4 ms·

The question is, if it belongs to me, can I voluntarily give it up even under the known condition I can't ask for it back? I mean, it belongs to me right? That'

The question is, if it belongs to me, can I voluntarily give it up even under the known condition I can't ask for it back? I mean, it belongs to me right? That's where these laws often run afoul. You can have more freedom with consequences, or less freedom with restrictions.

bambax 8y ago
Data isn't "property", it should be an unalienable right, like an author's moral rights over his work: it's yours but you can't sell it or otherwise dispose of it.
- jrs95 8y ago
  Isn't authors selling the rights to their work basically how the entire book industry works?
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Selling the rights to publish your book is different from giving up all the rights you have over your book. The latter is something that (IANAL...) you can't do in many jurisdictions.
  - dsr_ 8y ago
    That's the copying right, not the moral right. The moral right is the right to be identified as the creator and the right to maintain the integrity of the work in subsequent copying.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      So, they can't sell that, as the GP is proposing, or they generally just don't under the current economic system? Because I'm pretty sure Dean Koontz does a variation of this, where he outlines the story but someone else actually writes the book, and it's published under his name.
      - JorgeGT 8y ago
        It depends on the jurisdiction. In some countries like the UK they can be indeed waived, but in others like France moral rights are inalienable -- any contract wherein you give up these rights is null and void by law.
      - dsr_ 8y ago
        That's a work-for-hire, in which the authorship of the work (and thus the moral rights) is agreed by all participants before the work starts to be FooCorporation. Classic work-for-hire includes ghostwritten novels and autobiographies, corporate reports, web pages, and most likely every line of code you've ever written while employed by a corporation. There are jurisdictions where moral rights cannot be sold, and others where they can, but work-for-hire nearly always sidesteps the issue.
LeifCarrotson 8y ago
Be clear what you mean by voluntary. I agree that preventing a person to choose to sell something they own is a restriction on their freedom. But problems arise when the negotiation of that exchange is unilateral, relegated to EULAs and contracts which are incomprehensible, non-negotiable, and mandatory to purchase the product, and performed in a less-than-perfectly-efficient market. It would be one thing if I could buy a Tesla, a Nest, or log onto a site with ads, and the process included a step where I could elect to share my data, to not share my data, or to give them the data and promise not to ask for it back, with different price points for each. It's another thing when giving people the freedom to give up certain rights results in all manufacturers requiring people to exercise that freedom in order to purchase products. The market is far from efficient. There is no car that's just like a Tesla but costs more by the value of this data exchange. There is no negotiation of the contract with Tesla, it's built into the purchase price and required by the legal department. Observing that the market is pervasively inefficient in a way that leads to a bad outcome, and devising regulations that correct the inefficiency, is precisely why we have laws and governments.
- Symmetry 8y ago
  I'd be fine if the only way to get a Tesla was to deliberately sign over your rights to the data. But nobody reads the EULA and the vast majority of consumers have no idea that this is something they're agreeing to. I'd really like for us as a society to rethink how consumer consent could work in a way that doesn't require everyone to be a lawyer. But given that most of the rules around this have been constructed implicitly by lawyers and judges I'm not sure how that could happen.
  - vkou 8y ago
    What about used car sales? Are you now unable to sell your car, unless the buyer agrees to the TOS?
    - ubernostrum 8y ago
      This is precisely how covenants work on real estate, and is how things like homeowners' associations perpetuate themselves: the original builder, or the first owner to join the HOA, attaches a covenant which will require all future owners to also join the HOA and follow the HOA's policies. In prior times, such covenants were also used to try to racially segregate property, by forbidding sale to a person of a race the covenant's creator disliked (such covenants are technically still valid, but unenforceable by US courts). And they're sometimes used for other things, too; I recall there was a house near my college's campus that the college wanted to purchase and use, but the owner had set up a restrictive covenant that would forbid any later purchaser/inheritor from selling it to the college.
gglitch 8y ago
I suppose GP's implication is that that known condition won't be permissible.

bambax 8y ago

Data isn't "property", it should be an unalienable right, like an author's moral rights over his work: it's yours but you can't sell it or otherwise dispose of it.

jrs95 8y ago
Isn't authors selling the rights to their work basically how the entire book industry works?
- adrianN 8y ago
  Selling the rights to publish your book is different from giving up all the rights you have over your book. The latter is something that (IANAL...) you can't do in many jurisdictions.
- dsr_ 8y ago
  That's the copying right, not the moral right. The moral right is the right to be identified as the creator and the right to maintain the integrity of the work in subsequent copying.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    So, they can't sell that, as the GP is proposing, or they generally just don't under the current economic system? Because I'm pretty sure Dean Koontz does a variation of this, where he outlines the story but someone else actually writes the book, and it's published under his name.
    - JorgeGT 8y ago
      It depends on the jurisdiction. In some countries like the UK they can be indeed waived, but in others like France moral rights are inalienable -- any contract wherein you give up these rights is null and void by law.
    - dsr_ 8y ago
      That's a work-for-hire, in which the authorship of the work (and thus the moral rights) is agreed by all participants before the work starts to be FooCorporation. Classic work-for-hire includes ghostwritten novels and autobiographies, corporate reports, web pages, and most likely every line of code you've ever written while employed by a corporation. There are jurisdictions where moral rights cannot be sold, and others where they can, but work-for-hire nearly always sidesteps the issue.

LeifCarrotson 8y ago

Be clear what you mean by voluntary. I agree that preventing a person to choose to sell something they own is a restriction on their freedom. But problems arise when the negotiation of that exchange is unilateral, relegated to EULAs and contracts which are incomprehensible, non-negotiable, and mandatory to purchase the product, and performed in a less-than-perfectly-efficient market. It would be one thing if I could buy a Tesla, a Nest, or log onto a site with ads, and the process included a step where I could elect to share my data, to not share my data, or to give them the data and promise not to ask for it back, with different price points for each. It's another thing when giving people the freedom to give up certain rights results in all manufacturers requiring people to exercise that freedom in order to purchase products. The market is far from efficient. There is no car that's just like a Tesla but costs more by the value of this data exchange. There is no negotiation of the contract with Tesla, it's built into the purchase price and required by the legal department. Observing that the market is pervasively inefficient in a way that leads to a bad outcome, and devising regulations that correct the inefficiency, is precisely why we have laws and governments.

Symmetry 8y ago
I'd be fine if the only way to get a Tesla was to deliberately sign over your rights to the data. But nobody reads the EULA and the vast majority of consumers have no idea that this is something they're agreeing to. I'd really like for us as a society to rethink how consumer consent could work in a way that doesn't require everyone to be a lawyer. But given that most of the rules around this have been constructed implicitly by lawyers and judges I'm not sure how that could happen.
- vkou 8y ago
  What about used car sales? Are you now unable to sell your car, unless the buyer agrees to the TOS?
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    This is precisely how covenants work on real estate, and is how things like homeowners' associations perpetuate themselves: the original builder, or the first owner to join the HOA, attaches a covenant which will require all future owners to also join the HOA and follow the HOA's policies. In prior times, such covenants were also used to try to racially segregate property, by forbidding sale to a person of a race the covenant's creator disliked (such covenants are technically still valid, but unenforceable by US courts). And they're sometimes used for other things, too; I recall there was a house near my college's campus that the college wanted to purchase and use, but the owner had set up a restrictive covenant that would forbid any later purchaser/inheritor from selling it to the college.

gglitch 8y ago

I suppose GP's implication is that that known condition won't be permissible.