Who Owns What After We’ve Bought It?

This idea that companies ought to be able to control music after we’ve bought it is a flawed one. “The issue is one of who owns, or has rights to use our common culture. That means stuff we created ourselves, and only we can decide is worth sharing. And as many of you pointed out, what we call the ‘entertainment industry’ today is merely a distributor, much like the Victorian canal owners were in the last century, in Britain. The smarter Bridgewaters bought into the upcoming railways, while the dumber canal owners didn’t, and died a natural death. Today’s pigopolists don’t “own” the culture simply by claiming that their exclusivity is based on technology – that’s a social contract we don’t buy, and history, in most cases, is on our side.”