physical media FTW (always and forever)

Excellent piece on the virtues of physical media AKA why I will continue to collect, adore, and hoard my beloved Blu-Rays like a squirrel with acorns.

A collection of physical media is a bulwark against fear—the fear that rights holders may take works out of circulation, whether because of a mere contractual lapse or a calculated market-making and desire-stoking scarcity... The shutdown or lockdown of a single site may eliminate all access to the only extant source for a major movie. Thus, physical media take on an essentially political role as the basis for samizdat, for the preservation in private of what’s neglected or suppressed or destroyed in the public realm, be it through mercantile vandalism, doctrinaire censorship, or technological apocalypse.