Ownership is not an all-or-nothing state of affairs: it is piecemeal. Ownership is shades of gray between absolute unfettered control, and zero allowance at all. Tech companies are increasingly taking away the ownership of the products we bought and paid for, one feature at a time.
To understand this principle, consider real estate, like a single family home. Technically, you could argue that you don’t fully own your real estate because you pay taxes on it and are usually subject to zoning laws, but even so, most people would still say that you “own” your property in a meaningful sense of the word.
However, if you lost more and more control over your real estate, there would come a point at which we would say that you no longer meaningfully “own” it.
For example, your land might suddenly get a large easement on it where you can no longer build on the land and you can’t park vehicles on it either. You might also lose the water rights, or the mineral rights, or the airspace rights. The property might even become landlocked such that you can’t even legally access it unless you parachute down onto it from an airplane. But you still “own” the property… right? Well, not really, not in any meaningful sense of the word.
The problem facing modern consumers is that manufacturers are slowly removing ownership by removing our control over, and access to, the products we supposedly purchased and own. Some examples include:
- Artificially restricting the availability of repair parts and repair tools so you are required to go back the manufacturer for repairs.
- Locking the bootloader of your phone so you cannot install a different operating system if you want to.
- Forcing advertisements to be shown on the screen of your smart fridge even though you already paid full price for a device that you supposedly own.
- Collecting intimate details about you to sell for profit without your explicit informed consent.
Just as a person’s ownership of real estate can cease to be meaningful when they lose a certain amount of control over it, manufacturers of consumer electronics are quietly making ownership of personal electronic devices meaningless.
To make it clear just how egregious companies like Apple, Samsung, BMW, and Nvidia are being, imagine if you bought a new construction house, but the builder did the following things:
- The builder locked the door to your furnace room and told you that only they, the builder, can access and repair the furnace, even though it’s your furnace. And imagine that it was illegal for you to break the lock on that door in your house (as section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, DMCA, dictates is the case for digital locks).
- The builder painted their name on the side of your house, and it was illegal to paint over it or otherwise obscure it (forced advertisement).
- The builder collected information about how much water, gas, and electricity you use and sold it to home insurance companies without your knowledge or consent (selling your data).
Just as it would be unacceptable for house builders to do these things, so too is it unacceptable for manufacturers of consumer electronics to do these things. And yet, they continue to abuse the American people in these ways, and we have no market-based recourse because EVERY manufacturer is doing it.
It is long overdue for the government to take a stand and defend the people of this country from exploitative business practices; to say that enough is enough, and that ownership must include things like being able to modify, unlock, and repair the products you bought and paid for.
“Buy” vs “Rent”
A purchase is when you pay a one-time fee for time-unlimited access to, and full control over, a good.
A rental is when you either pay a one-time fee for limited-time access to a good, or a recurring fee for unlimited-time access to a good, with the seller retaining ultimate control over the good in both cases.
Digital goods which can be downloaded in a generic format (like an MP3 or a PDF) are traditional purchases. However, digital goods which can only be accessed through a proprietary system, like your “purchased” YouTube content, sit in an awkward middle ground between a traditional purchase and a traditional rental. Like a traditional purchase, these digital goods can be used for an indefinite amount of time for a one-time fee. However, like a traditional rental, these digital goods are still controlled by the seller, and they can be revoked by the seller at any time, as Sony has done to its PlayStation users on several occasions despite using the word “purchase” when users paid for these goods.
It is the opinion of the CCP that the sellers’ retention of ultimate control over digital goods sold in closed ecosystems qualifies such sales as “rentals”, not “purchases”.
A similar thing is true for software licenses. If you pay a one-time fee for the full, offline installation of a piece of software, that is a purchase. However, if the software is a subscription, then you are not purchasing it, you are renting it, and the seller should be required to call it a “rental” not a “purchase”. When you pay your landlord, you are not “purchasing a 1-year license to occupy the apartment”, you are renting the apartment.