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Comment by forrestthewoods | Hacker News Reader

"Own" is such an overloaded term. What do you own when you own anything? It's almost always complicated! If you own a music album on compact disc then people say they own that album. But you aren't allowed to make copies of that disc. And you absolutely can't makes copies and then sell the copies. You can't even use that disc whenever and whereever you want. For example you can't play that disc through stadium speakers at a sporting event. Nor can you use host a concert and play parts of that album. You can't do it to mix with other music and you can't even play it directly.

So again I say, own is such an overloaded term. I wish people used it far less than they do.

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You chose an example of copyright, which is the most complicated and controversial example you could have chosen, in order to make a claim about about the general idea of ownership. Why not choose one of the other 99% of things that we purchase?

>But you aren't allowed to make copies of that disc. And you absolutely can't makes copies and then sell the copies. You can't even use that disc whenever and whereever you want. For example you can't play that disc through stadium speakers at a sporting event. Nor can you use host a concert and play parts of that album. You can't do it to mix with other music and you can't even play it directly.

You can own a knife, but still not be allowed to stab people with it. That's materially different than owning a computer or car and not being able to look at the inside, modify it, or repair it.

I would say instead that "own" is a diluted term. Most of the qualifications that apply to it are mostly the result of legal wrangling and the ambiguous property nature of information vs. physical items.

You CAN actually do all the things that you write down.

But it has consequences depending on the law if you don't have a license to do it.

Some of the things you say, like making copies of my own disc is totally legal in countries like Spain. It is illegal to distribute them.

In fact, in a democracy if more than 50% per cent of the people consider that they could do something, they can do it, think on the Prohibition.

If those in power reject the majority, they could be kicked out.

"Own" is just clickbait here. They don't quote any automaker who says you don't own your car. They do quote automakers referring to "owners" as the people who paid for and drive the cars. There are other items I can own but cannot modify in certain ways, such as firearms.

Worth noting that it's illegal to modify a firearm in certain ways, but other ways are totally legal. Which relates back to the distinction between laws that prevent modification vs. laws that enforce safety standards. It's not OK to modify a semi-automatic rifle to be fully-automatic, the same way it's not OK to exploit security holes in your car computer's firmware. However, it's not OK to swap out your car computer's firmware entirely, but it is OK to swap out the barrel, upper, lower, or whatever on your weapon, provided it's certified for sale.

Great analogy.

There's a difference between ownership of a physical data storage device and the ownership of the data on that device. You own the physical disk, but you're only leasing the data on it.

If we're going to lump both of these together as you're doing, then "own" is the wrong word to use; you're "leasing" instead. In that sense, I'd agree with you that the word "own" is used incorrectly in a lot of contexts.

You own the disk, but you do not own the music on it. The disk comes with a license to play the music only in a certain manner. If you do something that is not allowed by the license, you are not covered by the license and therefore you are liable under copyright for using a work you do not own.

I think, we should use the word own if we want to protect ownership rights. If we start saying that "own is such an overloaded term, lets not use it anymore" this is the first step to giving up any ownership rights you may have had.

You are certainly allowed to make copies of that disc.

I have it straight from the MPAA that you can make a copy of that disc!

And you can transcode it too.

What they don't want is distribution.

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