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The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy
An argument for retaining the notion of personal property in the products we “buy” in the digital marketplace.If you buy a book at the bookstore, you own it. You can take it home, scribble in the margins, put in on the shelf, lend it to a friend, sell it at a garage sale. But is the same thing true for the ebooks or other digital goods you buy? Retailers and copyright holders argue that you don't own those purchases, you merely license them. That means your ebook vendor can delete the book from your device without warning or explanation—as Amazon deleted Orwell's 1984 from the Kindles of surprised readers several years ago. These readers thought they owned their copies of 1984. Until, it turned out, they didn't. In The End of Ownership, Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz explore how notions of ownership have shifted in the digital marketplace, and make an argument for the benefits of personal property.
Of course, ebooks, cloud storage, streaming, and other digital goods offer users convenience and flexibility. But, Perzanowski and Schultz warn, consumers should be aware of the tradeoffs involving user constraints, permanence, and privacy. The rights of private property are clear, but few people manage to read their end user agreements. Perzanowski and Schultz argue that introducing aspects of private property and ownership into the digital marketplace would offer both legal and economic benefits. But, most important, it would affirm our sense of self-direction and autonomy. If we own our purchases, we are free to make whatever lawful use of them we please. Technology need not constrain our freedom; it can also empower us.
Of course, ebooks, cloud storage, streaming, and other digital goods offer users convenience and flexibility. But, Perzanowski and Schultz warn, consumers should be aware of the tradeoffs involving user constraints, permanence, and privacy. The rights of private property are clear, but few people manage to read their end user agreements. Perzanowski and Schultz argue that introducing aspects of private property and ownership into the digital marketplace would offer both legal and economic benefits. But, most important, it would affirm our sense of self-direction and autonomy. If we own our purchases, we are free to make whatever lawful use of them we please. Technology need not constrain our freedom; it can also empower us.
380 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 28, 2016
39 people are currently reading
861 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 22, 2018
Really enjoyed this one, particularly as someone who is interested in issues of copyright but lacks a legal background. Simple, clear prose that drills-down into seemingly irrelevant-yet-relevant court cases to help explain our contemporary digital property rights moment. Certainly not a rosy picture painted by Perzanowski and Schultz, but the authors provide a robust plan of attack to rebalance the distribution of power away from IP owners.
September 1, 2018
A lot more legalese and legal cases cited than I signed up for, but it makes salient points about the importance of meaningful choice, rather than customers being shoehorned into a dominant licensing model with no options to actually own copyrighted work.
___
Property rights reduce transaction costs. When you know clearly what you are getting when you hand your money over life is easier. Licenses are idiosyncratic and often subject to change, injecting uncertainty into transactions.
When you license rather than own your purchases you lose the autonomy over what you can do with them (e.g. lend them out, resell them, give them away).
Exhaustion and the personal property rights it recognises are an inherent part of copyright law's balance between the rights of creators and the public.
Based on current trends, subscriptions, not purchases, will be the primary way we access copyrighted works.
Spotify only has so much control over how much money makes it way into the pockets of artists. Those payments are filtered through record labels, music publishers, and collecting societies, each of which takes its own cut. Most of the $2 billion paid by Spotify has replenished the coffers of record labels, while very little has gone to artists. But that is a function of the contracts between artistes and their labels.
The rise in two very different approaches to consuming music - subscription services and vinyl records - highlights the importance of consumer choice. Not everyone wants to rent their music, and not everyone wants to own it either.
Intentionally or not, rights holders and retailers have managed to nearly universally dissuade their customers from reading the terms that purportedly govern their purchases. And if the public rationally avoids investigating licenses, there is little incentive to offer more consumer-friendly terms. They would simply go unnoticed.
Gamestop offered a free $1000 to the first person who noticed that particular clause. It took 4 months for someone to claim it.
In a world governed by EULAs, life is easier for software companies and much harder for all of us.
Secondary markets (resale) keep prices down more efficiently and more reliably, and without the collateral damage of price discrimination.
By focusing on libraries, it is easier to understand that a digital exhaustion doctrine is not meant to provide refuge for scofflaws and infringers. Instead, it is a way to protect the network of socially valuable uses that owning books makes possible.
"The primary purpose of our patent laws is not the creation of private fortunes for the owners of patents, but is to 'promote the progress of science and the useful arts". The right to vend is exhausted by a single, unconditional sale.
In everyday english, "sharing" implies something given freely. And that sort of sharing is of course premised on individual ownership. You usually can't lend something you don't own. But many of the services lumped together under the "sharing economy" moniker are premised on short-term, for-profit rentals. Most are built around the exchange of money for temporary access.
