#rights — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #rights, aggregated by home.social.
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#MissKittyPolitics can't keep having people represent her that have everything when she doesn't have all of her #human #rights. I am only willing to #toe this #artificial #line through November. And then it's over for me. Like absolute #truth all the time. I'm fucking done. What don't I deserve? 🤬🤬🤬
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#MissKittyPolitics says if #human #rights is not the beginning & end of a politician's platform then they are uncivilized. If humans don't have human rights, they can't live and #thrive. This is so beyond obvious that it is ignored completely. There are no difficult #solutions. There is #ignorance.
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She was so dumbfounded she couldn't tell me it was #NewYorkCity! Whatever level of denial #America had about its culpability for the past for denying #human #rights, skyrocketed after 9/11. The most outrageous sorts of nonsense were legislated. We are suffering that surveillance state right now. 🔦🔦🔦
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Hey @[email protected], #MissKitty is not going anywhere; you can't change reality. #Transgender and #Transsexual rights are #Human #Rights and no amount of gold foil is going to change that. We will #Impeach #Convict #Remove. You will wear orange. 🟠🟠🟠
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Impressive database, plus compelling highlights of red state laws proposed (not passed).
It's true, the purpose seems to take us back a century or more, where their eugenics can be labeled survival of the fittest.
#fascist #USA #GOP #KKK #Republican #state #bills #regressive #conservative #eugenics #minority #vaccines #gender #identity #women #civil #rights #conversion #therapy #marriage #equality
https://heartlandsignal.com/2026/09/09/bad-bill-tracker-republican-state-bills-2026/ -
Impressive database, plus compelling highlights of red state laws proposed (not passed).
It's true, the purpose seems to take us back a century or more, where their eugenics can be labeled survival of the fittest.
#fascist #USA #GOP #KKK #Republican #state #bills #regressive #conservative #eugenics #minority #vaccines #gender #identity #women #civil #rights #conversion #therapy #marriage #equality
https://heartlandsignal.com/2026/09/09/bad-bill-tracker-republican-state-bills-2026/ -
Impressive database, plus compelling highlights of red state laws proposed (not passed).
It's true, the purpose seems to take us back a century or more, where their eugenics can be labeled survival of the fittest.
#fascist #USA #GOP #KKK #Republican #state #bills #regressive #conservative #eugenics #minority #vaccines #gender #identity #women #civil #rights #conversion #therapy #marriage #equality
https://heartlandsignal.com/2026/09/09/bad-bill-tracker-republican-state-bills-2026/ -
Impressive database, plus compelling highlights of red state laws proposed (not passed).
It's true, the purpose seems to take us back a century or more, where their eugenics can be labeled survival of the fittest.
#fascist #USA #GOP #KKK #Republican #state #bills #regressive #conservative #eugenics #minority #vaccines #gender #identity #women #civil #rights #conversion #therapy #marriage #equality
https://heartlandsignal.com/2026/09/09/bad-bill-tracker-republican-state-bills-2026/ -
Cops Play Hide and Seek About Using #Spy Tech to Avoid Scrutiny and Bad PR
Law enforcement agencies across the country are increasingly relying on #spying technologies—automated license plate readers (#ALPR ), cell-site simulators, and facial recognition, to name a few--causing an outcry in many communities where people are rightly concerned about the threat to civil #rights and civil liberties these tools present.
#facialrecognition #civilrights #privacy -
Cops Play Hide and Seek About Using #Spy Tech to Avoid Scrutiny and Bad PR
Law enforcement agencies across the country are increasingly relying on #spying technologies—automated license plate readers (#ALPR ), cell-site simulators, and facial recognition, to name a few--causing an outcry in many communities where people are rightly concerned about the threat to civil #rights and civil liberties these tools present.
#facialrecognition #civilrights #privacy -
Cops Play Hide and Seek About Using #Spy Tech to Avoid Scrutiny and Bad PR
Law enforcement agencies across the country are increasingly relying on #spying technologies—automated license plate readers (#ALPR ), cell-site simulators, and facial recognition, to name a few--causing an outcry in many communities where people are rightly concerned about the threat to civil #rights and civil liberties these tools present.
