Headwind discourses of digital ownership

Abstract

This chapter outlines and examines headwind discourses of ownership. First, it delves into the post-ownership discourse and cautions against overblown portrayals of contemporary times as the “age of access”. The fact that digitalization has been an important driver of the shift from ownership to access-based consumption, should not blind us from noting the emergence of new technologies and digital goods, such as blockchains and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), that speak to the continued relevance of ownership and the intricate relationship between access and ownership in digital consumption. Second, drawing on extant reviews and commentaries, this chapter examines the discourse on inferior ownability of digital stuff, explicating the potential limitations of digital goods as candidates for ownership as well as how market actors constantly find new ways to make digital stuff ownable. The final section examines the critical discourse expounding the limitations of emergent forms of digital ownership, NFT ownership in particular. These critiques not only help identify important risks that the shifting arrangements of ownership pose in terms of eroding ownership rights but also leave considerable room for examining these re-arrangements on their own merit.