When we trade ownership for access, we sacrifice reliability. More troublingly, works can disappear altogether. In a world without individual ownership, a publisher could pull a controversial book, movie or album from the handful of subscription services, and it would be like it never existed.
What sets the blockchain apart from other recordation systems is that it is publicly maintained. There's no centralised authority wihch maintains the block chain. That means it costs very little to maintain, and is highly resistant to manipulation. Trust is essential for the value of the block chain.
Because ownership reduces information costs and increases competition, it increases the efficiency of the market overall. That doesn't mean that it is the only way to go. What the authors stress is the importance of meaningful choice.
___
Property rights reduce transaction costs. When you know clearly what you are getting when you hand your money over life is easier. Licenses are idiosyncratic and often subject to change, injecting uncertainty into transactions.
When you license rather than own your purchases you lose the autonomy over what you can do with them (e.g. lend them out, resell them, give them away).
Exhaustion and the personal property rights it recognises are an inherent part of copyright law's balance between the rights of creators and the public.
Based on current trends, subscriptions, not purchases, will be the primary way we access copyrighted works.
Spotify only has so much control over how much money makes it way into the pockets of artists. Those payments are filtered through record labels, music publishers, and collecting societies, each of which takes its own cut. Most of the $2 billion paid by Spotify has replenished the coffers of record labels, while very little has gone to artists. But that is a function of the contracts between artistes and their labels.
The rise in two very different approaches to consuming music - subscription services and vinyl records - highlights the importance of consumer choice. Not everyone wants to rent their music, and not everyone wants to own it either.
Intentionally or not, rights holders and retailers have managed to nearly universally dissuade their customers from reading the terms that purportedly govern their purchases. And if the public rationally avoids investigating licenses, there is little incentive to offer more consumer-friendly terms. They would simply go unnoticed.
Gamestop offered a free $1000 to the first person who noticed that particular clause. It took 4 months for someone to claim it.
In a world governed by EULAs, life is easier for software companies and much harder for all of us.
Secondary markets (resale) keep prices down more efficiently and more reliably, and without the collateral damage of price discrimination.
By focusing on libraries, it is easier to understand that a digital exhaustion doctrine is not meant to provide refuge for scofflaws and infringers. Instead, it is a way to protect the network of socially valuable uses that owning books makes possible.
"The primary purpose of our patent laws is not the creation of private fortunes for the owners of patents, but is to 'promote the progress of science and the useful arts". The right to vend is exhausted by a single, unconditional sale.
In everyday english, "sharing" implies something given freely. And that sort of sharing is of course premised on individual ownership. You usually can't lend something you don't own. But many of the services lumped together under the "sharing economy" moniker are premised on short-term, for-profit rentals. Most are built around the exchange of money for temporary access.
When we trade ownership for access, we sacrifice reliability. More troublingly, works can disappear altogether. In a world without individual ownership, a publisher could pull a controversial book, movie or album from the handful of subscription services, and it would be like it never existed.
What sets the blockchain apart from other recordation systems is that it is publicly maintained. There's no centralised authority wihch maintains the block chain. That means it costs very little to maintain, and is highly resistant to manipulation. Trust is essential for the value of the block chain.
Because ownership reduces information costs and increases competition, it increases the efficiency of the market overall. That doesn't mean that it is the only way to go. What the authors stress is the importance of meaningful choice.
Read
February 10, 2020This is a very important book, although as a book by two law professors there is focus on exhausting the mountainous, minute details of the subject. The book serves as a signpost alerting us to the fact that our economy (the digital economy, and soon enough the tangible economy) is fast transforming into a renter state, since the things we purchase have unreadable end-of-term agreements specifying that we don't own them perpetually and for all purposes. Instead of ownership, what digital purchases provide to consumers are licenses, for temporary streaming, that expire over a certain amount of time, vanish upon the whim or failure of the commercial server, and over which the consumer has no right to share, lend, resell, or copy. This is a big transformation because if this concept transfers over to tangible property, then consumers lose to copyright holders, in the sense that we would no longer 'own' our clothes, our appliances, our hardware, and instead we would only be 'borrowing' them from the suppliers, despite the fact that the consumer would be paying full price for the privilege.
January 15, 2017
Most of the book is about how hard it has been and continues to be to apply old law in the context of digital property. Many law cases with Keurig, Sony, John Deer etc. are brought up to explain how corporations are shifting how they see sales. It is always presumed that this will be bad for the consumer in the end. In the cases of needing the correct inc cartridges or coffee capsules this is obviously so but when talking about subscription services such as Spotify and Netflix I think he understates the convenience gained and how they have the potential to further benefit users.
