[pmarreck]

I get that, but physical media is still a pain in the ass to manage.

I too have ripped physical media in the past for my own convenience. These days, I just use a third party torrenting service ;) (I do try to have legal access to the given media first)

If there was a way to purchase data outright (or the rights to it) that wasn't copyable (sort of like a bitcoin or ethereum token for a single copy of some data, stored on some kind of shared ledger... which I believe is what the "contracts" crypto idea was about, except hasn't really taken off yet), this advantage of physical media would go away. (It would still have other advantages, though, such as anonymity, make-your-own-tuned-rip, zero dependence on outside services such as contract authentication ledgers, etc.)

I am historically a data hoarder and old system emulation enthusiast, these are obviously legal gray areas