Digital Wrongs: Why You’ll End Up Owning Nothing
I wrote this article a few years ago when Microsoft started imposing DRM on everyone. It was meant to be a rant against digital rights, but ended up as a critique of the direction of modern capitalism. At the time, I thought: “This is all going to end in tears….” I’m pretty sure it now has.
Digital Rights Management is more than just a software device to maintain the copyright of published material. It is a reflection of a new philosophy that will ultimately lead to a society in which consumers own nothing, where the nightmare of the dispossessed comes true and corporate bodies own everything. The logical extension of this is: you lose your home, car, all your possessions and everything you own to some vision cooked up in the boardrooms of America. Their vision of the model citizen is someone who is heavily in debt, but owns nothing, who consumes without assuming ownership, and who is powerless to influence the tide of events because the democratic process is meaningless.
The most fundamental premise of capitalism is the concept of ownership. It is the guiding principle that allows everything else in the market economy to work. Ownership is the idea that an individual is able to possess something exclusively, sell it and use the tokens of exchange to buy other things. It is the primary motivational force of incentive. Take away ownership and you take away capitalism. Continue reading