#facialrecognition #civilrights #privacy -
Cops Play Hide and Seek About Using #Spy Tech to Avoid Scrutiny and Bad PR
Law enforcement agencies across the country are increasingly relying on #spying technologies—automated license plate readers (#ALPR ), cell-site simulators, and facial recognition, to name a few--causing an outcry in many communities where people are rightly concerned about the threat to civil #rights and civil liberties these tools present.
#facialrecognition #civilrights #privacy -
Cops Play Hide and Seek About Using #Spy Tech to Avoid Scrutiny and Bad PR
Law enforcement agencies across the country are increasingly relying on #spying technologies—automated license plate readers (#ALPR ), cell-site simulators, and facial recognition, to name a few--causing an outcry in many communities where people are rightly concerned about the threat to civil #rights and civil liberties these tools present.
#facialrecognition #civilrights #privacy -
#Podcast : DHS’ Secretive ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit Pulling People Over
#dhs #privacy #rightshttps://www.404media.co/podcast-dhs-secretive-predictive-policing-unit-pulling-people-over/
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#Podcast : DHS’ Secretive ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit Pulling People Over
#dhs #privacy #rightshttps://www.404media.co/podcast-dhs-secretive-predictive-policing-unit-pulling-people-over/
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#Podcast : DHS’ Secretive ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit Pulling People Over
#dhs #privacy #rightshttps://www.404media.co/podcast-dhs-secretive-predictive-policing-unit-pulling-people-over/
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#Podcast : DHS’ Secretive ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit Pulling People Over
#dhs #privacy #rightshttps://www.404media.co/podcast-dhs-secretive-predictive-policing-unit-pulling-people-over/
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#Podcast : DHS’ Secretive ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit Pulling People Over
#dhs #privacy #rightshttps://www.404media.co/podcast-dhs-secretive-predictive-policing-unit-pulling-people-over/
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List of references on Sony websites to players "owning" their digital games
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Sony_PlayStation_digital_game_ownership_lawsuit
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49642531
#HackerNews #Sony #PlayStation #digital #ownership #lawsuit #references #game #rights #consumer #rights #digital #games
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Indiana State Police is seeking over $29 million in federal funding for surveillance technology, investigative tools, and vehicles that would bolster the agency’s work with federal immigration authorities.
#Indiana #FortWayne #StatePolice #Surveillance #ALPR #PoliceState #ICE #Flock #DeFlock #Rights #Privacy #Constitution #LEO #Police
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Indiana State Police is seeking over $29 million in federal funding for surveillance technology, investigative tools, and vehicles that would bolster the agency’s work with federal immigration authorities.
#Indiana #FortWayne #StatePolice #Surveillance #ALPR #PoliceState #ICE #Flock #DeFlock #Rights #Privacy #Constitution #LEO #Police
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Indiana State Police is seeking over $29 million in federal funding for surveillance technology, investigative tools, and vehicles that would bolster the agency’s work with federal immigration authorities.
#Indiana #FortWayne #StatePolice #Surveillance #ALPR #PoliceState #ICE #Flock #DeFlock #Rights #Privacy #Constitution #LEO #Police
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But whatever. It's not like this is the master plan. I mean it is, but the Universal Declaration of Human Rights #UDHR got signed in 1948. Rocket science isn't rocket science, but #human #rights are dead ass simple. LOL Somebody asked me what I was so angry about one day a number of months ago.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:hc7tndm7gduompba65aps75k/post/3mv4k7xdkfk2k -
The least free place on earth: Occupied Ukraine – POLITICO
From passportization to deportation Starting from 2014, Russia has occupied about 20 percent of Ukraine in the country’s…
#Ukraine #UA #Europe #Europa #EU #News #&Governance #Citizens'rights #demographics #education #humanrights #Kremlin #lawenforcement #Rights #Russia #surveillance #warinUkraine
https://www.europesays.com/ukraine/39763/ -
Jordan Bardella accuses EU Parliament of far-right ‘paranoia’ in court battle – POLITICO
Bardella’s lawyer, David Dassa-Le Deist, told the court the decision was taken because of “prejudice” against far-right parties…
#Europe #EU #EuropeanParliament #Courts #Elections #Farright #France #Frenchpolitics #JordanBardella #luxembourg #MarineLePen #MEPs #Parliament #Rights
https://www.europesays.com/europe/134303/ -
SM Energy ends controversial mineral rights agreement
NEWS FLASH 8/19/2026 In a dramatic shift following months of public pushback and legal maneuvering, SM Energy has…
#Energy #agreement #Arts #boulder #businessdirectory #colorado #controversial #Denver #eastcounty #ends #Entertainment #frontrange #mineral #northmetro #Restaurant #rights #SM
https://www.europesays.com/3204260/ -
A quotation from Theodore Roosevelt
