DRM and terms-of-service have ended true ownership, turning us into "tenants of our own devices"

Writing in Wired, Zeynep Tufekci (previously) echoes something I've been saying for years: that the use of Digital Rights Management technologies, along with other systems of control like Terms of Service, are effectively ending the right of individuals to own private property (in the sense of exercising "sole and despotic dominion" over something), and instead relegating us to mere tenancy, constrained to use the things we buy in ways that are beneficial to the manufacturer's shareholders, even when that is at the cost of our own best interests.

Tufekci's analysis points out a serious problem in the "Surveillance Capitalism" critique that says that paying for devices and services (rather than getting them through an advertising advertising subsidy) would restore dignity and balance to the tech world. When Apple charges you $1,000 for a phone and then spends millions killing Right to Repair legislation so that you'll be forced to buy repair services from Apple, who will therefore be able to decide when it's time to stop fixing your phone and for you to buy a new one, then it's clear that "if you're not paying for the product" is a serious misstatement, because in a world of Big Tech monopolies, even when you're paying for the product, you're still the product.

My latest book, Radicalized, gets deep on this subject, with the lead story, "Unauthorized Bread," about refugees whose lack of political and economic agency dooms them to living in housing where all the appliances force them to buy authorized bread for the toaster, authorized dishes for the dishwasher, and authorized clothes for the laundry machines, and how they push back by seizing the means of information. Read the rest