6 ms·
"simple" solution (that breaks a whole lot of the world as we know it): Make a law that states people have ownership (including copyright) over their own PII.
by alasdair_ 4y ago
"simple" solution (that breaks a whole lot of the world as we know it): Make a law that states people have ownership (including copyright) over their own PII.
If that goes too far, do something like the UK's Data Protection Act of 1998 that insists almost all PII is subject to review by the individual and they can demand erroneous data be fixed. They can also demand deletion in various scenarios.
But personally, I like the copyright idea. If a copy of a song can be protected from being made legally, even if I personally make the copy, I see no reason why my most personal of details cannot be similarly protected.
- m463 4y ago> I like the copyright idea I used to add a copyright notice to the bottom of my resume, to prevent distribution. Don't know how well this works practically speaking, especially in this electronic day and age.
- ronsor 4y agoThe public policy reason is that facts can't be copyrighted, whether that's a street address or GPS coordinates at 5:32 PM.
- alasdair_ 4y agoIt's a "fact" that a book has specific words in a specific order, yet we're not allowed to share that fact with other people without legal repercussions. I fully understand laws are not written by computer scientists and that nuance is involved, I'm just saying that the idea that PII could be copyrightable doesn't seem THAT crazy to me.
- geodel 4y agoHuh, one can obviously share snippets of paragraphs or pages for review and all for books. Same with address, it is snippet of information about a person and not the whole detail of everything in a house.
- alasdair_ 4y agoYes, exceptions exist. But while you can use a small sample of a song in a review (say), you can't take the same sample and use it in your own song, even if it's just a few seconds. Perhaps PII for commercial use could be treated differently than for private use?
- joshribakoff 4y agoYou can measure the duration, key, BPM etc and publish that which are all facts. A recording of a song (even if it falls under fair use) is not a “fact”, it’s information that took creativity to produce, multiple people working independently would not produce the same exact song - unlike going around and measuring the height of bridges where if multiple people did it they would arrive at the same measurement
- _aavaa_ 4y agoJust as it's a fact that PI is 3.14 when approximated to 3 digits, it's also a fact that a particular recording can be represented by an MP3 file when approximated to about 3 MB.
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago> It's a "fact" that a book has specific words in a specific order, yet we're not allowed to share that fact with other people without legal repercussions. Talking about the order of words in text X is not the same as a reproduction of text X. Example: Original: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog Reproduction: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog Talking about the order: In the sentence beginning with the following fair-use excerpt "The quick brown", the word "fox" precedes "dog". > I'm just saying that the idea that PII could be copyrightable doesn't seem THAT crazy to me It would be awesome, because then I could license out my address and collect royalties any time it is used or mentioned.
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y agoThe first word of the sentence is "The". The second word of the sentence is "quick". The third word of the sentence is "brown". The fourth word of the sentence is "fox". The fifth word of the sentence is "jumped". The sixth word of the sentence is "over". The seventh word of the sentence is "lazy". The eighth word of the sentence is "dog". Eight facts. Would replicating an entire book like this violate the copyright? The entire text is reproduced in order, there's just a bunch of junk added. I suspect courts would rule that it is a copyright violation.
- joshribakoff 4y agoYea because your “fact” is literally a reproduction of the creative work with superfluous additions. Instead, if you publish a list of books and their unique word count it would be a collection of facts - and someone can copy your list (including mistakes) because your list isnt covered by copyright.
- salawat 4y agoProducing a Mona Lisa with a mustache would therefore be a reproduction with superfluous additions then, eh?
- 4y ago
- albio 4y agoOne portion of our daily 10,000 steps will be to write out some copywritten works in the GPS path to make sure our data is doubly copywritten and should not be reproduced!
- specialist 4y agoPer the US Constitution, right to privacy means sovereign control of my body, my self. Since I am my data and my data is me, I already own all my PII. We just want the legal system to honor this simple reality.
- landemva 4y agoYou can choose to not give away your data by not using those services. Boycott those services or help build competing privacy-centric services.
- specialist 4y agoHow could I have known GoodRx would sell my data to advertisers? I thought it was illegal for them to do so.
- landemva 4y agoI am not familiar with that service. If you work W-2, the payroll processor for your company likely gives your payroll details to theworknumber. This is ridiculous.