[… T]he individual virtues, and the necessity of character as the chief factor in any man’s success — a teaching in which I now believe as sincerely as ever, for all the laws that the wit of man can devise will never make a man a worthy citizen unless he has within himself the right stuff, unless he has self-reliance, energy, courage, the power of insisting on his own rights and the sympathy that makes him regardful of the rights of others.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901–1909)
Autobiography, ch. 1 “Boyhood and Youth” (1913)More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-theodore/8…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #theodoreroosevelt #teddyroosevelt #character #citizen #courage #individuality #moralcode #personalcode #personalresponsibility #rights #selfreliance #success #virtue #worthiness
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A quotation from Theodore Roosevelt
[… T]he individual virtues, and the necessity of character as the chief factor in any man’s success — a teaching in which I now believe as sincerely as ever, for all the laws that the wit of man can devise will never make a man a worthy citizen unless he has within himself the right stuff, unless he has self-reliance, energy, courage, the power of insisting on his own rights and the sympathy that makes him regardful of the rights of others.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901–1909)
Autobiography, ch. 1 “Boyhood and Youth” (1913)More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-theodore/8…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #theodoreroosevelt #teddyroosevelt #character #citizen #courage #individuality #moralcode #personalcode #personalresponsibility #rights #selfreliance #success #virtue #worthiness
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A quotation from Theodore Roosevelt
[… T]he individual virtues, and the necessity of character as the chief factor in any man’s success — a teaching in which I now believe as sincerely as ever, for all the laws that the wit of man can devise will never make a man a worthy citizen unless he has within himself the right stuff, unless he has self-reliance, energy, courage, the power of insisting on his own rights and the sympathy that makes him regardful of the rights of others.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901–1909)
Autobiography, ch. 1 “Boyhood and Youth” (1913)More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-theodore/8…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #theodoreroosevelt #teddyroosevelt #character #citizen #courage #individuality #moralcode #personalcode #personalresponsibility #rights #selfreliance #success #virtue #worthiness
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A quotation from Theodore Roosevelt
[… T]he individual virtues, and the necessity of character as the chief factor in any man’s success — a teaching in which I now believe as sincerely as ever, for all the laws that the wit of man can devise will never make a man a worthy citizen unless he has within himself the right stuff, unless he has self-reliance, energy, courage, the power of insisting on his own rights and the sympathy that makes him regardful of the rights of others.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901–1909)
Autobiography, ch. 1 “Boyhood and Youth” (1913)More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-theodore/8…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #theodoreroosevelt #teddyroosevelt #character #citizen #courage #individuality #moralcode #personalcode #personalresponsibility #rights #selfreliance #success #virtue #worthiness
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A quotation from Theodore Roosevelt
[… T]he individual virtues, and the necessity of character as the chief factor in any man’s success — a teaching in which I now believe as sincerely as ever, for all the laws that the wit of man can devise will never make a man a worthy citizen unless he has within himself the right stuff, unless he has self-reliance, energy, courage, the power of insisting on his own rights and the sympathy that makes him regardful of the rights of others.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901–1909)
Autobiography, ch. 1 “Boyhood and Youth” (1913)More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-theodore/8…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #theodoreroosevelt #teddyroosevelt #character #citizen #courage #individuality #moralcode #personalcode #personalresponsibility #rights #selfreliance #success #virtue #worthiness
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-DAILY NEWS
#DEMOCRACY #RIGHTShttps://www.dn.se/kultur/kristina-lindquist-medborgarskapsproven-ar-en-del-av-fordrivningens-politik/
🦜 #NAZZEFASSAN FORTFARANDE
I FARTEN MED SIN SELEKTION !?... -
-DAILY NEWS
#CLIMATECHANGE #DEMOCRACY
#SCIENCE #RIGHTS #OMNICIDE MM....https://www.dn.se/kultur/jonna-bornemark-sjalvklart-bor-vi-agera-genast-men-det-racker-inte/
🦜DET HÄR ÄR EXISTENTIELLT
SPRÄNGSTOFF !... -
AI, gambling and Middle East set for Labor conference debate
Labor is stepping up efforts to reassure Australians artificial intelligence can be embraced while addressing safety risks, respecting…
#NewsBeep #News #Artificialintelligence #AI #anthonyalbanese #Anthropic #ArtificialIntelligence #AU #Australia #Claude #Conference #copyrightlaws #debate #gamblinginducements #gaza #israel #Labor #palestine #Rights #Technology
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/792785/ -
Sony erases digital content from libraries; reminded we don't own what we buy
#HackerNews #Sony #Digital #Rights #DigitalOwnership #ContentRemoval #ConsumerAwareness
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"Why do you have to make everything about politics?"
