I may have touched on this before, but I have a disdain for most
digitally-purchased media. Why? DRM. Digital Restriction Measures to
me, but Digital Rights Management to the general public.

I have bought one video on Youtube/Google Movies and TV as well as a
couple on Vudu. Thankfully not more than 5 or 6. But it is absolutely
infuriating trying to get these to a DRM-less file. Usually the reason
I do it is because it's so much cheaper than the physical version. I
know that's the only reason I bought Luck of the Irish (2001) on YT:
the VHS copy was upwards of $50. Yeah, no. I am sort of a
completionist, I guess, or at least anal about keeping my stuff backed
up, especially books, pictures, and movies. But you can't really back
something up if you don't have the file.

I know I could get a screen recorder or something like that to get the
file, but that automatically degrades it a little. I may end up doing
that anyway.

I should point out that I'm pretty anti-piracy. While I can see the
merit in try before you buy, a lot of the time people don't buy and
still keep it. Morally to me that's wrong, although I do tend to be a
massive hypocrite about this when it comes to p**n. I gues I don't
view it as much of a legitimate business for whatever reason. But I
don't rent movies or music, rip them, then return them.

Anyway, the DRM on DVDs and BDs is almost always pretty trivial to
break: they still have to play on DVD/BD players. Those don't bother
me much since I can still get a freed copy relatively easily. But when
I have to go through a certain app or website just to watch something
I paid for, I get a little perturbed. I like MP4s. I like MKVs. I
don't like navigating some bloated POS website that has ads and dumb
navigation and logins and buffering (Vudu ain't great).

Ebooks *can* have quite-tough DRM, although I haven't bought many
ebooks, thankfully, and all were converted successfully with Calibre.
I also painstakingly scanned, OCRed, and converted most of my physical
books to epubs and txt. Not perfect, but the amazing ability to hold a
small library in your pocket was worth it to me. I have returned
ebooks that were riddled with DRM before because of how much I loathe
it.

I feel that DRM should be illegal. They try to phrase things as though
you're buying a license to watch the movie at any time instead of
buying the movie itself, and that's just BS. People are still going to
crack DRM and it's still only hurting the legitimate purchasers. Why
couldn't they add some digital watermark to files with the purchasers
name if they wanted to crack down on piracy? Then they'd at least know
the source of any leaked copies. Then again, that'd probably be
cracked just as quickly as the DRM was.

Another major issue with digital items is the fact that libraries can
be wiped out with an account. I have quite a few digital games on my
Xbox. They're tied to my Xbox Live account. If I was some dirtbag and
cheated on XBL and got banned, I could have all those non-physical
games ripped from me. Gone. That's not a real concern for me, but it
happens, especially if the provider is a smaller company. This as
opposed to the physical disc only being ruined if you're reckless or
suffer some natural disaster or fire. While those things happen, you
can prepare for lots of them and if you lose them, it's almost always
in your control.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on DRM and why physical media is
generally superior to digital copies.