It's a relief to see that the top-voted comments already disagree with this article. I disagree so much however that I need to voice it, I can't just upvote oth

It's a relief to see that the top-voted comments already disagree with this article. I disagree so much however that I need to voice it, I can't just upvote others. So, here it goes: Nope, nope nope nope. Personal data property is a bad idea. And it probably does not come from people who actually care about privacy. It is an ideological push towards more and more privatization and "free market" economy. Think of it for a minute. If personal data protection is based on private property that you can sell or rent, it means that rich people get a right to privacy, while others will necessarily rent or sell their data so they can pay for rent or feed their kids. It means power over personal data belongs with money. That's not what anyone actually fighting for the right to privacy actually wants. Now, people should have control over their personal data, that's a fact. But control means rights, it does not mean that a notion of property is necessary (or maybe a loosely derived notion, like something resembling moral rights [1], in addition to control). It also means regulation of data controllers and data processors. The fight for actual privacy is not the fight for ownership, it's the fight for control. For those who, rightly, think that "control" is a vague term: it was, but it has been properly defined [2], and more recently formally modeled [3] (disclaimer: I'm one of the author of the latter article). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights [2] https://script-ed.org/article/control-over-personal-data-true-remedy-or-fairy-tale/ https://script-ed.org/article/control-over-personal-data-tru... [3] https://pablo.rauzy.name/research/publications/lemetayer2018capacity.pdf https://pablo.rauzy.name/research/publications/lemetayer2018...