6 ms·

The real problem here isnt that we're leasing things (we have leases for cars, houses, and many other physical goods). The problem is that the manufacturers mix

The real problem here isnt that we're leasing things (we have leases for cars, houses, and many other physical goods). The problem is that the manufacturers mix leasing and owning. I.e. you own the device, but lease the software. I think that everyone would be radically happier if you either leased everything or owned everything. This is partly because when we buy something at a store, we expect to own it, not own part of it and lease the rest. This leads to the price of the object being higher than what you would actually pay if you were going to only lease it. In a world where nobody owns tractors and just leases them, we would still be fine because nobody would pay full price for a tractor every month, but rather only what would make sense economically.

therandomguy 11y ago
Price is set by the market. The lease cost will match the purchase price today. It will all be the same for the consumer.
- metaphorm 11y ago
  [citation needed]
- simplemath 11y ago
  The mythical "free market" uninfringed upon by bad actors, and other fairy tales.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
baddox 11y ago
I don't think it's that either. I think it's that laws exist to protect "intellectual property," which leads to a lot of bizarre consequences that don't occur with laws protecting traditional physical property. A lease on a physical good like a car is not particularly strange. It's just a contract that allows the lessee to use a scarce physical item that belongs to the lessor under certain terms. If we had that kind of lease on software, but without IP laws, there still wouldn't be any strange legal consequences. The lessee gets the software, and perhaps the terms say that the lessee cannot copy or modify the software. The difference is that if the lessee does distribute a copy of the software, the lessor cannot go after third parties who download those copies, because they haven't signed any sort of lease or contract. The lessor can go after the lessee, of course, but that's it. This latter description shouldn't be described as an "attack on ownership" any more than renting a car from the airport is an attack on ownership. The real attack on ownership is the existence of IP laws. You own your hard drive, but only until the hard drive happens to arrange some bits in a particular order.
- ethbro 11y ago
  > If we had that kind of lease on software, but without IP laws, there still wouldn't be any strange legal consequences. The lessee gets the software, and perhaps the terms say that the lessee cannot copy or modify the software. The difference is that if the lessee does distribute a copy of the software, the lessor cannot go after third parties who download those copies, because they haven't signed any sort of lease or contract. The lessor can go after the lessee, of course, but that's it. The difficulty I see with the current and future legal landscape is that there's no clear distinction between right-to-modify and right-to-distribute. It might be argued that this has been a willful conflation by IP owners in an attempt to best sell their agenda. (Right-to-modify-something-owned being substantially more in line with pre-digital norms) My understanding was that the point of the DCMA's reasonable clauses was to clarify that yes, if you own something, you also own the right to modify it. Including the right to circumvent any artificial technical limits placed on your ability to modify. The tension has always been that modifiable devices can also strip technical protections from IP to enable distribution. To me, I can't see how we end up with any alternative to the following two options (which I think the Stallman-position cardboard cutout would argue as well): [World A] Users do not have a right to distribute IP. To ensure this, IP encrypted. Breaking IP encryption is illegal. To ensure breaking IP encryption is also impossible, modifying at least some portion of software/firmware/hardware in consumer devices is also illegal. To ensure modification is also impossible, technical measures are employed (aka "Nightmare TPM"). [World B] The legality of distributing IP is irrelevant. The legality of breaking IP encryption is irrelevant. Breaking IP encryption is feasible, because modifying the software/firmware/hardware of consumer devices is feasible. The road to cyberpunk ethos was always that [World A] would be enacted legally (because money), while [World B] would be de facto reality (because consumers get creeped out by TPM and there are more hardware companies interested in selling units than vertically integrated IP stakeholders^). ^Bonus points for those who remember when Apple was the former rather than the latter
