Similar things happened in the past as well. At conferences or trade shows you could find booths selling CDs/DVDs of online content like IETF RFC's, government publications, etc. I could see it as useful for people that had infrequent/spotty network connectivity, but mostly it was preying on people who were unaware of how to obtain these documents on their own.

Occasionally you could find print versions as well, which were sometimes a deal if you took the cost of toner/paper into consideration.