I agree this is a fascinating post and important wake up call for some, but also a few points of debate:

1. Owning a customer can mean owning the customer relationship, when used in the context of a dispute or dialog between two partners that involve company data. Relationship can mean privileged use of data or right to contact in that context.

2. a brand winning in a zero sum game space – could apple be said to “own” its devotees in the personal computing, personal audio, or smartphone spaces?

As long as one isn’t so unbalanced as to assume ownership means actual ownership of a person, there might be some value in that bathwater still??