The last chapter is the best where suggestions for reforms are made and examples of third party standards and software which can help are suggested. It is also here a mention of Bitcoin and blockchain can be found. The blockchain seem to be exactly the solution he wants so maybe that should have gotten even more attention.
The last chapter is the best where suggestions for reforms are made and examples of third party standards and software which can help are suggested. It is also here a mention of Bitcoin and blockchain can be found. The blockchain seem to be exactly the solution he wants so maybe that should have gotten even more attention.
August 17, 2019
I completely disagree with the reviews that complain that this book has too much legalese. Ownership is a legal concept with important legal implications, and this book clearly explains those things in a way that does not require prior legal expertise on the part of the reader but also does not dumb down the discussion.
A helpful and illuminating exploration of the implications of licensing regime creep for the rights of consumers to control and use our own stuff, including some frankly alarming examples of the way intellectual property controls (technological and legal) are extending from their established domains like software and ebooks into realia through the expansion of the "internet of things."
I find the authors' contention that EULAs don't meet the legal definition of contracts convincing, and wish that more courts would see the logic. I also appreciate their argument that holding consumers to a "duty to read" such documents is wholely unrealistic and in some cases unconscionable, and that regulators should insist on a better balance of information and rights rather than letting corporations set the terms to their own benefit, leaving consumers with only the choice to take it or leave it.
The book provides a useful challenge to the quasi-socialist philosophical leanings that many in libraryland harbor without really thinking about it, because our instincts tend toward the good of sharing things in common more than to a robust defense of personal property rights. Perzanowski and Schultz observe that sharing IS a personal property right, and that the rise of the "sharing economy" runs the risk of ultimately eroding the right to share if corporations and technology barons succeed in convincing so many of us to cede ownership in exchange for service models that the option to own disappears or becomes exponentially difficult. They do not contend that owning is always better than renting/leasing/licensing/borrowing/sharing, but that it should remain a viable choice, and that consumers should not be deceived about the choice they are making. (i.e., sellers shouldn't be allowed to have a great big "BUY NOW" button on their website and then bury language about "we don't sell, we license all content" in the terms of service that no one ever reads and expect courts to uphold the fine print rather than their clear public announcement that they are exchanging money for ownership, which is the plain meaning of the word "buy.")
Reading this book has left me seriously considering re-upping my lapsed membership in the American Library Association and/or making a donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, because most of the lobbying done on these issues represents the financial interests of big corporations that control IP, rather than users or small creators. We need regulatory and legislative reform relating to ownership in a digital world, and those who will speak for We the People are worthy of support.
A helpful and illuminating exploration of the implications of licensing regime creep for the rights of consumers to control and use our own stuff, including some frankly alarming examples of the way intellectual property controls (technological and legal) are extending from their established domains like software and ebooks into realia through the expansion of the "internet of things."
I find the authors' contention that EULAs don't meet the legal definition of contracts convincing, and wish that more courts would see the logic. I also appreciate their argument that holding consumers to a "duty to read" such documents is wholely unrealistic and in some cases unconscionable, and that regulators should insist on a better balance of information and rights rather than letting corporations set the terms to their own benefit, leaving consumers with only the choice to take it or leave it.
The book provides a useful challenge to the quasi-socialist philosophical leanings that many in libraryland harbor without really thinking about it, because our instincts tend toward the good of sharing things in common more than to a robust defense of personal property rights. Perzanowski and Schultz observe that sharing IS a personal property right, and that the rise of the "sharing economy" runs the risk of ultimately eroding the right to share if corporations and technology barons succeed in convincing so many of us to cede ownership in exchange for service models that the option to own disappears or becomes exponentially difficult. They do not contend that owning is always better than renting/leasing/licensing/borrowing/sharing, but that it should remain a viable choice, and that consumers should not be deceived about the choice they are making. (i.e., sellers shouldn't be allowed to have a great big "BUY NOW" button on their website and then bury language about "we don't sell, we license all content" in the terms of service that no one ever reads and expect courts to uphold the fine print rather than their clear public announcement that they are exchanging money for ownership, which is the plain meaning of the word "buy.")
Reading this book has left me seriously considering re-upping my lapsed membership in the American Library Association and/or making a donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, because most of the lobbying done on these issues represents the financial interests of big corporations that control IP, rather than users or small creators. We need regulatory and legislative reform relating to ownership in a digital world, and those who will speak for We the People are worthy of support.
