Greetings, Future Tensers,
We’re in the midst of an important shift, one that’s taking us from media to content, as digital, on-demand services replace older physical formats such as VHS and DVD. While that transformation enables a culture of convenience, it also opens a host of new questions, most of all because copyright laws cover these new systems differently. Accordingly, as law professor Aaron Fellmeth writes in a contribution to our Futurography unit on the state of ownership, “your consumer rights depend almost entirely on service and license agreements that, most likely, you never read and couldn’t fully understand if you did read them.” It’s a gap that, Fellmeth argues, threatens to have far-reaching consequences if we don’t develop clearer legal standards.
A related set of problems arises around the question of whether consumers have the right to modify items that they’ve legally purchased. As Charles Duan explains, many manufacturers make it as difficult as possible to let us fiddle: Think, for example, of the proprietary screws on an iPhone. Given that benign hacking can actually expand the value of a device, Duan writes, “Companies, for their part, have an obligation … to encourage DIY experimentation.” Will they listen?
Here are some of the other things we read while mindlessly accepting end-user license agreements:
- Autonomous vehicles: Distracted driving is increasingly dangerous. Can driverless cars push back against that trend?
- Privacy: When Yahoo complied with a government surveillance order, it may have done so in a way that put users’ broader cybersecurity at risk.
- Science fiction: Francis Fukuyama explores the prescient power of the film Children of Men.
- Elections: Is voting online worth the risk? We assembled a panel of experts to debate that and other related questions.
Events:
- Why own anything when you can access everything? Join Future Tense on Tuesday, Oct. 25, in Washington, D.C., to consider how technology is transforming the concept of ownership. For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.
Buffering,
Jacob Brogan
for Future Tense