Before the wave of digital ownership took over, we owned everything we bought. Think about all the games, e-books, apps and other digital content that you own. Do you really own it? All we can buy nowadays is a license to use something which can easily be taken away at any time. The term "buy" has taken on a whole new meaning in the 21st century and there is very little we can do about it.

Digital ownership recently came to the forefront because of the game preservation movement triggered by the shutdown of The Crew servers by Ubisoft (more on this later). However, ownership in the traditional sense is also under threat in other industries such as movies, books, TV shows and even physical/tangible objects like smart phones and TVs. Where is this going to stop? The problem is that the lack of ownership has been normalized to the point that people don't even realize that they are being taken advantage of!

“Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.”
Alduous Huxley

Books

Typically, when you buy a book, you keep it forever, regardless of whether it's still being sold. Take for example Rage by Stephen King. This was a controversial book in its time. It didn't stay on store shelves for very long due to its association with several high profile school shootings in the US during the 80s. However, even after it was taken off store shelves and out of print, if you had a copy of the book, you got to keep it.

This is the type of ownership that I am talking about. If you have a physical copy of a book, you're free to lend it to someone, write in it (please don't) or photocopy parts of it for personal use. This does not hold true for digital, DRM protected e-books.

I used to own a Kindle and had bought a fair number of e-books from Amazon. However, as time went on, the device got old, slow and needed replacement. So, I replaced it with a Kobo Libra 2 to avoid the ad-ridden mess that the new Kindles have become. Then came the pain.

Amazon does not make it easy for you to download your books and put them on another e-reader. You can't just copy books to your new e-reader the way you do with a flash drive. They have their own Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection, that you need to bypass before the book can be used elsewhere. Not having a Kindle makes this all the more difficult. If bypassing the DRM is illegal in your country, then the only legal options you have left are to either forfeit your legally purchased e-books, or buy an "Amazon approved" device to access your content. Fast-forward to 2025 and Amazon has now removed the option to download e-books to your computer as well; making it impossible to access your content in a manner and device of your choosing without removing the DRM (which is illegal in the US).

Since the books are controlled by whatever provider you bought them from, what is to stop them from altering the contents of the books? There is no guarantee that you will perpetually have access to the book that you originally bought. What if a government decides to censor something in a published book, causing it to be censored in the e-book that you bought with no way to revert the change? This can't happen in a physical book, or an e-book that you have a downloaded copy of.

“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
Ray Bradbury

Video Content

There was a time when you could just buy a DVD copy of your favorite movie or a box set of your favorite TV show from a video store. With the proliferation of streaming services, this has become a lot less common and sometimes even impossible. A lot of "purchase" options for digital video/audio content have moved online. You can buy your movies, TV shows or music online and can access them on demand from anywhere in the world. Convenient isn't it?

There's a major caveat to this though: you never get a copy of the content that you purchase. You only get a license to access it, at the mercy of the provider. So, if the content provider chooses to revoke that license, you can no longer access your content and you don't even get a refund.

Imagine this: you bought a DVD copy of a movie which was published by T-Series. Now, say T-Series loses the publishing rights to that movie. So, they have someone break into your house and take away the DVD that you bought and paid for. What would you call this? Stealing right? That's basically what companies are legally doing with digital content.

There's even precedent for this happening. Sony already did this with Discovery channel content that people legally bought from the PlayStation store. They did reverse course after major consumer backlash, but the damage was already done. People were rudely reminded of the fact that they may just lose access to content that they legally purchased.

A similar thing happened with Redbox, a popular video rental service. Redbox was popular for its kiosk based DVD rental service. However, they also hosted an on-demand streaming service where people could purchase content online. In 2024, the parent company of Redbox filed for bankruptcy leaving people who bought streaming content on their website with no way to access it. So, people essentially had media that they allegedly purchased stolen from them.

Games

Ubisoft's The Crew was primarily a single player with some online multiplayer components. So, when it was rendered unplayable in 2024 due to the servers shutting down, there was widespread consumer backlash. This was a game that people had purchased for full price and that required a constant internet connection to play. Ubisoft then proceeded to gaslight its player base by saying that they never truly "owned" the game and that they can't complain about it being unavailable to them.

This incident spurred the creation of the Stop Killing Games initiative, which was started to petition lawmakers in the EU to prevent discontinued games from being entirely inaccessible to people who legally purchased them.

Now, I'm an advocate for using Steam to "purchase" games because of how much value the Steam platform provides to its users. You get cloud saves, instant updates, community forums, workshop mods, guides, easy multiplayer access, support for Windows, Mac and Linux, and a host of other features that are notably absent on other game storefronts. However, the ownership problem still remains. You don't technically own any game that you buy on Steam. All you really have is a license to play it. Steam is a platform that has historically stood by its user base. But, that does not mean they will continue to do so.

There are a few places where you can buy and keep your games by either outright downloading a copy of the game, or downloading an installer which you can keep forever. Notably, GOG.com and itch.io allow you to do this. GOG.com only hosts DRM free games that you can download and keep, whereas itch.io has some games that are available as DRM free and other that are licensed.

