Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

Video: Woz explains how cloud computing is turning us into Soviet Russia

Published Jun 14th, 2013 1:45PM EDT

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak had a quick chat with FayerWayer earlier this week, and the site asked him about a wide range of topics, including the new look of iOS 7 and the recent revelations about the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program. Wozniak’s most interesting comments, though, were about how cloud computing is slowly eroding the concept of owning content that we pay for, which in turn leaves us with less freedom than we used to have.

“Nowadays in the digital world you can hardly own anything anymore,” he said. “It’s all these subscriptions… and you’ve already agreed that every right in the world belongs to them and you’ve got no rights. And if you’ve put it on the cloud, you don’t own it. You’ve signed away all the rights to it. If it disappears, if they decide deliberately that they don’t like you and they cut that off, you’ve lost all the photographs of your life… When we grew up ownership was what made America different than Russia.”

The full video is posted below.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.