Owning up

Microsoft`s usual naysayers seem particularly insulted by its Passport service. Sun, the open source community, and the rest of the bandwagon are warning of Microsoft cornering the e-commerce market, and forcing users to pay Microsoft in various stages of the transaction for the benefit of buying a product online.

What is a little scary about Passport is the potential for micro-payments for rented products and services.

Jason Norwood-Young, Technology editor, ITWeb

In reality, Microsoft is just doing what it has always done - looking for new markets, controlling them, and making oodles of cash for its shareholders, founders and employees. This is not a bad thing, if Microsoft has a superior product, or at least has good marketing to make its product look superior, then it should be welcome to its earnings. It`s simple capitalism, and Microsoft`s competitors are working in the same market, with the same opportunities, for the same goal - making oodles of cash.

What is a little scary about Passport is the potential for micro-payments for rented products and services. Microsoft is moving towards the rented software model, and it`s not the only one that starts to salivate at the smell of a consistent revenue stream.

Music kingpin Bertelsmann is also pretty keen on the whole hired multimedia concept. If the German music producer has its way, you will never own a CD again. You will simply "hire" a song or album, and if you want to keep it past its expiry date, you have to pay again. And again. And again. Ouch.

Add this to Passport - or at least the Passport concept - where a third-party that controls your bank details is in collusion with a media supplier like Bertelsmann - and you have a wonderful system for making oodles of cash, which, as mentioned, is what Microsoft wants to do.

The listener hires an album, and every couple of weeks or months the listener is re-billed for that album. Yet he or she never owns the album. Over a period of time the cost of the album outweighs owning the original, and by hiring more music, videos, books and computer games, the monthly cost of entertainment could eventually skyrocket.

Of course, costs could be controlled by not renewing your subscription to an album you`ve listened to or a movie you`ve seen, but then you lose it. I like my music collection, even though I don`t listen to many of the albums for months at a time. I`m really proud of my book collection, although I don`t often read a book more than once and most just sit collecting dust. But for some inexplicable reason that could possibly be linked to human instinct, or just as easily attributed to being brainwashed by our consumerist society, owning things makes me happy. It gets me up in the morning and gets me to work so that I can earn a salary and buy more books and music and computer games. I resent taking a video that I`ve paid for the use of back to the video store.

So while most are worried about Microsoft`s Passport as being a method to steal the e-commerce environment away from the public and use it for its own gain, I`m more concerned about the potential of ownership becoming an out-dated concept we tell our kids about. I guess I`m just an old-fashioned, brainwashed consumer.