
But it turned out that the drugs that actually save lives require assembling all those basic research tools. A tremendous amount of money went into the field. And that kicked off the biotech revolution. But starting in 1980, America made it possible to patent many of those same discoveries. It used to be the case that in America, scientists were rewarded for their discoveries with reputation, with pats on the back, with publication, with tenure, with Nobel prizes. The biomedical example is a very powerful one. But there’s an equal and opposite phenomenon that I discovered some number of years ago, which is, when you have too many owners of a resource, the resource is wasted by being underused. So if anyone can fish in the ocean, well, the fish will be depleted. Heller: We’re all familiar with the idea that if a resource is unowned, too many people will use it. You write in the book about what happens when we have too much ownership.

They want you to feel that you’re stealing just a little - or you’re unsure whether you’re stealing - because it gives them the possibility of later recruiting you to be a subscriber.


So what HBO is using - and not just HBO, this is also true for Netflix - is one of the most advanced strategies of ownership design: a strategy that we call “tolerated theft.” And in this case, tolerated theft helps them build their customer pipeline. And young people who might not pay for the show are extremely valuable to HBO.
Share your hbo now password password#
The former president of HBO, Richard Plepler, he wanted password sharing because it helped build what he called “video addicts.” He wanted buzz about the show. Sharing somebody’s password feels very different.īut when you from the HBO side, here’s what’s so surprising - actually kind of shocking. So when it’s a DVD, the notion of shoplifting produces a really visceral reaction. The physical possession is what links us back to our animal territoriality. It turns out that we have different areas in the brain that connect to physical possession and intangible possession. They’re never saying “Mine!” about their joke or their story. Michael Heller: When you hear kids on a playground shouting “Mine!,” they’re always talking about their toy or their doll. Why is it that most of us wouldn’t dream of stealing a DVD of “Game of Thrones,” but many of us are willing to share an HBO password? OK, here’s an ownership question that seems particularly attuned to this pandemic moment, when we’re all so desperate for home entertainment. This is what we call an example of ownership engineering. They could have a rule that says you can recline, or you have to ask before you recline. The airlines are creating this ownership conflict, and they could solve it. Well, the reason is airlines have shrunk the space between seats - the “pitch” - in order to cram more people into a steel tube. The third point is: Why are these battles breaking out? We didn’t use to have fights over reclining seats. It’s attached to it, we’re taking it.” And we say, “No, this is ours.” When I go on Amazon or Google, or perhaps the Boston Globe website, they basically say “attachment”: “You’re leaving your trail of your looks and your likes on our website. The second thing is, these stories are identical to one of the most consequential debates of our time, which is, Who owns our click streams? These are our “looks” and our “likes,” they’re worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and they power much of the economy. There’s no natural, correct answer for who owns the wedge of space.

The first one is the realization that this is all about battling stories. You’re taking something that’s not yours.”Ī lot of things flow from that simple story. And I possess, I own, I control this area - and when you lean your seat into it, it’s trespass. The person in front is saying “attachment”: “I have a recline button on my seat, so all the space that is attached to where my seat can recline - that belongs to me.” The person in the back seat who’s getting the laptop scrunched into their chest is saying “possession”: “I’m working in this space. James Salzman: When we hear this fight breaking out, what we don’t hear is that they’re actually telling two discrete stories. So what does the James Beach story tell us about ownership? The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Ideas recently spoke with the authors via Zoom - Heller in his Upper West Side apartment and Salzman in his office at UC Santa Barbara.
