It makes me wonder about the meta question about how to stop whatever the next iteration of this will be.
Like, if we look back at this, surely there were people saying, "Hey, things have changed. You don't actually 'own' the thing you think you're buying anymore. This could come back to bite you," but on the whole, not nearly enough people cared for it to shape the market.
There is sure to be another thing like this, some other movement where yet another owner of something finds a way to sell you access to it in a way that makes you think it's "yours," but actually all you have is permission to use it as long as they remain happy with you and happy to continue allowing you access. How do we make sure people know and care next time?
And what about the fact that, on the whole, most people are apparently fine with having access to things rather than ownership of them? How do you make the distinction when it matters, but allow both types of transactions? (For example, I'm glad I don't have to buy, and then sell, even a single room in a house to stay in when I'm traveling; paying to use it for a limited period is preferable to me in that situation.)
We know putting the information in the terms of use won't help, but what would?
>It makes me wonder about the meta question about how to stop whatever the next iteration of this will be
My take: general computing will be gone.
There will be no way to run arbitrary code on any device.
You can see the screws already tightening at several places. Phones have various methods like safety net that is meant to "protect you", apps can now detect if they were sideloaded, bootloaders are locked.
DRMs are running with kernel level privileges, Microsoft requiring TPM on new releases of windows. There is pretty much one browser left (Chrome), so google can do whatever they want with the web. I'm sure they are already drafting out the next "web attestation" API, except this time they will do it in the dark instead of in the open.
DNS over https means that you can no longer block devices from phoning home on your own network.
There is a handful of companies controlling about 90% of the internet if not more.
I understand and sympathize with your point of view, but a general bars open policy with a kernel is not a necessity for general computing. Let's focus on the idea that you don't have to vet your code by the maker of the device, not that your tentacular code needs to access every single memory address.
> And what about the fact that, on the whole, most people are apparently fine with having access to things rather than ownership of them? How do you make the distinction when it matters, but allow both types of transactions?
We could engorge the commons. If people are okay with mere access, then (for easy-to-distribute things, like books and videogames) free culture should naturally outcompete comparable proprietary works.
Promote DRM-free cultural artefacts. If you'd drop $70 on a AAA title, drop $70 on a DRM-free game you like, and then tell your friends about it. (Try-before-you-buy is a feature, not a bug, though don't be stingy about this if you can afford not to.)
This isn't generally-applicable, of course, but deconstructing the "everything is property" schema might make it easier to get another angle on it.
"Intellectual property" almost seems like a contradiction in terms. Like, I can't arrange the bits on my own computer hardware in a specific order because someone else arranged the bits on their own, separate computer in that order first? What?
Or better yet, ideas. I can't think things in my own brain, arguably the thing that is most obviously mine, and then talk about what I think about those things, because someone else thought them first and I didn't come up with them on my own? I get why it's not cool to pretend I did come up with them. It's cooler if I can remember where I heard them first and give credit for them. But if I don't remember? If I connect two ideas I heard about ten years apart only once I hear the second one and I can't remember where the first one came from? How did that idea not become "also mine" after being stored and then recalled from my own brain for ten years?
I don't know how to solve the admittedly hard problem of allowing people to profit from the hard work it takes to come up with original ideas. But the "intellectual property" concept doesn't make a lick of sense to me as the way to do it.
People have indeed been warning about this for years, particularly in spaces like Steam where you don't even have a physical item to pretend you own. For a long time the response has mostly been "yeah right why would they revoke the licenses?".
This just happens to have been kicked off by one of the first high profile cases of exactly that happening with games (that I know of). It also happened a lot this year and last with movies and TV shows that were allegedly "bought" on platforms like PlayStation and Crunchyroll but were actually licensed by the rights holders.
In my experience Steam is actually extremely good in this area. I have games in my steam library which haven’t been sold on the steam store in years, and I can still download from the steam servers and play without any issues or friction. Some of them are EA and Ubisoft titles that were pulled so those publishers could sell exclusively on their store launchers.
Valve has historically been good about this, but the point is that the past doesn't guarantee the future. You cannot trust them to keep a thing for any amount of time without something legally binding.
Steam also can't do anything to protect you from games that require servers to play if those servers are shut down. Case in point, "Concord". They can offer direct refunds (I know they did that with The Day Before), but then doing that is a PR move that you can't rely on.
To me the the final dystopian level is data ownership.
It's already annoying to use your iPhone as a primary camera without paying for iCloud storage. Imagine if you could only view your own photos after you've paid $10/mo for the cloud service, and there would be no reasonable way to get your data out.
Like, if we look back at this, surely there were people saying, "Hey, things have changed. You don't actually 'own' the thing you think you're buying anymore. This could come back to bite you," but on the whole, not nearly enough people cared for it to shape the market.
There is sure to be another thing like this, some other movement where yet another owner of something finds a way to sell you access to it in a way that makes you think it's "yours," but actually all you have is permission to use it as long as they remain happy with you and happy to continue allowing you access. How do we make sure people know and care next time?
And what about the fact that, on the whole, most people are apparently fine with having access to things rather than ownership of them? How do you make the distinction when it matters, but allow both types of transactions? (For example, I'm glad I don't have to buy, and then sell, even a single room in a house to stay in when I'm traveling; paying to use it for a limited period is preferable to me in that situation.)
We know putting the information in the terms of use won't help, but what would?