Here’s a flash from the past. You buy a movie from Sky on your settop box: you get to view it instantly of course, but then your eternal rights are mailed to you in the form of a DVD. Ultraviolet must be turning in it’s sleep.
It is guess work why this scheme was chosen. Of course it is simple and pragmatic. And maybe the electronic version of buy to keep will follow in due course. But suggesting that Sky can do this by simply offering the content through it’s own receiver is silly: many customers would want their rights to the content not to be linked hard to Sky and their equipment. Julian Clover of BroadbandTVNews speculates it has something to do with competing with Amazon and brick and mortar shops. Maybe there simply is a (albeit shrinking) group of people that prefer the tangibility and simplicity of physical media.