  - baddox 11y ago
    > The difficulty I see with the current and future legal landscape is that there's no clear distinction between right-to-modify and right-to-distribute. In the context of entering a contract, I don't see either as "rights." If you sign a contract saying that you will pay a certain amount to use a tractor without modifying its internals or distributing copies of its source code, I am fine with a legal system enforcing that contract.
incongruity 11y ago
The question I have is what does ownership mean if the thing owned is useless without something that cannot be owned/must be leased and cannot be replaced? Can you say that it's really owned if you can't separate the leased part and can't use the thing without the leased part? I mean, sure, you're free to write any sort of contract you want, free market yadda yadda, but I think there's something meaningful in the point the article makes here...
digler990 11y ago
I feel like the term "lease" isn't appropriate unless there is a viable way and underlying plan to eventually return it. When I lease I car, I have to return it. They don't sell me the car under the auspices of a lease, with no way to ever return it, and still restrict my rights on what I can do with it.
- ilikepi 11y ago
  Given enough time, software eventually becomes unsupported, and then -- perhaps after more time, but perhaps not -- unusable. In effect, this is the return at the end of the auto lease. It's not a perfect analogy (really nothing ever is), but it's pretty good, especially I think for people not used to thinking about this issue with software and other digital goods.
  - yborg 11y ago
    You're describing the same thing as leasing a car. Eventually the car is out of warranty and then at some point wears out and becomes undriveable. People don't typically lease vehicles for the physical life of the hardware.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    Some analogies are perfect, they are called isomorphisms, and, if found, are very powerful.
jessaustin 11y ago
In a world where nobody owns tractors and just leases them... Tractors manufactured in the 1960s are still in regular use today, to a far greater extent than e.g. automobiles of that era. Although there are regular improvements, the core task of pulling implements across a field has not changed, and the same giant piles of steel that function today should still function decades from now. The portion of tractor owners and users who would welcome the dystopia you envision is minuscule.
jwr 11y ago
Agreed — I thought about this carefully and I'd have no problem with a rental-type agreement for a car of a piece of machinery, as long as we all agree that it's a rental (and the pricing reflects it). Tesla is another example of a company walking a thin line. I'd be OK with their software updates to the car, and I'd actually rather take this further: I am not into car repair and I just want to use the vehicle for transportation, so a rental/lease agreement is fine with me. The same problem exists with many other devices that we seemingly "own". Phones are a good example: they are rapidly becoming computing devices that we "buy", but don't really own, as we can't use them without the software, which is "licensed". Again, not a huge problem for me in the case of a phone, but let's be clear that I don't really "own" much more than a decorated doorstop/brick. I really pay an upfront rental fee with the expectation of using the device for about 2-3 years.
Joeri 11y ago
The confusion goes further. When you "buy" a kindle book, are you buying it or leasing it? It's still restricted, you can only put it where amazon says you can put it, so in my view that's leasing. Yet the button on the site says "Buy", and there's no other component involved. At the very least the labeling laws should require clearly distinguishing between purchase and lease. If there's a part of the product that you're only leasing and not buying, the whole thing must say "lease" or "rent". It would be funny to see amazon forced to relabel their site like that though...
- agumonkey 11y ago
  It's rabbithole. Owning a VHS tape recorder forbids you to use Betamax. Even when things become a standard you're still under the ecosystem diktat. Unless someone broaden the GNU manifesto and distribution to the physical world, where you could share means to create factories to produce anything you need on your own (pushing the debate onto matter, land and energy).

