Ok, but you don't own the actual thing. If I buy a copy of Star Wars on DVD I obviously don't own the movie itself. I only own a copy and the right to use that

Ok, but you don't own the actual thing. If I buy a copy of Star Wars on DVD I obviously don't own the movie itself. I only own a copy and the right to use that copy in certain ways; typically personal & fair use. Historically, producing the copies themselves was generally so expensive that it made whatever licensing access essentially inconsequential. The media itself was inherently a perpetual license. As we have moved towards the availability of cheaper and cheaper copies, this is no longer the case. Copies of a work can now be so cheap and easy to create/distribute that simple possession of a copy of the work being equivalent to possession of a license no longer makes sense. The objectively correct way to handle this is to establish a shared cooperative system of identification and proof-of-purchase. For example: I should be able to buy a regular perpetual personal use license for a certain work in a certain format (ie: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope—1997 Special Edition) from the owner of that work (currently Disney) then present that license or proof-of-purchase to any provider (ie: Netflix) to receive a copy of that work in that format.