Let’s face it: the consequences of a single article written in 2016 have been quietly dictating our lives since 2020.
I first read the WEF article of the same title in early 2018, back when I was still doing small-kid things—like believing in the future and assuming happiness was the default state of being. Back then, the article felt speculative, even provocative. Today, it feels uncomfortably accurate. Consumers have become increasingly powerless, caught between faceless corporations and systems designed to extract rather than serve.
Before dismissing the idea outright, though, it’s only fair to let its proponents explain themselves. And if that explanation begins and ends with “shareholder value,” they can stop pretending this is about consumer choice.
The article, written by Ida Auken, laid out a future that I didn’t fully grasp at the time. Back then, privacy felt like an abstract concept—something people invoked to excuse wrongdoing. If you weren’t doing anything illegal, why worry?
But that assumption collapses the moment you ask a simple question: what counts as legal or acceptable behavior? Is it defined morally, socially, or politically?
Spoiler: it’s defined by the state.
This is where free speech enters the picture—messy, uncomfortable, and absolutely indispensable. Free speech enables criticism, dissent, and independent thought. It’s the reason the world, flawed as it is, isn’t a complete hellscape. And historically, the fastest way to dismantle it has always been the same: control communication.
Totalitarian regimes didn’t innovate here—they perfected a formula. Newspapers were monitored. Dissent was criminalized. Informal networks formed underground. We saw it in Nazi Germany. We saw it in the Soviet Union. We even saw echoes of it in supposedly democratic states during wartime, justified under the banner of national security.
One could argue that war creates exceptional circumstances. Fine. Let’s grant that.
But what happens when ideas themselves become contraband? When reading the wrong thing, sharing the wrong thing, or merely finding something “interesting” is framed as spreading enemy propaganda? Suddenly, guilt is no longer about action—it’s about thought.
This isn’t a slippery slope. It’s a shove.
And this is why privacy matters. Not as a convenience, but as a basic human right. Without it, “evil” becomes a selectively applied label, enforced by whoever controls the infrastructure. Governments want access. Corporations want leverage. And both benefit when the individual has none.
Not all subscriptions are bad. Wanting to make money isn’t immoral. Providing a service that requires maintenance justifies recurring costs.
But some practices are so egregious that they poison the entire X-as-a-Service model.
Take BMW’s heated seat subscription. The hardware is already installed. The customer owns the car. Yet access to a physical feature is locked behind a monthly payment. Over time, the consumer ends up paying far more than the feature’s actual value.
This isn’t flexibility. It’s rent-seeking masquerading as innovation.
And it doesn’t stop at cars. HP now flirts with laptop subscriptions—$34.99 a month for a device you never truly own. Miss a payment, lose access. Ownership becomes conditional. Control shifts upstream.
This isn’t about convenience. It’s about power. And it brings us to one of the most important debates of the 21st century, one of piracy and payments.
Netizens of the early 2000s lived in a materially different internet. Not because corporations were kinder, but because ownership still existed. Music came as files you possessed. Movies lived on disks that sat on shelves. Even Netflix’s DVD subscription—despite being a service—ended with something tangible in your hands. You could lend it, scratch it, lose it, or keep it forever. Gamers bought cartridges, discs, or installers that worked regardless of corporate goodwill.
What mattered wasn’t the format. It was the asymmetry of power. Once you paid, the transaction ended. No company could reach back in and revoke what you had already bought. Ownership meant finality.
Piracy, in that world, wasn’t just theft—it was competition. It existed because access was gated, prices were rigid, and distribution was imperfect. And the industry’s response wasn’t moral outrage alone; it was to make legal ownership more attractive. Better availability, better pricing, better convenience.
Today, piracy has changed meaning because ownership has been quietly removed from the equation.
When nothing is owned—only licensed—payment no longer ends a transaction. It begins a relationship of continuous compliance. Miss a payment, lose access. Violate a policy, lose access. Fall out of favor with a platform, lose access. The same mechanisms used to fight piracy now ensure dependence.
In that context, piracy stops being a question of ethics and starts becoming a question of agency. Not “should I pay?” but “what, exactly, am I paying for if nothing is ever truly mine?”
Software DRM is where this shift becomes impossible to ignore.
Once upon a time, buying software meant owning a copy. You installed it, backed it up, modified it, and ran it on hardware you controlled. If the company disappeared, the software still worked. If the internet went down, nothing broke. The transaction ended at purchase.
Digital Rights Management changed that relationship. DRM didn’t just protect software from piracy—it redefined ownership into permission. Programs began phoning home. Licenses could be revoked. Features could be disabled remotely. Entire products could stop functioning, not because the hardware failed, but because access was withdrawn.
This alone would be troubling. But DRM rarely exists in isolation—it exists alongside centralized distribution platforms, content moderation policies, and increasingly vague definitions of “acceptable use.”
When software is licensed rather than owned, censorship no longer requires laws or court orders. It only requires compliance with platform rules. A book doesn’t need to be banned if it can simply be delisted. A game doesn’t need to be outlawed if it can be made inaccessible. An idea doesn’t need to be refuted if the tools required to express it can be silently disabled.
The power here is not loud. It does not announce itself with force. It operates through updates, account suspensions, and expired licenses. It is enforced not by governments alone, but by corporations whose incentives align neatly with regulatory pressure and risk avoidance.
This is why ownership matters.
Because a society that does not own its software does not control its means of expression. And a society that does not control its means of expression does not need to be censored—it will censor itself, preemptively, to avoid being cut off.
