It's 2026 and people are still falsely conflating digital with suspect and physical with safe. We live in a world where plenty of commercial software that comes "on a disk" is unuseable without constant approval from the publisher, and plenty of "digital download" software can be downloaded once and then used and reinstalled forever without needing to ask for anyone's permission.
I understand the confusion. For a long time, you got an item on physical media, and no-one could take it away from you. Then downloads and cloud services became popular, and at the same time this crap started happening. But not everyone's trying to screw us with downloads, and the people who are, are doing their damndest to screw us via physical media as well.
The issue isn't digital vs. physical, it's own vs. lease.
Plenty will take this as an excuse to pirate, and I understand completely. I think it sends a stronger signal to spend your money where you actually get to own stuff. In this case, in a world where there is no DRM-free movie/TV show store, that means buying the discs. And for what it's worth, having recently gone back to Blu Rays, it's been a nice reminder of how much better the quality is off of the disc compared to the compressed image they send you.
I haven't seen Sony make one goddamn good decision in the past month or more. This company is so fucked. When was the last time it stocks actually went up in value?
This is not the first time and it will not be the last time. You have to hold Sony accountable (as consumers), and you have to hold the license holders accountable because they are just as liable. This will keep happening on pretty much every platform that doesn't allow a DRM free downloadable copy of the media. It will happen again.
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