You Don't Own Your Smart Phone

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Think about your smart phone. You don't actually own the data that runs through it. What you are doing essentially its licensing access to a series of ones and zeros. The foraging, looking for wild mushrooms or a fruit or game, has changed over time. Your home is not your castle. It's somebody else's castle with you. There may be restrictions on what the phone can do after i resell it - but i might be willing to pay a premium to avoid those restrictions.

Law professors Michael Heller and James Salzman talk about their book, Mine! with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Heller and Salzman argue that ownership is trickier and more complicated than it looks. While we tend to think of something as either mine or not mine, there's often ambiguity and a continuum about who owns what. Salzman and Heller explore a wide and surprising range of property rights from everyday life. The conversation includes a discussion of the insights of Ronald Coase on the assignment of property rights when rights conflict.