This seems like they're willing to ride the storm for a while and looking at the long term.
By next gen ("xbone 2" - sorry, I love saying "xbone"), so many more people will never be buying physical media for anything - movies/music/games, and so a lot of this stuff will be all in the past: lending and selling games etc. And the next generation of gamers will have grown up in this era of no physical media so won't care about a lot of these things. And internet connections are only getting faster and better, so the connectivity won't be an issue either.
It fucking sucks that things are moving that way, I certainly don't support it and won't be buying anything like this. But just saying that is probably how MS are looking at it, in the long term, not just this launch.