"Because they made my existence political."
Queer Chameleon, by Amee Wilson
#HappyPride #QueerChameleon #AmeeWilson #asexual #bisexual #lesbian #gay #intersex #genderfluid #pansexual #demisexual #omnisexual #genderqueer #polysexual #aromantic #LGBTQ #rights are #HumanRights #conservatives #attack the #most #vulnerable #among #us for #political #gain #GOP #DEI #diversity #equity #inclusion
https://www.boredpanda.com/fun-and-wholesome-queer-chameleon-comics-queeeerchameleon/ -
Sur 5 drapeaux des membres permanents du conseil de sécurité de l'ONU, 3 drapeaux appartiennent à des pays qui ne reconnaissent pas la juridiction de la cour pénale internationale (ils n'ont pas ratifié les statuts de Rome), pourtant dépendante ... de l'ONU! Trouverez vous quels sont-ils ? #UN #ONU #justice #droit #rights #accountability #CPI #ICC #Security #UNsecuritycouncil
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https://www.europesays.com/africa/263279/ Somalia: International Human Rights Organizations Reportedly Preparing Dossier on Senior Somali Officials #Dossier #human #international #officials #on #Organizations #Preparing #Reportedly #Rights #senior #Somali #Somalia
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Etiikka.fi-sivuilla Ilkka Niiniluoto kirjoittaa Oikeudenjälkeisestä ajasta, https://etiikka.fi/oikeudenjalkeinen-aika/,
Sami Pihlström Normatiivisesta järjestyksestä, https://etiikka.fi/normatiivinen-jarjestys/,
Jukka Kekkonen Suomen oikeusvaltion murenemisesta, https://etiikka.fi/miten-suomen-oikeusvaltio-murenee/,
Virpi Mäkinen kysyy, Oikeuttaako äärimmäinen hätä normien rikkomisen, https://etiikka.fi/oikeuttaako-aarimmainen-hata-normien-rikkomisen/,
ja Sara Heinämaa pohtii valmius- ja käännytyslakeja Hannah Arendtin ajatusten pohjalta, https://etiikka.fi/muistiinpanoja-ihmisen-oikeuksista-valmiuslaki-ja-kaannytyslaki-kaksi-kyseenalaistusta/#etiikka #ethics #journal #filosofia #philosophy #rights #order #state #valtio #normit #norms #regulation #society #yhteiskunta #suomi #normativity #normative #laki #law
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Waterloo and a revolution: Von der Leyen and Costa pick their Eurovision favorites – POLITICO
The song that “moves me the mos…
#Eurovision #AntónioCosta #Baltics #Competition #culture #Energy #EurovisionSongContest2026 #Finland #History #Humanrights #Iceland #Ireland #Israel #KajaKallas #music #Palestine #Platforms #Poland #Portugal #Rights #RobertaMetsola #Russia #Security #slovenia #Spain #Sweden #Switzerland #TheNetherlands #Ukraine #UrsulavonderLeyen
https://www.europesays.com/europe/42840/ -
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
-- G. K. Chesterton -
Tell him he’s right – POLITICO
German government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius batted off suggestions that Merz might have to jet off to W…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #Americas #BorisPistorius #Cars #Communications #Defense #democratic-party #Diplomacy #DonaldTrump #exports #France #FriedrichMerz #Germany #industry #Iran #JohannWadephul #MarkusTöns #Missiles #Pentagon #Rights #Russia #Security #tariffs #Trade #TradeAgreements #UnitedStates #War #WarinIran #World
https://www.newsbeep.com/520765/ -
RE: https://mastodon.social/@QasimRashid/116489299784659411
Today the Roberts Court spits on graves of hundreds of thousands who died for the idea that black people are people.
