Four conditions, none of them optional
Say the bytes are on your drive. Are you done? Not yet — a folder of anonymous blobs is not ownership, it is custody of unknown objects. This quest uses a strict, operational definition. You own a model when four conditions hold at once:
- Bytes in hand. The actual tensor files exist on storage you control — not a cache a runtime may garbage-collect, not a folder owned by a container user, not "the cloud drive that syncs when it feels like it".
- Digest verified. You have checked the files against a cryptographic digest the author published (or computed one at acquisition time and recorded it). The copy can now prove it is the artifact, not a lookalike.
- License read. You know which license governs the artifact and what it permits — research-only, commercial with conditions, truly open. An artifact whose license you have not read is a liability you have not priced.
- Offline access. With the network unplugged, you can go from your storage to a loaded model. If anything in that path phones home, you own a dependency, not a model.
Each condition exists because its absence has a documented failure mode. Unverified bytes: corrupted or tampered transfers that load anyway and quietly degrade outputs. Unread licenses: downstream use you cannot legally justify. Network dependencies: the loan from the previous lesson, smuggled back in through a config file.
Custody versus ownership
It helps to separate three roles people confuse. A tenant reaches the model through someone else's infrastructure and holds nothing. A custodian holds bytes but cannot vouch for them — the download folder full of model_final (2).bin files. An owner holds bytes, can vouch for them, knows their terms, and can use them in the dark. The jump from tenant to custodian is a download. The jump from custodian to owner is verification and record-keeping — much cheaper, chronically skipped.
This is why the later tracks spend so much time on digests and metadata. Those are not bureaucratic niceties; they are the entire difference between the second and third role. And notice what the definition does not include: running the model, liking the model, or having a relationship with its maker. Ownership is about the artifact and your storage, nothing else.
A checklist you can run today
Turn the definition into a physical check. For one model you care about, fill in the four blanks: where the bytes live, what digest proves them, which license governs them, and what loads offline. Any blank you cannot fill is the exact next action — and each blank has a dedicated track in this quest.