I have been thinking on this topic for many many months now. Over the years, I have built up a collection of over 1,300 CDs and at least half that in DVDs. I have an entire 400-disc book of television DVDs with just a few pages empty. For this discussion, I would like to focus exclusively on audio CDs.
So I have all my media ripped, tagged, and basically in the form I personally need it. Sure it would be outstanding if I had scanned in all the pages of the extra materials, but I didn't and would have a difficult time doing so, though not impossible.
My main inquiry is legality. I think we are basically past the idea of ripping CDs. Everyone does it, tons of programs are capable of it, and it seems to be generally accepted. But, in this day and age of big hard drives and reducing physical impact (scanning receipts, analog photos and documents, PDFs, digital software rather than hardware) I am trying to figure out what the ultimate fate of all my CDs is. They take a tremendous amount of space, as one might imagine. Currently they are scattered through about 8 large disc storage units. I have seen those 1,000 disc cabinets and thought that two of them would be sufficient for the foreseeable future. But then again I am investing more money and time in this physical content that provides little benefit. The main benefit overall would be to be able to nicely display all the discs and they could look nice if stored well. They should be alphabetized.
So what are my options? I was thinking them through:
1. Store content
2. Give away content
3. Dispose of content (trash, recycling)
4. Sell content
My best guess is the order they are listed being most ethical to least. BUT, disposing of anything usable seems to, at the very least, question the environment. Even more so, a large number of my CDs are extremely old and some are rare/out of print.
I look forward to any feedback people have! I am far from making a move but would really like to learn more about this heated topic.