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Declaring Personal Data as Property

I have a proposal that may help with some of our ‘big tech’ issues – declare data about an individual as their property, giving them similar control of data about them, as authors have over their works.

If interested, please view the video, i would be interested to see your feedback.  

8 replies on “Declaring Personal Data as Property”

The first casualty of something like this will be investigative reporters like Project Veritas, and Judicial watch. Mark my words.
You’re creating a censorship loophole that can be used to hide a truckload of crimes, suppress information voters need to make decisions, and muzzle any opposition.

If you had watched the video you would have seen that I specifically include investigative journalism as ‘fair use’.
if you are going to comment, watch the video.

By Post Author

Data about any individual is multilayered. What is suggested will require licenses to be granted from an individual to every person with whom said individual is acquainted or comes in contact. The resulting legal quagmire will effectively kill the entire civil and criminal legal systems of the world. In short, this proposal is completely impractical.

Thanks for the feedback. As stated, but obviously not clearly enough, there will be a fair use provision for friends and family incidental collection of data. Any other time we are creating data about ourselves, it is trivial to have a ‘do you agree to the use and storage of this data for … whatever transaction?’
I suppose an ‘implied consent’ for certain things like using a credit card to buy you coffee would make things easier.
Certainly nothing insurmountable.

By Post Author

You are already consenting to such agreements whenever you sign in to FB, Google, etc.
The data belongs to you. We don’t need a law or a constitutional amendment to establish that your personal data belongs to you. The “problem,” if there is one, is that people don’t realize that their data is valuable and they give it away, or exchange it for access to services such as FB. What would bring all this to a screeching halt would be a law that says that you can’t give your data away to a company, or exchange it for services, that the company must compensate you in cash.
There are already rules on the books for tax purposes stating that, say, an accountant and a lawn mowing company can’t agree to “I’ll do your books and you mow my lawn.” So there’s precedent for those kinds of rules in the tax code. (Of course, I personally think that the tax code is Wrong and that a Really Good Argument for going to a sales-tax method instead of income-tax method would be to get rid of the entire tax code and all of its ridiculous rules.)

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