commercial software (cad, sim, business management) or media service (streaming, music, etc...) where companies can leverage nigh infinite debt to overcome the user base action in favor of market growth.