The logic was:

If I took home a $200 box of software in 1995, installed it, and then drove back to Circuit City in the morning and returned it, there was no way for anyone to tell.

Like, across all aspects of American media, profits skyrocketed with CDs because consumers couldn't easily copy them. With cassettes and floppy discs, piracy was just accepted. And when they got to start over with CDs/DVDs they wanted to do everything possible to break the piracy habit in the window they could.

American Neoliberalism kicked off with Clinton in 1992, which is when all this was happening and corporate profits were prioritized over all else in the pursuit of campaign donations.

Like, this shit didn't happen accidentally, we didn't just stumble into it.

There's reasons for why our shit is so fucked and it's not in the EU.