Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft
5 hours ago
>Because you own the physical medium, but the data encoded on it is still copyrighted
Yes, and it turns out I also own the hard drives that it's stored on. The thumb drives. The SSDs. And there is no copyright police in my utility room. But there is a Plex server. The "Netflix sucks and I don't have enough control over my shows" problem was solved years ago. Seriously, you can stream this to any device you own, whether you're at home or in some hotel a continent away. You can stream it for your friends.
>I spent 3 years personally backing up my wife's 1400 DVDs, because with that many of them, at some point the discs are bound to go bad.
I made a list of our DVDs, then gave them away and spend a few weeks downloading those. In many cases, like Star Trek TNG, I ended up getting improved versions... god help me, interlace comb.
So if I rent out the device that I own, I can make $$? Also, the everybody is my friend. $$$$.
I have seen, quite recently, on sites like Amazon and Ebay, 4-26tb refurbished hard drives filled with digital media for sale.
So, yes, you can. Is it legal? No. But neither is selling cocaine in a nightclub yet many people fund their entire lifestyle doing just that.