What Mr. Show and HBO Go Can Teach us About the Importance of Digital Ownership

[Commentary] Digital ownership is important because increasingly when you “buy” a digital thing online you don’t really own it. Instead, you click through some long terms of service agreement and “license” it. That distinction matters -- if you are licensing something you are not really buying it, and if you are not really buying it you don’t really own it. Non-ownership plays itself out in all sorts of ways. Because you don’t own those digital goods, you may not be able to lend them to someone else, or resell them, or even pass them on to your heirs when you die. Similarly, because you are only leasing them, rightsholders can reach out after the “sale” and simply make the files disappear. When you are only renting something, the rightsholder can take it away and make it disappear at any time for any reason. That gives them the power to alter their own history.