4 ms·

Considering the long list of awful pharma, insurance, and marketing firms in the world out there, Regeneron is probably one of the better outcomes

bflesch 1y ago
They will keep selling and re-selling copies of this dataset as long as there are interested buyers.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
  Licensing, not selling.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  There may be some sort of exclusivity clause that comes with the sale - though, of course, that's no guarantee of anything.
  - xxpor 1y ago
    Does the first sale doctrine apply to B2B?
    - pavel_lishin 1y ago
      I'm not sure if buying a CD from Walmart is comparable to buying a large business full of people's personal data.
    - hiatus 1y ago
      First sale doctrine only applies to physical copies.
- benrapscallion 1y ago
  That’s not what has been happening with DiscovEHR and Regeneron Genetics Center data.
  - sumeno 1y ago
    So far
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  So the database of DNA will continue to be copied, and copied, and copied... Life, uh, really does find a way!
xyst 1y ago
There is no "better outcome". People who got bamboozled into paying for this junk service shouldn’t have their DNA data treated as some commodity that can be traded like a stock. The sale of this data should be treated as PII and "transfers of ownership" should not be implied. The default for every user should be to delete the data upon sale of company and provide a way for users to opt in to the transfer. Users should be incentivized and trust (if any at this point) needs to be rebuilt with this new company, not implied.
- yawnxyz 1y ago
  It's pretty wild we don't have laws that cover this
  - ikiris 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - engineer_22 1y ago
      The other party had the house senate and presidency for 2 yrs, made little progress, kept no promises. I don't think partisan politics really relevant here
      - lern_too_spel 1y ago
        During those two years, that party passed some form of universal healthcare (ACA) and banking reform meant to stop the next financial meltdown (Dodd-Frank). Those were the two major promises they made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress
      - ikiris 1y ago
        This is just whataboutism and frankly unnecessary defensiveness. There were not partisan commentary made. The literal advertised platform of the dominant party is anti regulation so why did you feel the need to go all reactionary to it?
slg 1y ago
Which somewhat undermines all the doomsday scenarios that people have been talking about. Going back to 23andMe going bankrupt in the first place, this data is clearly not worth nearly as much as it would be if any potential buyers thought there was an actual legal path to abusing this data in the way many are predicting. That doesn't mean that won't change in the future and part of the problem here is that there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube, but buyers don't think this will change anytime soon, which should be an indication that it probably won't.
- lesuorac 1y ago
  Idk. Everybody made fun of Elon buying twitter but the spin-off from it (X.ai) was valued enough to buy the original company. We'll need to wait a bunch of more years to see if the 23andme concerns were unfounded.
  - mgiampapa 1y ago
    Those are all paper transactions with made up numbers. You need outside money coming in from sane investors for the numbers to mean things.
    - next_xibalba 1y ago
      Huh? Both the acquisition of Twitter and the ongoing capitalization of X.ai involved real outside money from external investors.
      - mgiampapa 1y ago
        The sale of X to X.ai at the end of march was not an arms length transaction.
    - lesuorac 1y ago
      Fidelity isn't a sane investor? Crucial X.ai bought out X with a minority of stock. X.ai as in the thing spun out from X to do ai using X's data. Fidelity seems to value X.ai enough to be happy to have gotten more shares of it using the X shares. I swear if OpenAI happened like 1 year prior to the twitter sale then everybody would have a different opinion about 44 Billion being the correct price for twitter.

bflesch 1y ago

They will keep selling and re-selling copies of this dataset as long as there are interested buyers.

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
Licensing, not selling.
pavel_lishin 1y ago
There may be some sort of exclusivity clause that comes with the sale - though, of course, that's no guarantee of anything.
- xxpor 1y ago
  Does the first sale doctrine apply to B2B?
  - pavel_lishin 1y ago
    I'm not sure if buying a CD from Walmart is comparable to buying a large business full of people's personal data.
  - hiatus 1y ago
    First sale doctrine only applies to physical copies.
benrapscallion 1y ago
That’s not what has been happening with DiscovEHR and Regeneron Genetics Center data.
- sumeno 1y ago
  So far
shadowgovt 1y ago
So the database of DNA will continue to be copied, and copied, and copied... Life, uh, really does find a way!

xyst 1y ago

There is no "better outcome". People who got bamboozled into paying for this junk service shouldn’t have their DNA data treated as some commodity that can be traded like a stock. The sale of this data should be treated as PII and "transfers of ownership" should not be implied. The default for every user should be to delete the data upon sale of company and provide a way for users to opt in to the transfer. Users should be incentivized and trust (if any at this point) needs to be rebuilt with this new company, not implied.

yawnxyz 1y ago
It's pretty wild we don't have laws that cover this
- ikiris 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - engineer_22 1y ago
    The other party had the house senate and presidency for 2 yrs, made little progress, kept no promises. I don't think partisan politics really relevant here
    - lern_too_spel 1y ago
      During those two years, that party passed some form of universal healthcare (ACA) and banking reform meant to stop the next financial meltdown (Dodd-Frank). Those were the two major promises they made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress
    - ikiris 1y ago
      This is just whataboutism and frankly unnecessary defensiveness. There were not partisan commentary made. The literal advertised platform of the dominant party is anti regulation so why did you feel the need to go all reactionary to it?

slg 1y ago

Which somewhat undermines all the doomsday scenarios that people have been talking about. Going back to 23andMe going bankrupt in the first place, this data is clearly not worth nearly as much as it would be if any potential buyers thought there was an actual legal path to abusing this data in the way many are predicting. That doesn't mean that won't change in the future and part of the problem here is that there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube, but buyers don't think this will change anytime soon, which should be an indication that it probably won't.

lesuorac 1y ago
Idk. Everybody made fun of Elon buying twitter but the spin-off from it (X.ai) was valued enough to buy the original company. We'll need to wait a bunch of more years to see if the 23andme concerns were unfounded.
- mgiampapa 1y ago
  Those are all paper transactions with made up numbers. You need outside money coming in from sane investors for the numbers to mean things.
  - next_xibalba 1y ago
    Huh? Both the acquisition of Twitter and the ongoing capitalization of X.ai involved real outside money from external investors.
    - mgiampapa 1y ago
      The sale of X to X.ai at the end of march was not an arms length transaction.
  - lesuorac 1y ago
    Fidelity isn't a sane investor? Crucial X.ai bought out X with a minority of stock. X.ai as in the thing spun out from X to do ai using X's data. Fidelity seems to value X.ai enough to be happy to have gotten more shares of it using the X shares. I swear if OpenAI happened like 1 year prior to the twitter sale then everybody would have a different opinion about 44 Billion being the correct price for twitter.