Bookmarked for reading (found in Neil Mather’s blog). Actual cases of ‘tethered’ economic transactions where a buyer is bound into an ongoing relationship with the seller with an uneven power balance, are already easy to find: John Deere suing farmers for tinkering with their tractors (with Deere claiming they never sold a tractor but a license to operate the software on one), insurance and credit companies remotely disabling a car upon a late payment, or Amazon removing books you bought from your Kindle (1984, actually, of all possible books!)
Outright ownership, the right to fix, the right to tinker, are all essential things, and key ingredients to keep your (networked) agency. While I understand the business model decision behind software subscriptions, it does make me increasingly uncomfortable because of the forced ‘eternal’ relationship with the seller.
It’s troubling too to think how this will encroach on more and more transactions, as so many things become are becoming so-called ‘smart’. As Paul says in his Info Civics article, “All authority is borrowed from the server, and so the users possess no authority of their own. As a result we must describe these services as authoritarian.” It’s provocative but I think the same could be applied here.
We have an interview with one of the authors, Aaron Perzanowski, here – therestartproject.org/podcast/crisis-copyright/.
Ton Zijlstra mentioned this bookmark on zylstra.org.
“Software as a hostage” is a good way to formulate what is wrong with SaaS as part of the tethered economy.
Frank Meeuwsen mentioned this bookmark on diggingthedigital.com.
Ton Zijlstra mentioned this bookmark on zylstra.org.