Ownership is Power
What does it mean to own something? Ownership is the state or fact of legal possession and control over property, which may be any asset, tangible or intangible. Ownership is not rental, its not a lease, or a license. It means that you must legally posses the property, and in most cases, that you also physically posses it in some form.
What we are doing with most digital purchases is, sadly, not ownership. Similarly, what we are doing with cars, and houses, and sometimes with medical procedures, and cell phones, is also not ownership. In fact, the amount of things that we pay for that we don't actually own is astoundingly and alarmingly high. We have systematically eschewed ownership. We have handed it back to the corporations, who have convincingly and swiftly accepted our trade, and are in return providing even more avenues for us to not own things for our own convenience.
The problem here goes so far beyond that of unavailable movies and albums. We collectively accept to some degree that movies and music are leisure, and therefore we are not entitled to them (by the by, this is an exceptionally puritan and outdated view that we should also discard). The thing that's coming next will be far more sinister. We need to recognize that today, its music and movies - tomorrow, it could be your car, or your access to critical health data, or your access to educational materials, or the right to repair your own home, or vehicle, or bicycle. The cost of this access is far, far greater than the upfront cost of total ownership.
It also goes beyond access. We have accepted now for some time that the information we provide to companies is going to be shared and distributed to other companies and that data will become accessible to people who it wasn't intended for. 23 and Me shares your data with law enforcement. Car companies are selling your driving data to insurance companies. We are accepting encroachment into our private lives and information which, at minimum, is disturbing and violating, and at maximum is harmful and even threatens our economic and political freedoms.
We ought to own the things we pay for. We also ought to own the data we generate. If we don't, we should seek to obfuscate or sabotage the validity of that data.
Ownership is indeed power. Right now, we are powerless.