The Death of Ownership?

I was on the phone with a friend of mine today when a thought rattle around my head finally came out: How we are quickly becoming a world where, in essence, we no longer own anything. Well, not "anything", but a world where art is no longer ART. A world where art is nothing more than something you "lease", controlled either by the artist or, more likely, by a corporation.

Then again, I'm being very vague here and not explaining anything specific. So let me explain.

Do you own an MP3 player? OK, do you buy CD's anymore? Do you download all, or at least a large majority, of your music legally through, say, iTunes? Congrats, you don't own it! You are, in the end, only "leasing" it. You are buying the rights to listen to the song any number of times you want on your iPod, and once that's gone... well, bye-bye song. You don't own the music, and you never will with MP3's.

Ten years ago, the internet was a new beast that no one could control, and everyone liked it like that. Well, almost everyone. By around 2001, companies, namely record companies, saw Napster and other Peer-to-Peer services as the end of them, as people could rip music from their CD's and share the files with the world. Napster was soon shut down, but the P2P concept remained and soon evolved into torrents.

In return, we saw the legal option emerge and take hold: iTunes and Rhapsody. Both allow you to buy the songs legally, but one limits how your able to use the music. To me, I'm astounded by the fact so many people are more than happy to pay 99 Cents for something they can't keep for themselves forever, are essentially "leasing" it, and are limited to where they're able to store it. Your basically paying to be dictated how to enjoy something. Then again, buying an MP3 legally doesn't always mean leasing it; some places will sell it to you with the ability to do as you please, and you have the option of periodically buying it from the artist themselves.

But this still poses a dangerous thing. Not only do we see artistic expression reduced to nothing more than something you "lease", but a world where, more or less, you don't actually own anything.

Now, philosophically, one could argue that is how the world is now, that you don't "own" your house, your "leasing it" from the government, etc, etc.... but we're going strictly on the simple idea that "you pay for it, you can do what you like with it, and no one is allowed to take it away." You know, like buying a sandwich; You bought it, you get to eat it, and no one has the right to grab it from you.

The way things are going, we may see a continual dying out of CD's. Personally, I hate that. I don't hate it as an artist who always dreamed of designing awesome CD's. I hate it as someone who... well, someone who loves CD's! I've got nearly a 1000 of them at my home, and I listen to each and every single one. My entire collection is loaded and ripped to my computer, but I own them. Every single last MP3 is MINE. I bought the CD, the rights to rip them, and the rights to listen to them on my MP3 player and anything else. I also got the right to sell them if I don't like them, something somewhat illegal, as I understand it, with MP3's you buy.

At the same time, people are beginning to lean towards renting movies online. We've already seen more than 1 billion DVD's shipped and mailed with Netflix, the start of the demise of the movie rental store (I'm glad to see it)... but we're starting to see a shift in even SELLING DVD's. We are able to get a lot of TV shows streamed for free online, something I am grateful for and use daily (I listen to the Daily Show at work if I missed the previous nights episode), and its a convience. Streaming movies isn't a bad idea.

But buying movies online often has the same limits and restrictions of, say, iTunes where you don't own it forever, your only leasing it. Its starting to catch on, and some could say that if there is a sort of "death" to physical formats, its largely because of convince and cost. One person I know says that, "if CD's and DVD's are gone in 5 years, its not because people didn't like the format or they didn't have an option; Instead, the option is gone because they decided to pick this instead."

In turn, though, we are seeing something interesting come out of this.

If we do see a sort of "death of ownership", we've already seen some bits of its effects. For example, music is no longer about a band selling a ton of CD's to support themselves (something that, in the end, was always a myth, anyway), but instead focusing on putting out great albums and putting on great shows. In essence, a death to releasing music for a buck and instead a focus on quality. Albums weren't always albums, you know. At one time, before the 50's, 90% of music was just singles. If you released a lot of hit singles, that was your A-side for the album, and the B-sides would be, well, the B-Side. You made an album based on what sold. A return to that system isn't the worst thing in the world, but it will also give artists an incentive to try and write better albums in turn.

But movies? Well, I don't know. movies these days suck, and we have a bunch of asshole studio people who think slapping together a remake or a movie based on a "property" (comic book, tv show, book) that did good will do well instead of focusing on good film making, storytelling, and character development. People complained in the 1990's and earlier about this, but really, it has hit a pinnacle here! Film studios are to quick to assume people have A.D.H.D. and no attention span when, in reality, they simply aren't putting out anything interesting.



In the end, I want to say that a possible end to physically formatting is something that worries me. The idea of no longer having anything, that anything would no longer be owned but controlled by other forces, is not something I think is good. In the 1976 film Rollerball, we saw a world where no one did own anything relating to information. A scene that still shakes me today is when the main character goes to a library for some information, finds it can destroy something in the society that was destructive, and leaves. When he returns, the information has been erased and he is left without proof.

A world where information is controlled... this is not the world for me.