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I'm torn between liking this view of personal data as property and also liking the view of Richard Stallman and the FSF that "intellectual property" is a legal
by ajdlinux 9y ago
I'm torn between liking this view of personal data as property and also liking the view of Richard Stallman and the FSF that "intellectual property" is a legal fiction that we ought to resist. What does it actually mean to "own" data, and is "property" the best metaphor to represent a set of personal data control rights?
- specialist 9y agoI hear ya. Pinko commie liberal me abhors the idea. Legal fictions like "property", "money", and "rights" are practical innovations that make society work better (eg more moral, greater public good). Kinda like the tech tree in games like Civilization. The books "The Mystery of Capital" and "Nonzero" influenced me a lot. Good starting points, optimistic, and more right than wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto_Polar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto_Polar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wright_(journalist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wright_(journalist) Until something better comes along...
- ajdlinux 9y agoRMS' objection to "intellectual property" isn't an objection to the concept of property in general, but rather an objection to conflating the rights that are associated with tangible property with the rights that are granted by copyright law and patent law. The canonical example is the language of "theft" used by organisations like the MPAA to refer to copyright infringement - RMS would say that illegally copying a copyrighted work doesn't deprive anyone else of their copy of said work, unlike stealing a sandwich from someone. RMS might disagree with me here, but I think the same thing can be said in this case - we need more precise terminology that accurately describes the types of infringement when it comes to misuse of PII.