"Smart" Devices

A lot of "smart" device or Internet of Things (IoT) devices require an internet connection to function. This means that the device needs to talk to some web server in order to function. Typically, this server is owned by the company that made the device. Technically, you own the device. But, if the functionality of the device entirely depends on its communication with an online server, then its functionality can also be remotely disabled by the online server.

In 2023, Amazon shut down a user's smart home based on allegations of racist comments made by their doorbell. The allegations were found to be false, but the individual was left with a non-functional smart home for weeks before this was resolved! Essentially, Amazon can fully control how you interact with your smart home.

Belkin is soon pulling support for its Wemo line of smart devices essentially turning them into paperweight. Basically, if you have any Wemo smart devices, they will stop functioning on January 31, 2026. What can you do if you're affected? Nothing. If you're savvy, you can figure out a way to have it connect to your local server and control it from there. But, otherwise, you can't do anything short of a class action lawsuit against the company. Spotify also did this with their Car Thing product which essentially makes it entirely useless.

This denial of control and ownership also extends to stuff like printers, cars, and televisions. In fact the DMCA prohibits bypassing DRM for repairs! So, even if you have the technical expertise to repair your broken devices, you can't legally do so if it requires bypassing a manufacturer installed DRM protection. This is a device you bought and own. Wild isn't it?

There are plenty more examples of this. Essentially, buying a device does not guarantee that you own it. If it requires a connection to an online server to function, then it is controlled by the server and not by you. If the server shuts down, the device shuts down. Do you know how I know that I own my toaster? It does not ask for a WiFi password, and it will only stop working when the physical components inside it are broken. I can then proceed to repair the toaster and continue using it.

Computers and the Cloud

With a lot of apps and services moving to the cloud, the ownership of apps and software is also slowly dying. There was a time when you could buy an application in a box from your local store and install it on your computer. Nobody could take that away from you. Sure, you're locked into the specific version of the application that you bought and you had to buy a new copy if you wanted the latest version. But, you could use the version of the application that you bought forever.

By no means am I discounting the hosting and computation costs of keeping a cloud server running. But, a lot of applications don't really need to be in the cloud and some don't even have any cloud components. I'd rather pay a flat price for a photo editing app that runs locally on my machine, than pay a recurring yearly/monthly fee for no added benefit. It makes absolutely no sense to continue paying for an application that requires no ongoing upkeep costs from the developer. Of course, they can charge you for a new version of the app, but there's no reason to continue charging for the version that you already paid for.

In my opinion, modern Windows also tries its best to exert unnecessary control over your computer. Ask yourself the following questions, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about:

• Can you remove Microsoft Edge if you don't want it?
• Can you easily use a retail copy of Windows without a Microsoft account?
• Can you easily opt out of using Copilot and remove it from your computer?
• Can you easily stop all automatic Windows updates and manually install them?

I'm not claiming that the things above are impossible to do. I'm saying that they are not easy and are intentionally made difficult in order to wrest control away from the user. This is downright adversarial behavior.

Reclaiming Control

With how things are going, it has become increasingly difficult to actually own and control everything that you have rightfully purchased.

“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.”
George Orwell

If you are serious about taking back control, there are a few things you can still do:

• Visit your local library and borrow physical books instead of buying DRM protected e-books. If you prefer e-books, then look for DRM free versions of the books you want to read.
• Streaming services are typically a better option for video/audio content since you can cancel your subscription at any time. DRM protected video and audio that you legally "purchased" can be taken away from you. But, that's not a problem with subscription services because you never owned any of the content to begin with. With how DRM protection works on blu-rays I wouldn't recommend buying them. DVDs are still better for long term storage. Some music is still being released as CDs and vinyl records. Honestly, digital media is the most difficult to own nowadays.
• If you want to own your games, look for DRM free versions on GOG.com or itch.io. Humble Bundle also offers DRM free copies of some games. Just make sure you download the games you buy and keep them backed up somewhere (preferably not in the cloud since you don't own that either).
• Don't buy smart devices if you have no way to connect them to a local server that you fully control. Look into Home Assistant if you want a local smart home server to control your smart devices. Seriously, a WiFi enabled toaster sounds cool, but you probably don't need it. This is harder to do with televisions since almost every consumer TV out there is a smart TV. You can use a large PC monitor instead of small TV. But, that's probably not going to be large enough if you're looking for a family TV.
• Most applications have alternatives that are available for a flat fee. If the functionality you require is only possible with cloud connected apps (SaaS), then subscriptions are not necessarily a bad thing. Just be wary of applications that require a subscription despite not fundamentally requiring cloud/internet connectivity.
• If you're not happy with Windows, a lot of Linux based operating systems have come a long way in being fully functional and easy to use. Take a look at Linux Mint for general use, Bazzite for gaming, and Bluefin for development work. There are plenty more out there, but these are just the ones I typically recommend.

Hopefully, with rising awareness, we can convince companies to stop stealing from us (yes, that's basically what they're doing). The most powerful tool we have as consumers is our wallet.