Ownership is so 2009

Some thoughts on property and the direction we're moving in the twenty-tens. It's not completely insane that sometime in the not to distant future a parent will hear their progeny ask a question like:

"Dad, what does it mean to buy something?"

and the following conversation might ensue:

Dad: "Well Billy, it's like licensing something, but you can do whatever you want with it"
Child: "But that's crazy, no company would ever let someone do WHATEVER they want with their product"
Dad: "Actually it used to happen all the time, you would buy something, and then you could do what you wanted - use it, disassemble it, loan it, even sell it again"
Child: "But isn't that completely anti-capitalist? It you could sell stuff you didn't need anymore then how would companies make money. Why would be people keep buying new stuff if the old stuff worked just as well?"
Dad: "I don't know it used to just work itself out...You know free market and all that"
Child: "Dad are you a Commie? Do I need to call the thought police?"

Ok, that last piece was a little over the top, but the rest isn't all that far from where we are now.

Anything that's delivered in a digital form is already licensed and not sold. Music, Movies, Video Games, Books.

Physical goods are moving in that direction too, helped by embedded microcontrollers and software. You can't take ownership of a computer without accepting a whole bunch of restrictions on what you can do, but it gets worse. Want to sell ink cartridges for someone elses printer? Get slapped with a DMCA lawsuit for reverse engineering their faux-DRM. Want to sell an unlicensed game on console? Same thing.

Intellectual Property rights are slowly encroching into all walks of life. Want to post a video of yourself dancing like an idiot to a pop song? Good luck.

Pretty soon baseball bats will come shrink-wrapped with End User License Agreements allowing them to sue you if you use their bat in an unauthorized manner.

Combine the licensing phenomen with the credit phenomenon, and suddenly we don't actually own anything. That house you bought? Technically the bank owns it, and you owe them more than it's worth. That car? Actually, you traded in your last car for less than it was worth to upgrade to this years model, so technically you own less than 0% of that too.

Ownership just isn't for the little people anymore. It's so 2009.