The Civil War really was a thing.
But Uncle #ClarenceThomas won't be happy until he can't vote.
#JohnRoberts #RobertsCourt #SCOTUS #crowned #King #OurPutin #VotingRightsAct #VRA #GOP #KKK #DEI #fascist #USA #Constitution #Alito #Kavanaugh #ComeyBarrett #Gorsuch #SupremeCourt #voting #civil #rights -
“Under Absolute Despotism” 📜 Declaration of Independence (1776)
Revolution as civic duty... -
“A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”*…
First page of an original copy of twelve proposed articles of amendment, as passed by Congress in 1789, and engrossed by William Lambert (source and transcription of the full document)Following the often heated debate between Federalists and their opponents that led to the the ratification and adoption of the U.S. Constitution, the Anti-Federalists were still unsatisfied. Then-Representative James Madison, who studied the deficiencies of the Constitution pointed out by Anti-Federalists, collected proposals (16 in all), and then crafted a series of 12 proposed corrective amendments. Congress approved the twelve articles of amendment on September 25, 1789, and submitted them to the states for ratification. 10 were ultimately ratified– the first 10 amendments to our Constitution… or as we know them, The Bill of Rights.
In an excerpt from his book, Constitutional Myths: What We Get Wrong and How to Get It Right, Ray Raphael elaborates…
The Constitution of the United States, drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1788, did not follow the precedent set by these state constitutions. Despite spending almost four months drafting their new plan, the framers did not include within it a thoughtful listing of rights but only a scattering of guarantees. On September 12, just five days before the end of the Convention, George Mason finally suggested that delegates add a “Bill of Rights” similar to the state declarations of rights, but his motion failed to garner the support of a single state delegation.
Although state conventions ratified the Constitution, several included a caveat: the new plan should be amended as soon as possible. In fact, they proposed scores of amendments, some resembling provisions of what we now know as the Bill of Rights, but many others altering or even deleting structural features of the Constitution. New York’s convention coupled its list of proposed amendments with a demand for a second federal convention to consider these various proposals. The profusion of proposed amendments, plus the prospect of a second convention, frightened supporters of the Constitution, who feared that a new convention, if it met, would revise the fledgling Constitution before it could be put into effect and gut some of its major provisions.
Most leading Federalists hunkered down. In arguing against a second federal convention, they insisted that a bill of rights was not necessary and could even jeopardize rights that were not included. The job of the Constitution, they said, was to state what government could do, not what it couldn’t do. Rights already were secured because the government possessed no power that allowed it to impinge upon them. In fact, any catalog of specified rights would imply that rights were limited to those in the catalog, and not others.
James Madison and George Washington agreed with this argument, but they also took an accurate measure of people’s displeasure. It was strong and it was widespread. Rather than fight a rearguard action against the wave of discontent, they preferred to channel and control it. Article V of the Constitution stipulated that either Congress or state conventions might propose amendments. If Congress acted first, Madison and Washington reasoned, it could take charge of the issue and protect the substantive features of the new plan–congressional taxation, for instance–while giving ground elsewhere. Madison, meanwhile, pledged to his Virginia constituents that he would work to add a bill of rights if they elected him to represent them in Congress.
Once elected, in the First Federal Congress, Madison whittled down the large list of amendments suggested by the states’ ratifying conventions. With President Washington’s blessing, he proposed nineteen that did not endanger key constitutional components. After considerable debate and some revision, Congress pared Madison’s list down to twelve amendments, which it sent to the states for approval. Ten of these, which we call today the Bill of Rights, were ratified by three-quarters of the states, as required by the new Constitution. The genesis of the Bill of Rights, like the origins of the Constitution, was political as well as theoretical.