April 5, 2025
Though this book was published a few years ago, it has become increasingly relevant as our economy shifts, much to my own great displeasure, toward digital only media and away from physical property. If I can be forgiven for attempting to summarize an entire book in so short a phrase, the basic thesis here comes down to the fact that our laws and business practices have done a terrible job of adapting well-established and settled legal concepts from the physical space to the digital one.
The most basic example would be a book (perhaps even the very book we’re discussing). Because I bought a physical copy, I have ownership of that copy and can do with it as I wish. I can read it or not. I can put it on my shelf and keep it. I can lend it to a friend, sell it, destroy it. Basically I can do almost whatever I want with it short of copying it and redistributing those copies as that would be a violation of intellectual property law. In other words, separate bodies of law govern the physical property of a single book and the intellectual property of its contents. Great. We all understand that. But in the digital world, we all “buy” ebooks and other digital files, only to find that we haven’t actually purchased the same ownership interest in those digital goods as we would have their physical counterparts. We can’t resell a digital book because, for instance, there’s no way of knowing how many additional copies were generated in the process of making the sale.
This book does an excellent job of explaining the conflict between ownership and intellectual property rights in the digital economy, and it’s one of the most frightening books I’ve read of late because it describes a near-future in which we might not really own much of anything but only license all our products from companies that can strip them away from us at will. It’s one of many reasons I’m a strong proponent of physical media, but despite that personal preference, even I have to admit that digital products are here to stay and we need to come to terms with how to deal with them. Perhaps even more frightening is that the work of solving those problems is going to require the effort of far more capable and far more serious legislators than we seem to have at the moment. But I digress.
Though I may not always like the truths is has to tell, the book itself is quite good. The authors don’t shy away from detailed legal analyses, but explain the court rulings and jargon in such a way that it’s perfectly accessible to non-lawyers. And even as something of a legal nerd myself, I learned a lot from this book I didn’t already know.
Better still, lest we allow the book’s message to get us too down, the authors take some time to suggest both short and long term solutions that, while admittedly incomplete and not fully fleshed-out, would go a long way toward solving the issue. Furthermore, though AI is not at all the topic of this book, I think much of its analysis concerning the balance of rights between intellectual property rights-holders and purchasers of copies of those properties could go a long way toward promoting a more productive conversation in the AI field as well.
At the end of the day, this might not be the kind of exciting page-turner that typically tops the bestseller lists, but I consider it a must-read, not only for people in industries where products are becoming increasingly digital, but for everyone who might consider purchasing any media product…and before long, any product at all.
The most basic example would be a book (perhaps even the very book we’re discussing). Because I bought a physical copy, I have ownership of that copy and can do with it as I wish. I can read it or not. I can put it on my shelf and keep it. I can lend it to a friend, sell it, destroy it. Basically I can do almost whatever I want with it short of copying it and redistributing those copies as that would be a violation of intellectual property law. In other words, separate bodies of law govern the physical property of a single book and the intellectual property of its contents. Great. We all understand that. But in the digital world, we all “buy” ebooks and other digital files, only to find that we haven’t actually purchased the same ownership interest in those digital goods as we would have their physical counterparts. We can’t resell a digital book because, for instance, there’s no way of knowing how many additional copies were generated in the process of making the sale.
This book does an excellent job of explaining the conflict between ownership and intellectual property rights in the digital economy, and it’s one of the most frightening books I’ve read of late because it describes a near-future in which we might not really own much of anything but only license all our products from companies that can strip them away from us at will. It’s one of many reasons I’m a strong proponent of physical media, but despite that personal preference, even I have to admit that digital products are here to stay and we need to come to terms with how to deal with them. Perhaps even more frightening is that the work of solving those problems is going to require the effort of far more capable and far more serious legislators than we seem to have at the moment. But I digress.
Though I may not always like the truths is has to tell, the book itself is quite good. The authors don’t shy away from detailed legal analyses, but explain the court rulings and jargon in such a way that it’s perfectly accessible to non-lawyers. And even as something of a legal nerd myself, I learned a lot from this book I didn’t already know.
Better still, lest we allow the book’s message to get us too down, the authors take some time to suggest both short and long term solutions that, while admittedly incomplete and not fully fleshed-out, would go a long way toward solving the issue. Furthermore, though AI is not at all the topic of this book, I think much of its analysis concerning the balance of rights between intellectual property rights-holders and purchasers of copies of those properties could go a long way toward promoting a more productive conversation in the AI field as well.
