Digital colonialism rests on layered ownership spanning devices, cloud, and content.

Evidence

There are many additional layers of colonial-style ownership. One is domination over production of the “tethered” devices through which human beings connect to the infrastructures of data collection (by “tethered,” we mean a device whose use ties users to reliance on a particular operating system or set of proprietary products: think of Apple but also of the use restrictions built into most portable devices). Another is power over the computing capacity that enables large-scale processing and storage of data, usually known as the cloud, a mystificatory term. (Amazon by the end of 2017 already had 51.8 percent of global market share, rivaled only by Microsoft with 13.3 percent, the Chinese Alibaba with 4.6 percent, and Google with 3.3 percent.) Important also are the remarkable monopolies in content delivery, whether monopolies over last-mile internet connection or phone spectrum: consider the near monopoly power of broadband providers such as Verizon in the United States, which has driven the recent US net neutrality debates. Finally, as internet content circulation becomes ever more massified, there are new forms of control over the production of content (think of Netflix’s growing commissioning power or the pricing power over books and music of Amazon and Apple). — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 92

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the layered ‘colonial-style ownership’ structure underpinning the data colonialism thesis — useful scope precision.
• XREF: Connects to infrastructure/platform control debates in the attention/surveillance schools this rival frame is compared against. — connects to: Colonial-style ownership extends to device production and cloud computing capacity — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 92; Data colonialism, social quantification, and Cloud Empire form a single framework — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 163; The cloud centralizes data ownership in corporations that earlier internet models distributed. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 183 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: The 2017 market-share figures — worth checking later for updated share and whether the US/China duopoly claim holds.

Broader Connections

• Colonial-style ownership extends to device production and cloud computing capacity #corroborates (0.95) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 92
• Data colonialism, social quantification, and Cloud Empire form a single framework #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 163
• The cloud centralizes data ownership in corporations that earlier internet models distributed. #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 183