The short-term effect of the framing and ratification of the Bill of Rights was to put a Federalist stamp on the amendments and to doom the attempts by the Constitution’s opponents to modify the substantive or structural features of the new plan. The long-term effect was to reinforce America’s culture of rights and to infuse specific rights into American jurisprudence. After more than two centuries, the Bill of Rights, which had been so casually dismissed by the framers, figures so prominently in our minds that it often eclipses the Constitution itself. In an era when the word “government” has a bad name, the ten amendments that circumscribe the federal government’s authority over individuals are often viewed more favorably than the Constitution the framers created in 1787…
The backstory of the Bill of Rights, via the always-illuminating Delanceyplace.com
For more on the process that yielded them, and the texts of all 16 proposed amendments, see here.
* Thomas Jefferson, a critic of Federalists, in a 1787 letter to James Madison (who had originally been opposed to the idea of a “bill of rights,” both because he believed that the Constitution as written did not grant the federal government the power to take away people’s rights, and because he [and some other Framers] believed that we have natural rights too numerous to list– and that anything not explicitly included in a Bill of Rights would be unprotected.)
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As we ponder precedent, we might recall that it was on this date in 1930 that a BBC newsreader had nothing to communicate. His entire script for the 8:45 pm news bulletin was: “There is no news”… after which piano music was played for the rest of the 15-minute segment. The wireless service then returned to broadcasting from the Queen’s Hall in London, where the Wagner opera Parsifal was being performed.
This was how most British people got their news in 1930 – listening to radio; TV broadcasts started six years later (source) #AntiFederalists #BBC #BillOfRights #Constitution #culture #dayWithNoNews #dayWithoutNews #Federalists #history #JamesMonroe #news #radio #rights #ThomasJefferson #wireless -
Right to grow vegetables protected under new bill https://www.allforgardening.com/1716033/right-to-grow-vegetables-protected-under-new-bill/ #Apartment #Associations #condo #garden #gardens #lawmakers #legislature #news #politics #rentals #rights #tenants #Vegetable #vegetables #vermont #wcax
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The Rental Life: What Happens When You Own Nothing and They Own You
In July 2009, Amazon reached into the Kindle devices of thousands of customers and deleted copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. The company had discovered that the third-party publisher selling those editions lacked the rights to distribute them in the United States. Amazon issued refunds. Then it erased the books. A high school student in Michigan lost his annotated copy mid-assignment. A class-action lawsuit followed. Amazon’s CEO called the decision “stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles.” The company settled and promised not to do it again, unless a court ordered it, or unless the company determined it was necessary to protect consumers from malicious code, or unless the consumer failed to keep paying.
That string of qualifications matters more than the apology. Amazon conceded only that it would try to restrain a power it confirmed it possessed. And the definition of a good reason for using that power remained, as it remains today, in Amazon’s hands.
This episode from seventeen years ago now reads as a rehearsal for the present. The subscription economy has grown from a few hundred billion dollars in 2020 to an estimated $558 billion in 2025, with projections approaching $1.2 trillion by 2030 and nearly $2 trillion by 2035. Those numbers track a civilization that has been steadily converting ownership into tenancy. Your music, your software, your games, and in some cases even your car’s heated seats exist only as long as you keep paying, keep complying with terms you did not write, and keep trusting that the company on the other end of the wire will still be there tomorrow.
The Counterfeit of Possession
When you walk into a bookstore and buy a hardcover, the transaction is finished the moment you hand over your money. The book belongs to you. You can lend it, sell it, burn it, annotate its margins, or leave it to your grandchildren. No one from the publisher’s office will appear at your door to confiscate it because a licensing agreement expired. The relationship between you and the object is complete and sovereign.
When you “buy” a digital book, a digital album, or a digital game, the word “buy” is performing a conjuring trick. You are purchasing a license, a permission slip that can be revoked. California recognized the deception clearly enough to pass Assembly Bill 2426, which took effect January 1, 2025. The law prohibits sellers of digital goods from using the words “buy” or “purchase” unless they disclose, separately and conspicuously, that the consumer is receiving a revocable license and not ownership. Plaintiffs’ firms have already begun filing class actions under the statute. Yet the law addresses only the label. After January 1, 2025, companies must tell you that “buy” means “rent.” They are under no obligation to offer you the option of actually buying.
The fact that California had to pass a law telling companies to stop lying about what the word “buy” means tells you everything about where we are. Commercial language has been hollowed out. Familiar verbs of transaction, “buy,” “own,” “purchase,” still circulate in the marketplace, but they no longer carry their historical weight. They have become costume jewelry worn over a bare finger.
Adobe provides the corporate template. In 2013, the company began phasing out perpetual licenses for its professional software. By 2017, Creative Suite 6 was pulled from sale entirely. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro: tools that graphic designers, photographers, filmmakers, and publishers had owned outright for decades became rental properties. If you stop paying, the software stops working. One user on Adobe’s own community forum described how the company shut down the activation server for a version he had purchased with a perpetual license years earlier. When he called support, they told him the product had been discontinued and urged him to subscribe. The perpetual license, it turned out, was not so perpetual after all.
Subscription defenders point to accessibility: Adobe’s Creative Cloud at $55 per month costs less upfront than the $2,000 that Creative Suite Master Collection once demanded. The argument sounds reasonable until you run the numbers over time. A designer who paid $2,000 in 2012 still owns functional software in 2026. A designer who has paid $55 per month since 2013 has spent more than $8,500 and owns nothing. The moment the payments stop, the tools vanish. Lower barriers to entry become higher barriers to exit, and the total cost of permanent rental exceeds the cost of ownership within a few years.
You Will Own Nothing and You Will Browse the Store
Ubisoft, the French video game publisher, demonstrated the logical endpoint of this model with a bluntness that bordered on parody. In December 2023, the company delisted its racing game The Crew from all digital storefronts without advance warning. Three months later, on March 31, 2024, it shut down the game’s servers. Because the game required an always-online connection, the shutdown rendered it permanently unplayable for everyone who had bought it, whether digitally or on disc. Players who attempted to launch the game were met with a notification: “You no longer have access to this game. Why not check the Store to pursue your adventures?”
That message deserves to be read twice. The company that took your money for a product, then destroyed that product, then invited you to spend more money in the same store, saw nothing strange about the sequence. By April 2024, Ubisoft began revoking the game licenses themselves and moved the title into an “inactive games” section. Its lawyers argued in subsequent legal proceedings that customers had never purchased “unfettered ownership rights” but merely “a limited access license.” The French consumer rights organization UFC-Que Choisir filed suit, calling the arrangement an “abusive contract.” The European consumer movement Stop Killing Games emerged in direct response.
What happened with The Crew followed the subscription model’s internal logic with mechanical precision. Your product was never yours. No transaction was ever complete. The seller retained the power to terminate the relationship unilaterally, and when that power became convenient to exercise, the seller exercised it.
The Heated Seat and the Cold Principle
If the digital domain were the only territory being converted to rental, the problem would be serious but contained. The alarm escalates when subscription logic migrates into physical objects you have already paid for.
In July 2022, BMW began charging customers a monthly fee to activate the heated seats already installed in their vehicles. The hardware was present in the car. Wiring was in place. Heating elements were embedded in the leather. But the function was locked behind software, and unlocking it cost $18 per month. The company framed this as consumer choice, a way for buyers to add features later without committing at the time of purchase. Consumers framed it differently: they were being asked to rent access to machinery they had already bought.
BMW eventually retreated from heated-seat subscriptions after sustained backlash, but the retreat was tactical while the philosophy remained intact. The company’s board member for sales, Pieter Nota, told the press that the approach “was probably not the best way to start.” BMW remains, in its own words, “fully committed” to its ConnectedDrive subscription environment and continues to offer features like adaptive suspension, adaptive cruise control, and parking assistance as paid unlocks. Tesla has moved in the same direction, paywalling features behind its Full Self-Driving subscription. Mercedes-Benz charges annual fees to unlock additional performance in its electric vehicles. Automakers have settled the principle even if the specific application of heated seats proved too visible a provocation.
Here is what that principle means in practice: you purchased the car, but the car contains capabilities that do not belong to you. Your manufacturer retains a residual claim on the object sitting in your driveway. Your property is, in a meaningful legal and functional sense, not entirely your property.
The Surgical Table
The migration of subscription logic into medicine deserves particular attention because it involves the point where commercial arrangements meet human bodies. Intuitive Surgical, the manufacturer of the da Vinci robotic surgery system, has built its business model around recurring revenue. A February 2026 report from the American College of Surgeons noted that approximately 85% of Intuitive’s revenue now comes from recurring costs rather than from the sale of the machines themselves. The surgical instruments are designed to be disposable, usable for ten to eighteen procedures before the system requires new ones. Hospitals buy the robot, but the robot’s ongoing capacity to function depends on a continuous stream of purchases that the manufacturer controls.
This is subscription logic applied to the operating room, and it differs from the ordinary fact that scalpel blades and sutures have always been disposable. Unlike traditional surgical consumables, which are generic, interchangeable, and available from competing suppliers, Intuitive’s instruments are proprietary, coded to the machine, and designed with built-in usage limits that require replacement from a single manufacturer after a fixed number of procedures. The distinction matters: a hospital using traditional instruments can switch vendors tomorrow, while a hospital locked into the da Vinci ecosystem cannot. Whether a hospital can perform surgery on you depends on whether it has remained current on its instrument purchases, whether the manufacturer continues to supply compatible parts, and whether the financial arrangement between hospital and vendor remains intact. Patients on the table have no visibility into any of these commercial relationships, yet those relationships determine whether the machine works when the surgeon reaches for it.
What Disappears When Access Replaces Ownership
Individual inconveniences of the subscription economy, a deleted book, a locked seat heater, a revoked game license, accumulate into a structural transformation that is worth examining in its constituent damages.
Cultural memory suffers first. Archives depend on permanence. A library works because the books on its shelves will still be there next year, and the year after, and a century from now. Digital content governed by revocable licenses cannot be archived in any meaningful sense because the license holder retains the right to make that content vanish. When Ubisoft destroyed The Crew, it did not merely inconvenience the people who were still playing it. It erased a cultural artifact, a ten-year-old piece of interactive art that can no longer be experienced, studied, or referenced by anyone. Modders managed to bring the game back to life in 2025, proving that an unofficial preservation solution was technically possible. Ubisoft’s response was to revoke licenses to prevent even that.
Autonomy erodes alongside memory. Ownership confers the right to modify, repair, resell, and repurpose. A farmer who owns a tractor can fix it when it breaks. Someone who owns a book can lend it to a friend. Any photographer who owns a copy of Photoshop CS6 can keep using it for twenty years without asking anyone’s permission. Subscription models extinguish these rights. You cannot modify software you are renting. Reselling a license you do not own is impossible. Nor can you repair a feature that has been locked behind a paywall in a car you have already paid for. The subscription economy converts users into dependents, people who must ask permission to use things that are already in their possession.
Democratic resilience takes the deepest wound. When the infrastructure of daily life, the tools people use to work, to communicate, to create, to travel, is governed by corporate access gates, citizens become tenants of their own civilization. A government can be voted out. A regulatory body can be reformed. But a corporation that controls whether your software works, whether your car’s features are enabled, and whether your surgical robot has fresh instruments operates outside the democratic feedback loop. Its power flows from contracts of adhesion, and those contracts are written by the party holding all the leverage.
The Counterfeit Bargain
There is a direct line between the subscription economy and the taxonomy of fakery that structures The Counterfeit Bargain. When a company sells you a “purchase” that is a license, it is offering a counterfeit transaction. Every element of the exchange looks like buying. Its language says buying. Its interface mimics buying. But the substance is rental, and the landlord holds the keys.
The average American household now maintains roughly twelve paid subscriptions, with younger consumers averaging seventeen. A Kearney survey found that 72% of consumers underestimate their total monthly subscription spending by an average of 40%. This is the arithmetic of the counterfeit: people who believe they are accumulating possessions are instead accumulating obligations. Each subscription is a thread tying them to a provider who can raise prices, change terms, degrade service, or simply disappear, leaving the subscriber holding nothing.
The subscription economy asks us to accept a bargain that previous generations of consumers would have found absurd: pay for something, and receive in return only the conditional, temporary, revocable right to use it. When the condition changes, or the term expires, or the revocation is exercised, what you have left is exactly what you started with. Nothing. The word for a person who pays to live in a space owned by someone else is “tenant.” We have become tenants of our own tools, tenants of our own entertainment, and in the case of locked car features and subscription-gated surgical instruments, tenants of our own machines. The landlord class just learned to code.
#amazon #business #company #invention #knowing #meaning #music #own #ownership #rent #rights #streaming #teaching #tech #theft -
March 25, 2026 - 6:30pm to 8:30pm EDT
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