- It's fun to collect, to look at what you have.
- You can remember the books, by looking at your shelves.
- You /actually/ own something, instead of some random variable in Jeff Bezos' database saying you are /allowed to/ read it.
If everything is locked up in ebooks with DRM (Amazon recently nuked old Kindles to close a DRM loophole), culture is locked behind corporate paywalls.
>DRM
You're downloading them wrong.
Yes, that's what funds the creation of culture. If intellectual property is unprotected, then creators of that property are not supported.