<div class="header-image"></div> <table class="table-header"> <thead> <tr> <th colspan="2"></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>2026-01-21</td> <td style="text-align: right;"><a href="About.md" class="internal-link">About</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> # Cutting the Cord… Again  Shortly after the turn of the millennium, just as broadband was getting cheap enough to be considered a consumer commodity, there started a movement that aimed to cut the monopolistic costs of television from the cable companies. I knew people that were spending over $100 per month just to get all the channels they wanted. There would be like 6 channels people would want to have, and they would have to pay for 6 different channel packages to get them all. They'd be paying like $120 for hundreds of channels just to watch 6 of them. I was in my mid 20s, and there was no way I could afford that. Between food, rent and utilities (and internet) I was lucky to have 20 or 30 dollars at the end of the month to spend on just myself. There was no way that was going to go to cable television. So I did what everyone did at that time: I downloaded the movies and shows I wanted to watch. Maybe I should back up a little. There's more to this than meets the eye. Or ear. In those days people didn't identify themselves in the same way they do now. At least kids didn't. There were kids who were gay, kids who were black or Asian, kids who were Pakistani or belonged to Muslim or Christian families. But kids (myself included), identified with *subcultures*. And these subcultures had a soundtrack to go with them. It was music that was the connecting thread of these subcultures. People spent an unbelievable amount of money on music. And the music you collected was a window into the kind of person you wanted to present to other people. Oftentimes, when going to someone's home for the first time, you would be invited to browse his or her music collection to pick something to listen to. My first music collection was on vinyl. I didn't have a lot of vinyl; I was pretty young when I started getting records. They were all gifts for the most part. I started working pretty young. My first job was when I was 10, and that's when I started my cassette tape collection. Many of the records I had I bought again on tape so I could play in the boombox I got for my birthday (we actually called them ghetto blasters). My tape collection got pretty impressive, I think; at least for a kid at that age who bought it all himself. Each tape cost around 10 to 15 dollars and I had between 20 and 30 of them, as I recall. (In 1988, $10.00 was about the equivalent of $23.00 today) At some point in the early 90s I got my first CDs through one of those Columbia House offers. I didn't even have a CD player yet. By now I was firmly in the Goth and Rave subcltures, so I bought a lot of Industrial and avante guarde mucic (see my [Brief History of Industrial Music blogpost here](../Blog/2025-06-15%20A%20Brief%20History%20of%20Industrial%20Music.md)). Apart from the Columbia House deal, each CD cost at least $20. A lot of the music I was listening to was more rare so it cost even more. By the time I stopped collecting I had at least 200 CDs. One of the things record companies used to say was that the price would eventually come down once CDs replaced other music platforms and mass production was firmly in place. That never happened. --- There was always ways, for as long as I can remember, to copy music. Other than simply hitting record when a good song came on the radio, I used to put two tape players together, hitting play on one and recording with the other. This worked, but of course it made for a particularly shitty recording. Putting aside any ambient noise it picked up, people talking, doors closing, etc., the sound quality was much worse than any radio station with a weak signal. Later, I got a dual cassette deck. This allowed a person to play from one deck and have the output feed directly into the recording of the other deck. With no external microphone, the recording wasn't polluted with any unwanted background noise.  At the time, the RIAA tried to have such devices banned. There were ad campaigns driven by the major music labels strongly discouraging home taping, even from the radio. The slogan was [Home Taping is Killing Music](https://www.openculture.com/2023/07/home-taping-is-killing-music-when-the-music-industry-waged-war-on-the-cassette-tape.html).  Later, in the 90s, it became possible to rip the music from CDs and onto a computer hard drive. With the advent of mp3s, people began sharing music on the Internet via Usenet and FTP sites. Then CD burners enabled people to copy CDs, or burn music they'd already downloaded. This lead to a battle between music fans and the music industry that was larger than anything before. The RIAA actually began [suing individuals for copyright infringement](https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later) to the tune of *tens of thousands of dollars.