Steve Mann (via) has produced a sculpture of a chair which downloads a sitting license from the internet. When the license is obtained, the chair retracts the spikes on the seat, and when the license expires, the spikes redeploy.
The piece makes a point about the rentware world we're fast approaching, where individuals are stuck in a kind of feudal relationship with commercial entities, who reach into our homes and track and bill us for the use of our household goods. [#]
There’s a discussion thread on Slashdot too.