If the license is not tied to a physical object that you can safekeep, then it has none of the traditional benefits of ownership as you can only exercise your license through a stack that others make available. That's the real issue here.
I know. Unless the company has made a perpetual accessible portal/download thing where you can obtain your licensed product forever, it's doomed to fail sometime.
Mediums like discs (cd, dvd, blu-ray, etc) are usually defined as a assistance to make it easy for the consumer to actually use the licensed content (play the movie, install the game). However, these disc deteriorate over time and you may end up with a license, but no data.
