Recently, Amazon announced that they would be making a policy change to Kindle that seems relatively minor on the surface; at least until you start to peel down through the layers of it. Let's obsess over this for a minute because we can all probably use a distraction right now. Here's the deal, as of February 26, Kindle users can no longer download their purchased books to their computer for backup or manual transfer purposes.

But most Kindle users now sync their purchases over wifi, so what's the big deal? (you might say)

The issue is that this further muddies the already murky waters of ownership in the digital age. Or perhaps, from another angle, it makes things clearer. The question of do-you-really-own-it when it comes to purchased digital media has already been a tricky one, with the answer mostly being, "Well, not really." When you buy a digital product like a movie or a song or a book, you never really own it. You just own a license to access it. In reality, this is the way it has always been—even with physical media. When you picked up your limited edition HD DVD Director's Cut of Good Burger from the 2 for $22 bin at Blockbuster, you didn't own the rights to the 1997 masterpiece; you simply had a license to access it via that disc whenever you liked. You weren't allowed to make copies of it or host ticketed screenings in your parent's basement. We all understood this. And while some people did make the odd copy for their cousin Steve, the FBI wasn't coming for them because it wasn't a form of piracy on a scale that mattered much. Also, it was nearly impossible to track down. Even when Steve started selling bootleg copies behind his gym.

Digital changed this. It changed the scale and ability to crack down on piracy, it changed how and where we bought and consumed our media, and it changed our relationship to that license of access entirely. That dynamic that we all understood became cracked wide open, and a whole new slippery and strange entity crawled out. We no longer had something physical to take hold of and move around between the method and location of consumption. Again, I want to highlight that even physical media always represented just a form of access, but the form changed so starkly that everything became up for grabs. Out of this, two clear forms of access emerged that I think are worth highlighting: piracy and walled gardens. One used the slipperiness of the digital form to make the free copying and sharing of that access easier than ever before. The other found a way to use that very form to confine people to a closed (and pricey) system in order to continue to access their purchases. Apple was an early pioneer in this with the way they began introducing not just the media but the tools required to play that media on. This went on to include both software and hardware.

Okay, I wasn't really planning on a history lesson, but I can't avoid giving context to frame my thinking here as I reflect on these changes that Amazon has made. Kindle falls squarely into this messy space as one of the first major players in the digital book market. They sold both the e-books and the e-book readers required to consume them. And while there has always been a policy (and protections) to keep those e-books on Kindle, many savvy users have found ways around that, primarily through the ability to download your purchased files to your computer.

Alright, Amazon has a right to prevent people from exploiting their product. Again, what's the big deal? (You still might say)

The big deal, and this applies to all digital media, is the question of the ownership of that license to access. With physical media, it was easy to understand. As long as I have this physical thing—a tape, a VHS, a DVD, a book—I can access and enjoy this media that I have purchased. Even if the method of access breaks or needs to be replaced (think a Samsung DVD player), I can continue to use it on the replacement. On top of that, I am not forced to purchase another Samsung DVD player. If a Sony DVD player happens to be on sale, I can buy that, and my ability to watch my DVD remains unchanged. Digital media is increasingly locking your access into a closed system. You are forced to read that book on Kindle. You will always be forced to read that book on Kindle.

But let's take this to a few other possibilities. Let's say Amazon decides to change the text of a book because they feel that a certain line no longer fits with their values as a company. Or, what if they decide to ban certain books outright? They can just delete those sentences or books right off your Kindle, and there's nothing you can do about it. Or, and this is something I think is a very high possibility, what happens when Amazon decides that recurring and predictable revenue is better for their profits and moves Kindle to a subscription-only model. What is to prevent them from cutting off access to your purchased books and locking them behind a monthly paywall? And if you think they can't do that, you need to be paying more attention to the shift to the subscription model that has been taking place across the digital landscape over the last 5+ years. If you're a new user, that might not seem like such a bad deal. But let's remember that Amazon was a pioneer in e-books, releasing Kindle way back in 2007. If you've been faithfully purchasing books from them since they began, that becomes a much bigger thing.

This is why it's important for us to remember that our consumption habits are nothing more than an opportunity for profit. Corporations keep finding ways to turn those habits against us in order to maximize those profits. Why settle for selling a book to a customer once when you can force them to pay a recurring membership fee to keep reading within your walled garden? Perhaps the most absurd part of this whole thing is that libraries still exist. We already have FREE access to books whenever we want them, and services like Overdrive have made that access possible in a digital way as well.

I've heard it said that no one would be able to sell the idea of a library today, and I think that is true. It's also why they matter so much. Public goods and services are the few remaining strongholds of resistance to capitalism we have left. We need them as much as they need us. We should be supporting them while they're still around.

** Aside: I left Kindle years ago when I realized they were tracking my reading data and using it to make more profit.