I'm very disturbed by the steady erosion of ownership that has been happening for the past few years. Subscription models are an attractive way to get some digital content for a low price, whether it's music, software, movies, or books—but the internet has a notoriously short memory, and I fear that we're condemning ourselves to becoming cultural goldfish. I have books and records from my youth that sit on my shelf a…
As far as personal access goes, I hear you, but that's how I took myself into near-hoarder territory with media.
I'm not too worried about subscription services becoming the only game in town. As long as some people will pay for permanent access of individual titles, or for value-adds like movie extras, someone will sell them.
The bigger worry is the yanking of the access to stuff you've "bought," of course. But I suspect the first time someone with power either gets hurt or even scared by a DRM-related action, we'll get some mass decisions that come down to "if it looks like a sale and acts like a sale, it's a sale."
You may or may not be able to resell or transfer it (legally), but I seriously doubt the courts will stand for someone arbitrarily taking it away. EULA or no EULA, there's a pretty fat implied promise there, and "buy" is used all over the place in language. That alone would be enough for the EU's courts to seriously hammer anyone who switched it up for "rent".
The early software-related decisions around owning "licensed" copies were in the infancy of digital licensing, and there's plenty of room for reversal there. The VHS time-shifting/personal backup decision is much more in line with what I'd expect the theme to be over time.
In particular, I expect format shifting to become legal as soon as a format shift or service closure screws someone with money/influence.
Right now, the only real-world examples are video game console libraries, and they just don't garner the same sympathy because everyone's predisposed to the idea that software ages out with tech shifts. It'll be when iTunes, Vudu, Amazon, one of those does it that we'll see action.