A few months ago, news broke that UltraViolet [1] would shut down. It was a meta-DRM scheme that, for all practical purposes, was equivalent to a mapping of 'Email Address' -> 'Set of Entitlements'. Various motion picture rightsholders and digital media-serving providers integrated with it, so your rights could be imported and exported into their central list and grow over time. Although the service cost money to run, its decommissioning and the aftermath of your entitlements is a question of political will, and not a question of any technical reality. Vudu is one of the very few providers through whom you can bridge your rights over to its competitor-turned-replacement, Disney's Movies Anywhere.
If there were the political will to do so, the damn hashmap of rights could've transferred directly, but it didn't. Altering the storage scheme would've altered the basic economics of UltraViolet's hosting, but it's not an armor against studio after studio withdrawing from issuing and honoring such rights, as it actually happened.
My blockchain knowledge pretty much starts and ends with the legal aspects of cryptocurrency but I guess I was imagining a system where Ernest Hemingway, for example, could upload his latest novel (or maybe a hash?) to the chain and sell access tokens. So any time a user tries to access the file it can only be read if they have an access token for that novel’s ISBN.
Once the book is on blockchain it’s theoretically there forever, right? (Not sure how this works exactly - does at least one other machine on the chain need to be running?) But I don’t think it could be removed as easily as shutting down a server like Microsoft did. Or be censored/restricted by a government.
I suppose you’re right that there would still need to be an iBooks/Kindle type centralized reader/token wallet app or else it would be a total pain for users.
For years I've thought that there needs to be precedent for the right of first sale extending to digital purchases, which would help in these situations. As a licensee of a digital work, format shifting should be supported whenever a DRM'd marketplace like this needs to close. Consumers should be provided decryption keys as necessary when a company terminates required DRM servers. Perhaps they can be held in escrow and publicly released for some pre-determined period that overlaps with the final days of the service.
I'm glad these customers have been "made whole" (minus inflation), but it's really not Microsoft's place to be able to claw back an item a person has in their possession. It doesn't apply to physical books, why should it apply just because the medium has changed?