It’s sensible for businesses to shift from physical media sales. Per CNBC’s calculations, DVD sales fell over 86 percent between 2008 and 2019. Research from the Motion Picture Association in 2021 found that physical media represented 8 percent of the home/mobile entertainment market in the US, falling behind digital (80 percent) and theatrical (12 percent).
But as physical media gets less lucrative and the shuttering of businesses makes optical discs harder to find, the streaming services that largely replaced them are getting aggravating and unreliable. And with the streaming industry becoming more competitive and profit-hungry than ever, you never know if the movie/show that most attracted you to a streaming service will still be available when you finally get a chance to sit down and watch. Even paid-for online libraries that were marketed as available “forever” have been ripped away from customers.
When someone buys or rents a DVD, they know exactly what content they’re paying for and for how long they’ll have it (assuming they take care of the physical media). They can also watch the content if the Internet goes out and be certain that they’re getting uncompressed 4K resolution. DVD viewers are also less likely to be bombarded with ads whenever they pause and can get around an ad-riddled smart TV home screen (nothing’s perfect; some DVDs have unskippable commercials).
Nobody today is not coming to my house. However the world has not always changed in ways I like. If the media companies want to make an example of somebody they might randomly pick me. If I have physical media they will not be able to convince the general public I’m a dishonest thief and so even though I might be legally in the wrong for ripping DVDs they will stay away: they are going to look for someone who they can make look like a dishonest thief in the court of public opinion. They are not looking to take me to court and win whatever damaged they are owned from my activity (it will cost them about 100 times as much $$$ in lawyers fees - they would probably win but it isn’t worth it), what they would be looking for is to make an example in the news about how much someone loses and if I have physical media they instead look like jerks for enforcing a law on something that the generally public wouldn’t even call a crime.