Streaming and the potential if not for profit motives

Streaming is inherently less wasteful than traditional physical media. Any media company hosting thousands of shows and movies must surely be better for the environment than producing so much plastic waste. In the process of purchasing physical media it needs to be produced first; a plastic case, a plastic disc, plastic shrink wrap, likely covered in plastic stickers, all being shipped likely on a truck that runs off of diesel. The environmental impact of a disc has to be much worse than the miniscule amount of electricity used to run and access the file version right? I suppose you could make an argument that the electricity used probably comes from an oil based or natural gas based generator facility, but in a world without profit motives the electricity could come from solar, wind, nuclear, etc. Another question is "what is the best way to store these files in order to reduce the electrical consumption when not actively in use. A disc is a good way to passively store data without using electricity at all and the ability to access a file on a server requires constant electricity because the people running the server don't know when someone may want to access the files. I believe that in a system without a profit motive we could have near limitless electricity for all and perhaps it wouldn't be such an issue. Perhaps in a world without profit motive we would concurrently develop the most electrically efficient servers as well; maybe files are hosted locally by our friends and family rather than being totally centralized. The possibility of a world without profit motive also relieves us of the idea of copyright and gives us the ability for the free flow of information and entertainment. 

Streaming cannot be argued against that it is the most convenient way to access information. storage can easily get large pretty quickly in any format, and while we have had great strides in shrinking storage through flash media in recent years, anything on the large scale is still difficult to miniaturize. Imagine you want to watch a movie at your friend's house, in the past you would have to bring a VHS tape, DVD, Blu-ray, etc, and they would have to have the matching player for whichever media type you have for your movie along with a TV that has inputs for the matching cable types. Nowadays you can easily use any television to simply stream content so long as you have an internet connection. You can screen mirror your phone to the TV, you can use the integrated operating system on the TV or even use an external streaming device. I do personally love the tactile sensations of physical media, but I do think it can be a bit cumbersome to have to bring a player, cables, and a stack of movies to a friend's house for a small movie night. I've mostly been speaking of films in these arguments, however it cannot be stated enough how much streaming has changed music. Music of any genre is more accessible than ever and listening to small bands and indie artists is so much easier than it used to be. You can go on youtube or spotify and find so many small bands with only a thousand views/listens or less and it's one of my favorite pastimes to look for new, undiscovered talent on the web. Some of my favorite songs of all time I found simply by looking up a silly keyword in a search and seeing what came up.

Streaming is so much cheaper than having to buy your own physical media collections, even in a world without profit motive, a file will always be cheaper than a physical good. When it comes to physical collections, the size stacks up pretty quickly and you may be finding yourself running out of room and requiring some kind of CD organizer or bookshelf, be it for films, books, vinyls, CDs, VHS tapes, etc. At the end of the day they are all still physical objects and will take up a lot of space. This leads me into my next point, parity. When it comes to streaming, it's much easier to have multiple file backups than it is to have physical backups. If you only have physical backups you also leave yourself open to destruction of data through mold, heat damage, UV damage, fire, flooding, etc. When you stream, it's much easier to have these files multiple times on a single server in case of corruption, a failed drive, and even another server in a separate location.