- specialist 4y agoFTC Enforcement Action to Bar GoodRx from Sharing Consumers’ Sensitive Health Info for Advertising [2023/02/01] Under proposed order, GoodRx will pay a $1.5 million civil penalty for failing to report its unauthorized disclosure of consumer health data to Facebook, Google, and other companies https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/02/ftc-enforcement-action-bar-goodrx-sharing-consumers-sensitive-health-info-advertising https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/02/... GoodRx Response to FTC Settlement https://www.goodrx.com/corporate/business/goodrx-response-to-ftc https://www.goodrx.com/corporate/business/goodrx-response-to... FWIW, I used to work in healthcare IT, mid 2000s. At the time, it was understood that sharing data for the purposes of marketing and advertising was illegal. Also, being a geek somewhat familiar with stuff like tracking pixels, I'm still not sure what to make of GoodRx's response. If I can't make head's or tails of this case, what hope does a layperson have?
- Godel_unicode 4y agoCompanies would just change the checkbox from “I acknowledge the privacy policy” to “I grant you this license”.
- hysan 4y agoI posit that that would make a huge difference in the public. Most people I know, both technical and non-technical, don’t realize such nuances until put in direct laymen’s terms when seeing anything legal related. It’s why companies use dark patterns and vague language around accepting TOSes, EULAs, etc.
- comte7092 4y agoThe problem isn’t the awareness so much so as who has leverage. Even people who are aware they are giving up their information are often willing to do so since they know the only alternative is to go without such service all together.
- advisedwang 4y agoYou could just say that requiring a license to use data for purposes that aren't essential to running the service is forbidden, similar to GDPR. The GDPR pop-ups are annoying, but you can genuinely collection of data now.
- mindslight 4y agoConsent pop-ups are more appropriately described as "surveillance industry pop-ups" rather than GDPR popups. The GDPR doesn't require nagging someone for consent to process data necessary for the service (otherwise the requests to even show those dialogs would be illegal). Rather the surveillance industry is trying to trick you into giving your consent to use your information for their own non-necessary purposes.
- Godel_unicode 4y agoThis is pointless word-smithing to get out of being blamed for consequences. These popups exist because of GDPR requiring them, they’re GDPR popups. GDPR is the prop65 of privacy, and there was no chance of any other result.
- mmkhd 4y agoFor copyright there has to be a minimum amount of creativity involved before the law applies. Small snippets of PII would not overcome that hurdle but these small pieces of PII are protected like you describe in the UK and the EU (GDPR). The rights grante by the GDPR cannot be signed awy by a licensing agreement, but the can be overruled by other laws (e.g. mandatory retention times for tax purposes).
- tracker1 4y agoGDPR doesn't apply in the US, or to the US Govt.
- darig 4y ago[dead]
- ravenstine 4y agoThat would never work for a variety of reasons, namely that it would result in an unsustainable amount of litigation. Arguments would also be made that copyright exists not just for the creator but for the public good, and if it harms society as a whole (which is conceivable if any given datum shared has a high probability of being a copyright violation) then it couldn't be justified. That is, of course, the insidiousness of copyright; it's used against the public routinely under the guise that it helps the public.
- specialist 4y agoAre you saying we shouldn't do things that are hard? Or are you saying the existing advertising surveillance industrial complex couldn't possibly be repurposed to also track who's abusing our PII?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mindslight 4y agoThe law would also need a provision that the right to use someone else's personal information could only ever be licensed, and that license could be revoked at any time. Otherwise the surveillance industry would just do the usual American dance of nullifying rights through contracts of adhesion. The FBI here is merely a symptom and the tip of the iceberg. The US sorely needs something akin to the GDPR, to prohibit this unaccountable shadow government that is the surveillance industry. I personally think passing the GDPR verbatim and letting the courts sort it out would be a decent approach given how our legislative process otherwise undermines regulation by letting corporate lobbyists buy exceptions that destroy the intent of the law while leaving only the bureaucratic red tape intact as an anticompetitive warning. But I do think that if the GDPR were to be translated into the US legal concepts, it would take the shape you've started to lay out.
- CatWChainsaw 4y agoPerhaps in tandem, incorporate everyone/turn everyone into LLCs. Corporations seemed to have more rights than people even before corporations were "people". Might as well level the playing field there too.
- JohnFen 4y ago> people have ownership (including copyright) over their own PII I like this idea in concept. The catch is how to define "PII". The current definition of it is incredibly inadequate, as it omits a great deal of information that is personally identifying. I do object to the expansion of copyright that this would require, though. Copyright law is already overly oppressive, and I fear this would make that worse. Perhaps make a distinct property right over PII instead?