{"id":1199,"date":"2019-04-23T08:16:09","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T08:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/?p=1199"},"modified":"2019-04-23T09:17:36","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T09:17:36","slug":"do-we-really-own-our-digital-possessions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/do-we-really-own-our-digital-possessions\/","title":{"rendered":"Do we really own our digital possessions?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Digital products such as eBooks and digital music are often seen to liberate consumers from the burdens of ownership.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In our latest post, Dr Rebecca Mardon explores the idea of ownership in a consumer culture where we are increasingly drawn to digital possessions.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft has\nannounced that it will\nclose the books category<\/a> of its digital store. While other software\nand apps will still be available via the virtual shop front, and on purchasers\u2019\nconsoles and devices, the closure of the eBook store takes with it customers\u2019\neBook libraries. Any digital books bought through the service \u2013 even those\nbought many years ago \u2013 will no longer be readable after July 2019. While the\ncompany has promised to provide a full refund for all eBook purchases, this\ndecision raises important questions of ownership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital products such\nas eBooks and digital music are often seen to liberate consumers\nfrom the burdens of ownership<\/a>. Some academics have heralded the \u201cage of access<\/a>\u201d, where\nownership is no longer important to consumers and will soon become irrelevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent years have seen\nthe emergence of an array of access-based models in the digital realm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor Spotify and Netflix users, owning films and music has become unimportant as these subscription based services provide greater convenience and increased choice.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But while these\nplatforms present themselves clearly as services, with the consumer under no\nillusion of ownership, for many digital goods this is not the case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So to what extent do\nwe own the digital possessions that we \u201cbuy\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fragmented ownership rights<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Many digital products are subject to end-user licence agreements which set out a complex distribution of ownership rights.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The popularity of\naccess-based consumption has obscured the rise of a range of fragmented\nownership configurations<\/a> in the digital realm. These provide the\ncustomer with an illusion of ownership while restricting their ownership\nrights. Companies such as Microsoft and Apple present consumers with the option\nto \u201cbuy\u201d digital products such as eBooks. Consumers often make the\nunderstandable assumption that they will have full ownership rights over the\nproducts that they pay for, just as they have full ownership rights over the\nphysical books that they buy from their local bookstore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, many of these products are subject to end-user licence agreements which set out a more complex distribution of ownership rights. These long legal agreements are rarely read by consumers<\/a> when it comes to products and services online. And even if they do read them, they are unlikely to fully understand the terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen purchasing eBooks, the consumer often actually purchases a non-transferable licence to consume the eBook in restricted ways.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For instance, they may\nnot be permitted to pass the eBook on to a friend once they have finished\nreading, as they might do with a physical book. In addition, as we have seen in\nthe case of Microsoft, the company retains the right to revoke access at a\nlater date. These restrictions on consumer ownership are often encoded into\ndigital goods themselves as automated forms of enforcement, meaning that access\ncan be easily withdrawn or modified by the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not a one-off\noccurrence. There have been many similar instances that raise questions of\nownership. Just last month, social media site MySpace admitted to losing\nall content uploaded before 2016<\/a>. Blaming a faulty server migration, the\nloss includes many years\u2019 worth of music, photos and videos created by\nconsumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, after\ncustomers complained of films disappearing from Apple iTunes, the company\nrevealed that the only way to guarantee continued access was to download a\nlocal copy \u2013 which, some opined, goes\nagainst the convenience of streaming<\/a>. Amazon hit the headlines way back in\n2009 for remotely\nerasing \u201cillegally uploaded\u201d copies of George Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/a> from\nconsumers\u2019 Kindle e-reading devices, much to consumers\u2019 dismay and anger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Illusions of ownership<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Consumers need to become more sensitised to the restrictions on digital ownership. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My research<\/a> has found that\nmany consumers do not consider these possibilities, because they make sense of\ntheir digital possessions based on their previous experiences of possessing\ntangible, physical objects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf our local bookstore closed down, the owner wouldn\u2019t knock on our door demanding to remove previously purchased books from our shelves.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So we do not\nanticipate this scenario in the context of our eBooks. Yet the digital realm\npresents new threats to ownership that our physical possessions haven\u2019t\nprepared us for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consumers need to\nbecome more sensitised to the restrictions on digital ownership. They must be\nmade aware that the \u201cfull ownership\u201d they have experienced over most of their\nphysical possessions cannot be taken for granted when purchasing digital\nproducts. However, companies also have a responsibility to make these\nfragmented ownership forms more transparent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often there is a\nlogical business reason for such restrictions. For instance, since digital\nobjects are infinitely reproducible \u2013 they can be duplicated quickly and easily\nat negligible costs \u2013 restrictions on sharing are a means to protect the\nprofits of both distribution companies (Microsoft or Apple, for example) and\nmedia producers (including the authors and publishers of an eBook). However,\nthese restrictions must be stated clearly and in simple terms at the point of\npurchase, rather than hidden away in the complex legal jargon of end user\nlicence agreements, obscured by the familiar terminology of \u201cbuying\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr\nRebecca Mardon<\/a> is a Lecturer in Marketing and Strategy at Cardiff\nBusiness School.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was\noriginally published on The\nConversation UK<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Digital products such as eBooks and digital music are often seen to liberate consumers from the burdens of ownership. In our latest post, Dr Rebecca Mardon explores the idea of ownership […]","protected":false},"author":1678,"featured_media":1203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[577],"tags":[658,654,652,643,653,389,388,645,650,657,656,646,655,644,647,649,642,16,554,648,651],"class_list":["post-1199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing","tag-amazon-2","tag-apple","tag-choice","tag-consumer-culture","tag-covenience","tag-digital","tag-digitisation","tag-ebook","tag-films","tag-george-orwell","tag-itunes","tag-libraries","tag-license-agreement","tag-microsoft","tag-music","tag-netflix","tag-ownership","tag-research","tag-services","tag-spotify","tag-subscription-model"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paOfaS-jl","meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/620\/2019\/04\/Illustrated-e-reader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1678"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1221,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions\/1221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}