The Washington Post reports that the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (a consortium of technology and entertainment companies) has picked Neustar to develop their “Rights Locker”, which allows people to legally purchase movies and view it on a wide variety of devices. That strikes me as a good example of the way that technology can help overcome the tension between creative rights and consumer rights.

However, there is a very interesting point near the end about our evolving expectations: Consumers are viewing ownership as less important than access.

“On the surface, it sounds fantastic,” said Danielle Levitas, an analyst with IDC, of the DECE technology. But Levitas also wonders if consumers have already gotten used to devices that stream video content and don’t necessarily require the type of ownership that Neustar’s database would track. “I think the market is starting to move past ownership and is much more focused on rental now,” she said. “There’s a cultural shift around getting stuff ‘on demand’ and watching it once.”

Is that true?  More to the point, is that a trend we can expect to continue?  I think it probably is.  Faster broadband speeds have led to a real increase in (1) On-Demand, and (2) Subscription models.

We are moving from an Ownership Society to an Access Society.  I think that trend continues for awhile.

The cultural shift is intriguing, though not really all that different from how we’ve historically approached content in many other forms.   In a digital economy, with an abundance of content, access may trump ownership.