The end of ownership?: An investigation of users' preferences and perceptions of ownership configurations

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe notion of ownership of digital media content is complicated and fragmented, because of the interplay of intellectual property law, personal property rights, and contractual arrangements. Drawing from the existing literature on theoretical analysis of ownership, we present a framework with multiple ownership configurations of digital content. Using the online survey method, we investigated US users' perceptions of ownership of digital content, users' perceptions of the importance of various digital rights, and their preferences for different ways of obtaining media content. The results of this study show that downloadability and the continuity of rights together determine users' sense of ownership, and digital rights management (DRM) restrictions play a minor role in users' perceptions of ownership. Ownership, especially owning something physically, is still important to users with regard to books. With music, ownership is also important, but access, especially through the subscription model, is gaining in importance. Movie content shows a different pattern where users generally favor the access model over ownership. The study also found that users' perceived importance of digital rights varies with their preferences for obtaining different types of content.