therandomguy 11y ago

Price is set by the market. The lease cost will match the purchase price today. It will all be the same for the consumer.

metaphorm 11y ago
[citation needed]
simplemath 11y ago
The mythical "free market" uninfringed upon by bad actors, and other fairy tales.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

baddox 11y ago

I don't think it's that either. I think it's that laws exist to protect "intellectual property," which leads to a lot of bizarre consequences that don't occur with laws protecting traditional physical property. A lease on a physical good like a car is not particularly strange. It's just a contract that allows the lessee to use a scarce physical item that belongs to the lessor under certain terms. If we had that kind of lease on software, but without IP laws, there still wouldn't be any strange legal consequences. The lessee gets the software, and perhaps the terms say that the lessee cannot copy or modify the software. The difference is that if the lessee does distribute a copy of the software, the lessor cannot go after third parties who download those copies, because they haven't signed any sort of lease or contract. The lessor can go after the lessee, of course, but that's it. This latter description shouldn't be described as an "attack on ownership" any more than renting a car from the airport is an attack on ownership. The real attack on ownership is the existence of IP laws. You own your hard drive, but only until the hard drive happens to arrange some bits in a particular order.

ethbro 11y ago
> If we had that kind of lease on software, but without IP laws, there still wouldn't be any strange legal consequences. The lessee gets the software, and perhaps the terms say that the lessee cannot copy or modify the software. The difference is that if the lessee does distribute a copy of the software, the lessor cannot go after third parties who download those copies, because they haven't signed any sort of lease or contract. The lessor can go after the lessee, of course, but that's it. The difficulty I see with the current and future legal landscape is that there's no clear distinction between right-to-modify and right-to-distribute. It might be argued that this has been a willful conflation by IP owners in an attempt to best sell their agenda. (Right-to-modify-something-owned being substantially more in line with pre-digital norms) My understanding was that the point of the DCMA's reasonable clauses was to clarify that yes, if you own something, you also own the right to modify it. Including the right to circumvent any artificial technical limits placed on your ability to modify. The tension has always been that modifiable devices can also strip technical protections from IP to enable distribution. To me, I can't see how we end up with any alternative to the following two options (which I think the Stallman-position cardboard cutout would argue as well): [World A] Users do not have a right to distribute IP. To ensure this, IP encrypted. Breaking IP encryption is illegal. To ensure breaking IP encryption is also impossible, modifying at least some portion of software/firmware/hardware in consumer devices is also illegal. To ensure modification is also impossible, technical measures are employed (aka "Nightmare TPM"). [World B] The legality of distributing IP is irrelevant. The legality of breaking IP encryption is irrelevant. Breaking IP encryption is feasible, because modifying the software/firmware/hardware of consumer devices is feasible. The road to cyberpunk ethos was always that [World A] would be enacted legally (because money), while [World B] would be de facto reality (because consumers get creeped out by TPM and there are more hardware companies interested in selling units than vertically integrated IP stakeholders^). ^Bonus points for those who remember when Apple was the former rather than the latter
- baddox 11y ago
  > The difficulty I see with the current and future legal landscape is that there's no clear distinction between right-to-modify and right-to-distribute. In the context of entering a contract, I don't see either as "rights." If you sign a contract saying that you will pay a certain amount to use a tractor without modifying its internals or distributing copies of its source code, I am fine with a legal system enforcing that contract.

incongruity 11y ago

The question I have is what does ownership mean if the thing owned is useless without something that cannot be owned/must be leased and cannot be replaced? Can you say that it's really owned if you can't separate the leased part and can't use the thing without the leased part? I mean, sure, you're free to write any sort of contract you want, free market yadda yadda, but I think there's something meaningful in the point the article makes here...

digler990 11y ago

I feel like the term "lease" isn't appropriate unless there is a viable way and underlying plan to eventually return it. When I lease I car, I have to return it. They don't sell me the car under the auspices of a lease, with no way to ever return it, and still restrict my rights on what I can do with it.

ilikepi 11y ago
Given enough time, software eventually becomes unsupported, and then -- perhaps after more time, but perhaps not -- unusable. In effect, this is the return at the end of the auto lease. It's not a perfect analogy (really nothing ever is), but it's pretty good, especially I think for people not used to thinking about this issue with software and other digital goods.
- yborg 11y ago
  You're describing the same thing as leasing a car. Eventually the car is out of warranty and then at some point wears out and becomes undriveable. People don't typically lease vehicles for the physical life of the hardware.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Some analogies are perfect, they are called isomorphisms, and, if found, are very powerful.

jessaustin 11y ago

In a world where nobody owns tractors and just leases them... Tractors manufactured in the 1960s are still in regular use today, to a far greater extent than e.g. automobiles of that era. Although there are regular improvements, the core task of pulling implements across a field has not changed, and the same giant piles of steel that function today should still function decades from now. The portion of tractor owners and users who would welcome the dystopia you envision is minuscule.

jwr 11y ago

Agreed — I thought about this carefully and I'd have no problem with a rental-type agreement for a car of a piece of machinery, as long as we all agree that it's a rental (and the pricing reflects it). Tesla is another example of a company walking a thin line. I'd be OK with their software updates to the car, and I'd actually rather take this further: I am not into car repair and I just want to use the vehicle for transportation, so a rental/lease agreement is fine with me. The same problem exists with many other devices that we seemingly "own". Phones are a good example: they are rapidly becoming computing devices that we "buy", but don't really own, as we can't use them without the software, which is "licensed". Again, not a huge problem for me in the case of a phone, but let's be clear that I don't really "own" much more than a decorated doorstop/brick. I really pay an upfront rental fee with the expectation of using the device for about 2-3 years.

Joeri 11y ago

The confusion goes further. When you "buy" a kindle book, are you buying it or leasing it? It's still restricted, you can only put it where amazon says you can put it, so in my view that's leasing. Yet the button on the site says "Buy", and there's no other component involved. At the very least the labeling laws should require clearly distinguishing between purchase and lease. If there's a part of the product that you're only leasing and not buying, the whole thing must say "lease" or "rent". It would be funny to see amazon forced to relabel their site like that though...

agumonkey 11y ago
It's rabbithole. Owning a VHS tape recorder forbids you to use Betamax. Even when things become a standard you're still under the ecosystem diktat. Unless someone broaden the GNU manifesto and distribution to the physical world, where you could share means to create factories to produce anything you need on your own (pushing the debate onto matter, land and energy).