At the end of the day, this might not be the kind of exciting page-turner that typically tops the bestseller lists, but I consider it a must-read, not only for people in industries where products are becoming increasingly digital, but for everyone who might consider purchasing any media product…and before long, any product at all.
August 16, 2020
If you buy something, an object, it is supposed to belong to you. That's the thesis. Unless the government, fueled by others like Perzanowski decides the object can be taken from you. Or unless it might be dangerous in any vague way. Or many other cases. Or take the case of money. One can work for a certain sum of money. But you don't own your money because the government has to take a big chunk of the money to pay for Perzanowski sinecure, for Perzanowski other perks as an entitled white male, for publishing this book, and put some money away because Perzanowski deserves a pension too.
Short version: Perzanowski doesn't get the terms he juggles with, but he feels he should write a book so the government will give him a bigger pension.
Short version: Perzanowski doesn't get the terms he juggles with, but he feels he should write a book so the government will give him a bigger pension.
August 21, 2025
Should be required reading for everyone in this modern era of technology. Goes into good detail about how technology and copyright laws are slowly eroding ownership rights in favor of the owners of software and copyrights. Also gives some good starting steps for solutions that make sense. While it is a subject with a lot of legal and technical information, the book doesn't go into that legal & technical jargon and keeps it easy to read for the layman. Highly recommend.
January 7, 2022
Fairly dry writing, but ultimately contained a lot of valuable knowledge about the current state of digital ownership and licensing rights management. I enjoyed reading about the various case studies sprinkled in as well.
April 27, 2024
Excellent telling of how we got into the current mess with loss of ownership rights to purchased items and providing ideas to be used as a starting point for discussions on how to fix it to a more equitable balance between consumers and producers.
July 30, 2017
It is a good book. It made me think very differently.
October 8, 2017
A bit heavy on the legalese, but a good read.
January 12, 2020
I almost finished this, but it was somewhat tedious. Still, the book provides good advice on making sure you read the End User Agreement before you buy.
February 26, 2017
The end of ownership
Excellent overview of the downsides of the 'ownership' of digital products. The solutions they propose are also interesting but do not go far enough. What we should look for, in my view, is a new, international legal framework based a new definitions of (bundles of) ownership. Commons and Elinor Ostrom made some promising starts but these should be refined.
Excellent overview of the downsides of the 'ownership' of digital products. The solutions they propose are also interesting but do not go far enough. What we should look for, in my view, is a new, international legal framework based a new definitions of (bundles of) ownership. Commons and Elinor Ostrom made some promising starts but these should be refined.
April 8, 2025
This one was hard to rate.
Objectively— based on the information presented, the pace, the organization, the topic— this book is probably 4.5/5.
It was extremely informative, and the content was obviously well-researched. There were a plethora of examples of scandals and lawsuits regarding companies that tried their best to control the consumer market—at times almost overstepping the boundaries of exhaustion. It really got you thinking about the differences between ownership and licensing, and about the future of a digital economy.
Subjectively, based on how much *I* actually enjoyed reading it, I would give it 2.
Yes, the information was great—and there was a lot of it! The problem was I had a hard time following because the content was outrageously jargon and acronym-dense. I couldn’t keep track of everything. Because of this, I had a hard time staying focused. So while I got bits and pieces of the information, it was hard to put all the pieces together. I wish it was simplified just a little bit.
This book would definitely be a 4 or 5 star read for anyone who is interested in and already knowledgeable about this topic. For me, a beginner, and just mildly intrigued by the topic, it was too dense and dry. Therefore, I gave it 3 stars.
Objectively— based on the information presented, the pace, the organization, the topic— this book is probably 4.5/5.
It was extremely informative, and the content was obviously well-researched. There were a plethora of examples of scandals and lawsuits regarding companies that tried their best to control the consumer market—at times almost overstepping the boundaries of exhaustion. It really got you thinking about the differences between ownership and licensing, and about the future of a digital economy.
Subjectively, based on how much *I* actually enjoyed reading it, I would give it 2.
Yes, the information was great—and there was a lot of it! The problem was I had a hard time following because the content was outrageously jargon and acronym-dense. I couldn’t keep track of everything. Because of this, I had a hard time staying focused. So while I got bits and pieces of the information, it was hard to put all the pieces together. I wish it was simplified just a little bit.
This book would definitely be a 4 or 5 star read for anyone who is interested in and already knowledgeable about this topic. For me, a beginner, and just mildly intrigued by the topic, it was too dense and dry. Therefore, I gave it 3 stars.
December 19, 2016
Gained new insights about the idea of ownership of virtual property, and facts are backed by real-life incidents happened around us.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews