Information Owner

Full Title

For the purposed of this Identity Management article the term owner will apply to the real-world entity as represented by some digital Identifier.

Context

• The term owner comes from the middle-English word ownen meaning to possess or to take possession of.
• The closely associate term "owner's risk" should teach us that with ownership comes risk of loss.
• Any entity can Claim ownership. This claim was originally backed up by force of arms, but as society became more civilized, the claims were registered by some sovereign entity and thereby accepted by a court of law. The term possession is nine tenths of law was coined to recognize that it is still possible to convince a court that you own something because you possess it.
• Copyrights and patents were introduced into law to allow people to take possession of "ideas" or "expressions". The meaning of this right is still litigated on a daily basis; especially in countries where digital rights have become of such great value.

Problem

• It has been true until the Information Age that when you purchase a product, and take it home, that you own that copy and can dispose if it as you wish. Now we have a digital Ecosystem that allows distributors of content to repossess it whenever that want. While the concept has not be fully tested in a court of law, Amazon was able to reach into user's devices and remove a copy of the novel "1984" that users had purchased and taken possession of.