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.
Author(s): Aaron Perzanowski, Jason Schultz
Series: The Information Society Series
Edition: 1st Edition
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2016
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 261
Tags: Personal Property, Internet: Law And Legislation, Electronic Commerce: Law And Legislation, Intellectual Property
Contents......Page 9
Acknowledgments......Page 11
1 Introduction......Page 13
A Property Law Primer......Page 27
Understanding Ownership......Page 32
Property Conflicts......Page 35
The Exhaustion Principle......Page 37
Resisting Exhaustion......Page 40
3 Copies, Clouds, and Streams......Page 47
The Hard Copy Era......Page 48
The Trouble with Downloads......Page 50
The Cloud of Uncertainty......Page 54
Crossing the Stream......Page 60
4 Ownership and the Fine Print......Page 69
The Fine Print......Page 71
The Origins of the EULA......Page 74
The EULA as Contract......Page 77
The EULA as Permission......Page 83
Defining Ownership......Page 86
Licensing and Price Discrimination......Page 89
5 The “Buy Now” Lie......Page 95
Mixed Signals......Page 96
The False and Deceptive Advertising Frameworks......Page 99
What “Buy Now” Means to Digital Consumers......Page 102
Coming Clean......Page 110
6 The Promise and Perils of Digital Libraries......Page 115
Fabricating Friction......Page 118
Libraries without Collections......Page 120
Libraries and Cultural Preservation......Page 123
When Copyright Owners Attack: IP as an Adversary of Preservation......Page 125
Libraries and Safeguarding Patron Privacy......Page 126
Libraries and Innovation......Page 129
A Library with No Friends......Page 130
7 DRM and the Secret War inside Your Devices......Page 133
Smart Cows and Dumb Code......Page 135
The Battle for Your Living Room......Page 137
DRM Goes to Washington......Page 140
DRM Goes (Back) to Court......Page 143
A Failure, at Best......Page 144
A Disaster, at Worst......Page 146
The Effort to Copyright Garage Door Openers......Page 149
8 The Internet of Things You Don’t Own......Page 151
Jailbreaking Is Not a Crime......Page 153
Old MacDonald Licensed a Farm......Page 156
Less Fast, More Furious......Page 158
Free as in Coffee......Page 161
Open the Pod Bay Doors, Barbie......Page 162
Our Bodies, Our Servers......Page 164
9 Patents and the Ordinary Pursuits of Life......Page 167
Patent Law’s Flexible Approach to Exhaustion......Page 168
The Return of Edison’s Label......Page 172
Self-Replicating Technologies and the Puzzle of the Perpetual Copying Machine......Page 175
Selling Globally, Exhausting Locally......Page 176
Exhaustion’s End?......Page 179
Ownership, Sharing, and Choice......Page 181
Avenues for Legal Reform......Page 185
The Role of Technology......Page 197
Conclusion......Page 203
1 Introduction......Page 207
2 Property and the Exhaustion Principle......Page 210
3 Copies, Clouds, and Streams......Page 215
4 Ownership and the Fine Print......Page 219
5 The “Buy Now” Lie......Page 224
6 The Promise and Perils of Digital Libraries......Page 229
7 DRM and the Secret War inside Your Devices......Page 236
8 The Internet of Things You Don’t Own......Page 238
9 Patents and the Ordinary Pursuits of Life......Page 244
10 Ownership’s Uncertain Future......Page 246
Index......Page 253
