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But if that's the case, why was I able to give this data to Facebook to begin with? It wasn't mine to give, right? As long as Facebook exists, my contact list

by lacker 7y ago

But if that's the case, why was I able to give this data to Facebook to begin with? It wasn't mine to give, right? As long as Facebook exists, my contact list is clearly my property, and I should be able to export it. Data just doesn't work naturally with the traditional concept of "belonging". It's natural for a physical object to have a single owner, and that owner has property rights, like you need to get the owner's permission to do anything with the object, and the owner has the right to give that object to someone else. But for data, it's far more common for data to be about multiple people and entities, and no single one is the owner. If I buy you an Amazon gift card, that transaction involves you, me, and Amazon. Who "owns" that data? It just doesn't map to ownership. You have to think in terms of rights for any of this to make sense. Who has the right to use the data, and who has the right to transfer the data to third parties? It looks like society is converging on a system where some entities will have the right to use data that they do not have the right to transfer. That isn't how traditional object ownership rights work, but the rules around data usage don't have to map to the rules around physical object usage.

Trombone12 7y ago
Copyright is no less a concrete concept, and that can have single owners, so this is already a somewhat solved problem. Invoking rights helps nothing, ownership is already inherently about who has rights, so all you do is muddle the meaning of "own" by diluting it.
- naringas 7y ago
  Copyright is a concept from an earlier era when copying something required both, a somewhat unwieldy machine, and a physical object for each copy. indeed, ownership is already about who has rights but it is also limited by the nature of whatever is being owned. If we focus on inescapable constraints, i.e. not those imposed by society (which are arbitrary and can be changed), it turns out that technological developments have removed some of those constraints. All you do is ignore new possibilities (and their accompanying new problems) by holding on to legal notions first introduced in the 17th century.

by lacker 7y ago

Trombone12 7y ago

Copyright is no less a concrete concept, and that can have single owners, so this is already a somewhat solved problem. Invoking rights helps nothing, ownership is already inherently about who has rights, so all you do is muddle the meaning of "own" by diluting it.

naringas 7y ago
Copyright is a concept from an earlier era when copying something required both, a somewhat unwieldy machine, and a physical object for each copy. indeed, ownership is already about who has rights but it is also limited by the nature of whatever is being owned. If we focus on inescapable constraints, i.e. not those imposed by society (which are arbitrary and can be changed), it turns out that technological developments have removed some of those constraints. All you do is ignore new possibilities (and their accompanying new problems) by holding on to legal notions first introduced in the 17th century.