Possession=Ownership

It is one of the hidden assumptions under traditional capitalism - you possess a thing, then in a rough and ready way, you own it too.
One paid for it, and then that was done - one had it.
And everything was meant to conform. there products that no one can possess like experience - one still could own a package (and so gain rights to possess a memory.
The loop was not absolute: There is a layer of capitalism (shares) and society (nations) where one was expected to own what one did not possess. This relationship was ok and funded myriad things) The trouble was the other way around. possessing what one did not own - was a form of borrowing or stealing, or family right or perhaps social control - and almost always an issue
But starting with the tape- and even more with the computer- it is clear that this simple this second relationship has clearly become a power in the land- a power that can reckon its might against conventional capitalism
We expect to poses thing we do we do not own - and have done since the tape player. and yet modern technology makes this relationship so much complex. Firstly we can very share the possession; indeed the logic of not own is that all must share...Secondly it is no longer clear at which point rights of ownership actually manifest themselves. that is at which point some one can wrap up an image and use it to sell products. Nor are the rules of what is owned and whatnot at all stable. one the contrary, we programes, new application are endlessly being unwound to create different forms of ownership and possession.
New internet companies googles or facebooki or Amazon etc) exist not only in flogging product but more in defing new ways to possess things, differnt ways they might be and new possibilities of somewhere in the system a role for a traditional money making) form of owning. Even if this last point is merely the fact hat peoples are seeking to possess product - they do not own, and therefore are open to be advertised at...
Each company then as its own economy of owning and possession want it owns, what others do or no one does, and what it allows one to possess. regulation becomes problematic, and simplification impossible - for there is always a new product, defining new relationship up and coming.
a challenge is then put down to all traditional companies and states. Most heavily it falls on those companies be they mail order concerns or whatever that have been traditionally rather like what the internet provides. They will have to adapt to the new shifting world of possessing but not owning, or be moribund. But the burden is always clearly being felt deeply by the state, which feels it ought to somehow contain in some form of ownership (and so responsibilty) the myriad possession of the internet opens up. It wants then to build ownership into the system- to make some one own something somewhere and at some point.
But also it is clear that the sate is suffering from its own crisis of confidence about both what it ought to own, and what merely possess (it does not need to own the infrastructure; and whether it really needs to possess things at all - maybe owning them, and so defining broad policy, not individual local regulation and goal, is the thing....
Ownership and possession has ceased to be simple or predictable- and is rather now clearly emergent. New rules are constantly created, new patterns, what by the time we get used and start to think in term of the old system once again warp and change their natures. The old rules and the capitalism that went with it, is coming in certain places inoperable. The game will then be whether this cancer spread across the entire system, or whether it is kept in the one place. If the former happens the entire edifice of capitalism wobbles on its foundation. Infinite blood and money is likwly to be shed to keep prevent the spread occurring.
What fun- one might say darkly.