By now you’ve probably heard that stand-up comics Louis C.K. and Roseanne Barr have both had TV shows pulled from streaming services (such as Hulu and Netflix). Louis C.K. was accused of sexual misconduct and Roseanne Barr wrote posts on her Twitter account some found offensive. In response to the allegations and Twitter posts, C.K.’s and Barr’s shows were no longer listed. Considering the popularity of “cord-cutting” (no longer subscribing to cable TV but retaining Internet access) and the popularity of streaming services, this is an increasingly effective means of censorship not only of the artists but of the audience.

Users lost access to those shows. For all we know people paid for services like these and gave up their software freedom in order to gain access to those shows and now people at each service decided that users should be disallowed access to those shows via the service.

Remote control of one’s library means submitting to someone else’s control of that library. This is a compelling reason to own copies of one’s own media instead of depending on inherently unreliable streaming media (which means downloading media data without retaining a copy and thus constantly depending on the server to supply a new copy for re-watching, often combined with proprietary software which is always untrustworthy and digital restrictions management (DRM)—proprietary software and DRM are also reasons to reject a streaming service).

It should be up to you to decide what to watch and when, what is offensive and what isn’t.

If you had your own copies of Louis C.K.’s stand-up sets, or episodes of the “Roseanne” show in DRM-free formats favorable to free software, you wouldn’t need to rely on a streaming service to watch them. You wouldn’t have to put up with being tracked as you watch them. You couldn’t be cut off from access to them without your consent. These are some of the reasons why file sharing (not the propagandistic term “piracy“) is rightly considered a service.

Apparently the reasons for losing access to media via streaming services grows over time. Streaming services don’t advertise that if a celebrity says the wrong thing or allegedly mistreats someone, you lose access to the works in which they’re a star. You can’t predict what will disappear next when you depend on someone else to grant you access to their library. You also can’t control what your computer is doing when you run their software. You should prefer media in formats you personally can break (DVD DRM is easily broken now but Blu-Rays are less easily broken) and play with free software even offline.