The most unsettling part is not that we are being watched, charged, or restricted. It’s that we’re being trained to accept it as normal. One subscription at a time, ownership fades into permission, privacy into policy, and freedom into a checkbox we clicked without reading. And when the system finally decides we no longer qualify, it won’t feel like oppression—because by then, we’ll have learned to call it something else.
I first read the WEF article of the same title in early 2018, back when I was still doing small-kid things—like believing in the future and assuming happiness was the default state of being. Back then, the article felt speculative, even provocative. Today, it feels uncomfortably accurate. Consumers have become increasingly powerless, caught between faceless corporations and systems designed to extract rather than serve.
Before dismissing the idea outright, though, it’s only fair to let its proponents explain themselves. And if that explanation begins and ends with “shareholder value,” they can stop pretending this is about consumer choice.
The article, written by Ida Auken, laid out a future that I didn’t fully grasp at the time. Back then, privacy felt like an abstract concept—something people invoked to excuse wrongdoing. If you weren’t doing anything illegal, why worry?
But that assumption collapses the moment you ask a simple question: what counts as legal or acceptable behavior? Is it defined morally, socially, or politically?
Spoiler: it’s defined by the state.
This is where free speech enters the picture—messy, uncomfortable, and absolutely indispensable. Free speech enables criticism, dissent, and independent thought. It’s the reason the world, flawed as it is, isn’t a complete hellscape. And historically, the fastest way to dismantle it has always been the same: control communication.
One could argue that war creates exceptional circumstances. Fine. Let’s grant that.
But what happens when ideas themselves become contraband? When reading the wrong thing, sharing the wrong thing, or merely finding something “interesting” is framed as spreading enemy propaganda? Suddenly, guilt is no longer about action—it’s about thought.
This isn’t a slippery slope. It’s a shove.
And this is why privacy matters. Not as a convenience, but as a basic human right. Without it, “evil” becomes a selectively applied label, enforced by whoever controls the infrastructure. Governments want access. Corporations want leverage. And both benefit when the individual has none.
Not all subscriptions are bad. Wanting to make money isn’t immoral. Providing a service that requires maintenance justifies recurring costs.
But some practices are so egregious that they poison the entire X-as-a-Service model.
Take BMW’s heated seat subscription. The hardware is already installed. The customer owns the car. Yet access to a physical feature is locked behind a monthly payment. Over time, the consumer ends up paying far more than the feature’s actual value.
This isn’t flexibility. It’s rent-seeking masquerading as innovation.
And it doesn’t stop at cars. HP now flirts with laptop subscriptions—$34.99 a month for a device you never truly own. Miss a payment, lose access. Ownership becomes conditional. Control shifts upstream.
This isn’t about convenience. It’s about power. And it brings us to one of the most important debates of the 21st century, one of piracy and payments.
Netizens of the early 2000s lived in a materially different internet. Not because corporations were kinder, but because ownership still existed. Music came as files you possessed. Movies lived on disks that sat on shelves. Even Netflix’s DVD subscription—despite being a service—ended with something tangible in your hands. You could lend it, scratch it, lose it, or keep it forever. Gamers bought cartridges, discs, or installers that worked regardless of corporate goodwill.
What mattered wasn’t the format. It was the asymmetry of power. Once you paid, the transaction ended. No company could reach back in and revoke what you had already bought. Ownership meant finality.
Piracy, in that world, wasn’t just theft—it was competition. It existed because access was gated, prices were rigid, and distribution was imperfect. And the industry’s response wasn’t moral outrage alone; it was to make legal ownership more attractive. Better availability, better pricing, better convenience.
Today, piracy has changed meaning because ownership has been quietly removed from the equation.
When nothing is owned—only licensed—payment no longer ends a transaction. It begins a relationship of continuous compliance. Miss a payment, lose access. Violate a policy, lose access. Fall out of favor with a platform, lose access. The same mechanisms used to fight piracy now ensure dependence.
In that context, piracy stops being a question of ethics and starts becoming a question of agency. Not “should I pay?” but “what, exactly, am I paying for if nothing is ever truly mine?”
Software DRM is where this shift becomes impossible to ignore.
Once upon a time, buying software meant owning a copy. You installed it, backed it up, modified it, and ran it on hardware you controlled. If the company disappeared, the software still worked. If the internet went down, nothing broke. The transaction ended at purchase.
Digital Rights Management changed that relationship. DRM didn’t just protect software from piracy—it redefined ownership into permission. Programs began phoning home. Licenses could be revoked. Features could be disabled remotely. Entire products could stop functioning, not because the hardware failed, but because access was withdrawn.
This alone would be troubling. But DRM rarely exists in isolation—it exists alongside centralized distribution platforms, content moderation policies, and increasingly vague definitions of “acceptable use.”
When software is licensed rather than owned, censorship no longer requires laws or court orders. It only requires compliance with platform rules. A book doesn’t need to be banned if it can simply be delisted. A game doesn’t need to be outlawed if it can be made inaccessible. An idea doesn’t need to be refuted if the tools required to express it can be silently disabled.
The power here is not loud. It does not announce itself with force. It operates through updates, account suspensions, and expired licenses. It is enforced not by governments alone, but by corporations whose incentives align neatly with regulatory pressure and risk avoidance.
This is why ownership matters.
Because a society that does not own its software does not control its means of expression. And a society that does not control its means of expression does not need to be censored—it will censor itself, preemptively, to avoid being cut off.
The most unsettling part is not that we are being watched, charged, or restricted. It’s that we’re being trained to accept it as normal. One subscription at a time, ownership fades into permission, privacy into policy, and freedom into a checkbox we clicked without reading. And when the system finally decides we no longer qualify, it won’t feel like oppression—because by then, we’ll have learned to call it something else.
Big Brother doesn't watch anymore. He manages access.
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