A crucial e in 1993 when the Ninth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals ruled in MAI Systems Corp

v. Peak Computer Inc. that the local, impermanent copy of an operating system that is loaded into a computer’s RAM upon its booting up – a necessary component of a computer’s operation – is, by virtue of making a copy of intellectual property (the operating system), subject to copyright law. This “deeply stupid ruling,” Fairfield tells Vox, laid a trap, making the use of any software (broadly meaning nearly anything used on a computer system) a copyright violation unless the user followed rules set unilaterally by the manufacturer and/or seller. “That was the case that handed the keys to the kingdom to these companies,” Fairfield says.

These legal principles have carried over to the so-called Internet of Things, in which tangible objects are embedded with copyrighted software (a.k.a. smart devices, like smart refrigerators and televisions and cars). As discovered by those John Deere customers, even wholly purchased real-world objects are subject to tapaa Slovenian morsiamet user agreements imposed by the seller. ”

In Fairfield’s writing, four rights of traditional ownership are lost in this shift to a license-based system. Another loss is the “right to run,” or to use our purchased products however we would like, as illustrated by Apple regulating which applications iPhone users can install or Nintendo blocking the use of Wii U consoles unless users agreed to a new end-user license agreement. (This also applies to manufacturers requiring software updates to continue running, essentially enabling them to force consumers’ personal possessions to change under their noses.)

One is a “right to ban,” or to exclude others from your property, as Kindle owners could not keep Amazon from removing their copies of 1984, nor could We-Vibe sex toy owners block the company from tracking data about their toys’ usage

There is also the “right to hack,” which includes the right to repair, as demonstrated in the John Deere tractor imbroglio. Then there is the “right to sell,” which the owner of digital media and software typically lacks, both negating their ability to recoup costs and eliminating the secondary market that can make goods affordable to more consumers.

As new as these dynamics may seem, Fairfield argues that they actually hark back to an old, long-reigning system of ownership: feudalism. “Fine, now it’s not grand aristocratic families, it’s Silicon Valley Big Tech companies,” he says. “But it’s an identical system in terms of one person giving a right to another giving it to another giving it to another, who eventually hands on a little bit of it to you. And if anybody above you doesn’t like it, or you don’t use it the way they tell you, the whole thing goes away.”

Here Fairfield cites the tech principle known as Doctorow’s First Law: “Anytime someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, and won’t give you a key, they’re not doing it for your benefit

What is new is the ability of these supposed possessions to actually operate with a greater loyalty to their manufacturer’s interests than their user’s, as with Nintendo’s forced Wii U agreement or Keurig 2.0 machines’ initial refusal to brew non-Keurig coffee. (Sometimes the manufacturer even abuses this primary loyalty to force a U2 album upon the public.) Worse yet, our possessions may actually actively conspire against us, as when our browser histories help online retailers price discriminately. As more of our devices interact and collect data while prioritizing the motives of their makers, Fairfield writes, consumers e of poker by those who use our devices to see our cards.” In The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy, Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz argue the goal of such leverage is for companies “to divide our lives into individual transactions and charge as much as we are willing to pay for each one.”