* Bands were attacking their own fans. This is when people started to get wise to just how much they'd been ripped off for decades. After replacing their music collections over and over as new formats were introduced, spending hundreds of dollars on concerts and apparel, they were being compared to thieves&mdash;&mdash;again!&mdash;&mdash;for sharing music.  *The infamous Metallica "Napster Bad!" flash cartoon* Sony even developed the technology to [install a rootkit on Windows machines](https://www.eff.org/cases/sony-bmg-litigation-info) as soon as a purchased CD was put into a PC's CD tray. The rootkit was not only intended to prevent the computer from ripping music to the PC's hard drive, it also "reported customer listening [habits] and installed undisclosed, and in some cases hidden files on users' computers that can expose users to malicious attacks by third parties." These tactics turned music sharing into a moral crusade. Piracy went from something that people did because they were tired pf paying unfairly high prices to taking a stand against corporate overreach. It became the small, individual fan fighting back against the massive, greedy, unscrupulous multimillion-dollar corporate conglomerates. It was a form of protest. This feeling of protest carried over into the sharing and downloading of movies and television shows too. Being fresh off the heels of the RIAA treating fans as nothing more than a commodity, and the exorbitant pricing of cable, DVDs and even movie rentals, it felt not so much like we were stealing, but more like taking back something that was owed to us after spending so many hundreds and even thousands of dollars on products that frequently needed to be replaced, and even ruined our computers and appliances. It was like they were finally getting what they deserved——finally receiving a little comeuppance. So, while in all practicality we were avoiding a $120 cable bill, pirating movies and television still felt like a silent protest. Now, ~20 years after the fact, the landscape is quite a bit different. Piracy is not nearly as rampant as it was. Streaming services have largely replaced both television and the old models of selling individual music albums and movies on physical media. But the streaming services operate much like the old cable subscriptions. Subscribing to a single service won't make all movies and shows available, just like getting a single cable package wouldn't back in the day. People are now spending as much on streaming as they would have on cable. Some of these services include pay options for movies. You must pay an additional "rental" fee, on top of the subscription fee, to watch new releases, for example. With these, you can also pay more to "own" the movie. "Owning" the movie is a joke though--you don't own the movie at all. If the streaming service you purchased from loses the rights to that movie, then it just disappears off the servers and you don't have access to it any more. If a movie that came out 30 or 40 years ago doesn't meet today's "moral standards" (but somehow collecting money for a product that can be taken back at will is perfectly moral!), it can be edited digitally or even have scenes completely removed. This isn't what you paid for, this is now a different product. But who can you complain to in this scenario? [Disney is famous for this](../Blog/2024-06-12%20VHS%20Directors%20Cuts%20and%20Digital%20Fig%20Leaves.md).  *Disney's digital fig-leaf campaign in action* With physical media becoming lost to the ages, there is no way to watch many of these movies as they were originally presented in the theatre. At least there's no legal way. If you want to see digitally altered movies as they were originally presented now, the *only* way to do so is by downloading them illegally. If you want to ensure that a show you enjoyed will still be available to view later, you can capture the stream yourself (which now involves some technical expertise since there are copy-protections on the stream. Long gone are the days of popping in a VHS tape and hitting record), or download it illegally. Netflix, and I assume the other services as well, won't even allow you to watch what you pay for in many circumstances. If I pay extra for UHD, and connect my laptop to an older TV, I will *not* be permitted to watch the UHD stream for which I've paid. It will only show me a 720p stream. But they won't tell me this up front. And they will not refund me for the month(s) of degraded service. Why would I pay for any of this? With these predatory services it should come as no surprise that piracy is again on the rise. Much of this comes from illegal streaming services rather than traditional downloads, but there is a scene of preservationalists who want to ensure that movies and music will continue to be enjoyed without the sensibilities of corporate executives altering the media beyond the original artists' intent. It's time to cut the digital cord. These companies do not deserve your dollar. All the methods of obtaining digital media from 20 years ago still exist, and methods to avoid detection are easier to obtain and employ. Isn't it time again for another silent protest?