Cory Doctorow's latest Pluralistic essay argues that the slow, creeping expansion of the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules has fundamentally destroyed the concept of private property in the digital age, turning consumers into mere licensees of their own devices.
There's a smell in the air that we've all grown accustomed to, but that doesn't make it normal. As Cory Doctorow writes in his latest Pluralistic newsletter, we're living through a fundamental shift in what it means to "own" things, and we've barely noticed because the change happened incrementally over decades.
The culprit is Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which made it a felony to bypass "access controls" on devices, even for perfectly legal purposes. Doctorow traces this back 6 years, 5 months, and 22 days after a 1992 Simpsons episode, marking a precise moment when our relationship with property began to unravel.
The Economics of Felonizing Repair
In 1998, the argument for DMCA 1201 seemed narrow. Computers were expensive, and access controls (DRM) were considered engineering folly by computer scientists who knew that any protection could be broken and distributed online. Critics warned that cheap chips would change this calculation, and they were right.
Today, System on a Chip processors cost between $0.25 and $8. For that tiny hardware cost plus minimal engineering effort, any manufacturer can add an access control to their device and thereby criminalize any modification the manufacturer disapproves of. The penalty? Up to five years in prison and a $500,000 fine for a first offense.
This creates what Doctorow calls a "bargain" for manufacturers: add a dollar or two to your bill of materials, and the US government will imprison your competitors who offer complementary goods that improve your product.
The Toaster Test
Consider Doctorow's thought experiment: a toaster that scans your bread to ensure you're using "authorized" bread that pays royalties to the manufacturer. If the embedded computer has an access control preventing you from disabling this scan, modifying your own toaster to work with "unauthorized bread" becomes a felony.
This isn't theoretical. At CES 2025, there were countless "cooking robots" requiring proprietary feedstock. Your iPhone won't let you install software of your choosing. The pattern repeats across categories.
The Internet Connection Problem
Once manufacturers add cheap chips, they inevitably connect devices to the internet. This enables mandatory over-the-air updates that can remove functionality and sell it back as subscriptions—a pattern Doctorow calls "The Darth Vader MBA" ("I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further").
Examples abound:
- The Snoo smart bassinet added a premium subscription that locked existing features behind a paywall
- Printers that reject third-party ink cartridges via firmware updates
- Cars that disable heated seats after purchase unless you pay
Doctorow has documented this "autoenshittification" repeatedly: manufacturers sell you a device, then use remote updates to degrade it, then charge you to restore original functionality.
The End of Blackstone's Property Rights
Blackstone's 1753 treatise defined property as "that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual." By this definition, you don't own your iPhone.
If Apple declares your phone beyond repair, you must throw it away. If it needs parts pairing—a DMCA-protected access control—a third-party repair is a felony. If Apple stops supporting your OS, installing an alternative is a felony because the bootloader's access control must be bypassed. If Apple bars an app like ICE Block (which warns of nearby ICE agents), you can't install it yourself without bypassing access controls.
This extends to medical implants, appliances, cars, e-books, streaming video, and small devices. True ownership has become the exception.
Security and Privacy Implications
The consequences extend beyond property rights:
Privacy erosion: You can't add privacy blockers to prevent devices from leaking data about your movements, wealth, or conversations. Microsoft has announced it will gather private communications for "agentic AI" processing on its servers, and has confirmed warrantless secret access for US authorities.
Price discrimination: Without control over your device's data collection, airlines and e-commerce sites can "personalize" prices based on your perceived desperation or wealth.
Corporate-fascist alliance: Authoritarians can demand corporate cooperation in surveillance and censorship, offering tax breaks in exchange for undermining free society.
The Incremental Rollout Problem
The key to this transformation's success is its slowness. We notice individual irritations—garage door apps showing ads, printers rejecting cartridges—but fail to connect them to the broader pattern.
Doctorow argues this is "fucking weird" and "terrible." Lending, selling, and giving away books predates copyright, publishing, printing, and even paper. Yet modern e-books make these ancient practices felonies.
We're just a few cycles away from shoes that detect which shoelaces you're using, or dishwashers that block third-party dishes.
Why This Matters
The end of ownership isn't just about inconvenience. It represents:
- A reversal of civilization's foundations: Only immortal corporations can truly own things
- Vulnerability to exploitation: Corporate vampires drain wallets through mandatory subscriptions
- Authoritarian enablement: Fascists ally with corporations to destroy free society
- Security risks: Devices that can't be secured against data raids
- Privacy elimination: Constant surveillance built into everyday objects
The Remedy
Doctorow identifies this as a problem with a defined cause, precise start date, and actionable remedy. The DMCA 1201 created this abnormality, and reversing it would restore property rights.
But awareness is the first step. We need to recognize that the current state—where you can be imprisoned for modifying your own property—is not normal, historical, or inevitable. It's a specific policy choice from 1998 that has metastasized as computing became cheap and ubiquitous.
The alternative is accepting a world where ownership is a fiction, property rights apply only to corporations, and every device you buy is a leash controlled by its manufacturer. That's not just abnormal—it's a fundamental inversion of how human societies have understood property for centuries.
Related Reading
For more on this topic, see Doctorow's books:
- Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It
- The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation
- Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid
His full Pluralistic archive is available at pluralistic.net.
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