The sands of the internet
Nov. 12th, 2013 05:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficOne of my classmates has revealed that she is in fandom. In fact, she revealed she just started watching SGA so she could read the fic. So I decided to go looking for some of the fandom classics for her.
While I found a lot of them over on AO3, there are a lot that are just...gone. The links that I have go to nothing. And even for some of them that may still be around, the author may have it up under a different pseud, or have it locked. Really, rec lists are only good for two, three years on the internet, and the heyday of SGA fandom was (sweet jesus) six-seven years ago.
This ties into something else I've been noticing.
Back in the early 2000s, when DVD box sets just started being released, it seemed like I had reached fannish nirvana. Everything was getting released on DVD. Everything. And with a service like Netflix, I suddenly had access to every episode of almost every show I could want.
But the tide's going back the other way now. One, studios have realized that not every show is going to make money in DVD. There was a while where they were throwing their entire back catalogues out there. But then some didn't sell, and well--we're never going to get Sentinel seasons 2-4 on DVD. Those are just gone. And all the other backlist titles that seemed like we only had to wait for them to come out--at this point, they're not going to. The studios have figured out their models, and everything they think will make them money they've already put out there.
Two, streaming. I love streaming. Immensely. But streaming is undercutting the very thing about Netflix that drew me to it in the first place: the fact that it had everything. It used to be, if it was on DVD, Netflix had it. But they are now focusing more on the streaming video, and things are quietly disappearing from their DVD catalogue. You can no longer be sure that something will be there--or even that the latest season of a current show will be carried by Netflix when its boxed set is released. Instead, that model is being replaced by streaming, which is dependent on moment to moment licensing contracts. Content is always showing up and disappearing, and some content will be forever excluded because of the parent companies' streaming policies.
We're actually going back to a time when access to content is determined by the whims of studios. When you think about it--of course we are. That's the norm; it's been the norm. What we had for a handful of years was an interlude of almost everything being available. And we've gone back, now, to the normal state of affairs--endless frustration with an inability to get to the content we want, especially if that content is a few years out of date and wasn't a massive hit.
There are times when I think the historians of the future will be overwhelmed with an avalanche of facts about our time. And then there are times when I think they won't have anything at all, because this massive accumulation of data is happening on ephemeral storage media that won't even last our lifetimes, let alone into the future.
While I found a lot of them over on AO3, there are a lot that are just...gone. The links that I have go to nothing. And even for some of them that may still be around, the author may have it up under a different pseud, or have it locked. Really, rec lists are only good for two, three years on the internet, and the heyday of SGA fandom was (sweet jesus) six-seven years ago.
This ties into something else I've been noticing.
Back in the early 2000s, when DVD box sets just started being released, it seemed like I had reached fannish nirvana. Everything was getting released on DVD. Everything. And with a service like Netflix, I suddenly had access to every episode of almost every show I could want.
But the tide's going back the other way now. One, studios have realized that not every show is going to make money in DVD. There was a while where they were throwing their entire back catalogues out there. But then some didn't sell, and well--we're never going to get Sentinel seasons 2-4 on DVD. Those are just gone. And all the other backlist titles that seemed like we only had to wait for them to come out--at this point, they're not going to. The studios have figured out their models, and everything they think will make them money they've already put out there.
Two, streaming. I love streaming. Immensely. But streaming is undercutting the very thing about Netflix that drew me to it in the first place: the fact that it had everything. It used to be, if it was on DVD, Netflix had it. But they are now focusing more on the streaming video, and things are quietly disappearing from their DVD catalogue. You can no longer be sure that something will be there--or even that the latest season of a current show will be carried by Netflix when its boxed set is released. Instead, that model is being replaced by streaming, which is dependent on moment to moment licensing contracts. Content is always showing up and disappearing, and some content will be forever excluded because of the parent companies' streaming policies.
We're actually going back to a time when access to content is determined by the whims of studios. When you think about it--of course we are. That's the norm; it's been the norm. What we had for a handful of years was an interlude of almost everything being available. And we've gone back, now, to the normal state of affairs--endless frustration with an inability to get to the content we want, especially if that content is a few years out of date and wasn't a massive hit.
There are times when I think the historians of the future will be overwhelmed with an avalanche of facts about our time. And then there are times when I think they won't have anything at all, because this massive accumulation of data is happening on ephemeral storage media that won't even last our lifetimes, let alone into the future.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-13 04:03 am (UTC)As for things that aren't on DVD -- if there are reruns, there's always the possibility of high quality TV capture. I'm actually considering seeing about getting a capture card and a cable TV subscription for obtaining Festivids source that is only available in the form of digital transfers from nth generation home recorded videotapes. If only the groups who captured currently airing shows with such diligence would turn their eyes towards reruns of old children's programming...
no subject
Date: 2013-11-13 02:15 pm (UTC)I've gone back to buying the shows I want to keep and rewatch on DVD season by season instead of waiting for DVD boxed sets.
Netflix has less stuff I want to watch than it used to, it seems.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-15 06:17 pm (UTC)I could see the same thing springing up for TV shows. It must be fairly simple (technologically) to create these collections, the real problem is in access and distribution rights. So I could see a place for a middleman to survey fan demand and bring out small-time shows or movies that the studios can't be bothered to create for mass distribution.