The Backlog

You don't actually own the digital stuff you buy. This book explains why.

In "The End of Ownership," authors Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz show how unsuspecting consumers are losing valuable rights in the digital economy.

The End of Ownership

When you buy a book at a bookstore, you physically own the copy and have complete autonomy to do whatever you want to it. But when you buy a digital copy of the very same title, Kindle technically licenses it to you. If it wants, it can remove it since you don't own the copy, per se. That's the gray area of personal ownership that Perzanowski and Schultz explore in the enraging and revelatory End of Ownership.

United States National Archives / Giphy

It goes without saying that digital goods like streaming services, cloud storage, wearables, digital books, and more, provide people the chance to enjoy a wide variety of features and services. But the tradeoff also involves a certain degree of compromised privacy, technical limits, and user agreements that most of us don't bother to truly grapple with.

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