As a public institution you, the citizen, own it. What you are talking about is hoarding access. You want complete unfettered access to content without barriers and without friction. Typically the only way to do that is via pirating.

Let me remind you of the open source credo about free as in freedom not free beer. You are right that there may be exchanges or compromises at play, but it was a bit shocking to me when talking about what is essentially the digital commons that no one mentioned a library, which exists.

I'm also saying from a practical perspective if you want to stream movies without giving money to big tech, you can literally do that tonight with a library card. The infrastructure already exists.

> As a public institution you, the citizen, own it.

Nominally, yes. In terms of that meaning anything, no. The benefit of ownership is not exclusivity, but control. If the library doesn't have a book (or other piece of media, of course), I have no power to influence them to get it despite that theoretical ownership. If the librarian decides a book is offensive and removes it from the collection, I have no power to influence them to keep it. I have to live with someone else's decisions about what the library does and does not contain, just like with a commercial service. So my nominal ownership really means nothing at all.