[benatkin]

You're comparing apples and oranges.

In the case of a physical object needing to temporarily go digital, it needs to be sent digitally and the records kept, and of course the physical copy has to be kept.

In the case of the GPL there's no physical copy and thus there's no need to consider how to move from one form to the other.

To require that a physical object never be used digitally is bad for society.