At least this isn't saddled with a profit motive and the destruction of the consumer computing market.
Does that make it my data? If not why? What makes these 1s and 0s uniquely yours?
If you care about privacy don't post private stuff online.
Saying "Lysenkoism is true" is factually wrong, but saying "physical possession is equivalent to ownership" is just a very fringe political opinion.
So I don't see how "the GDPR" can be wrong, unless you mean it in the sense of "the death penalty is (morally) wrong", which is just your opinion in that case.
My point is this: If your insurance provider, for example, obtains access to your medical records, and store them on their servers, does that make it "their data" to use as they please? This would imply that:
> But if the data is on a storage media that you own, I would consider it your data
> but saying "physical possession is equivalent to ownership" is just a very fringe political opinion.
It is a fringe opinion in today's West, but only relatively recently: since the 1970s, one might argue. The fringe opinion, to be clear, is the older one implied to some degree by "possession is nine tenths of the law", and which views copyright and patent as an artificial grant from the State, useful, but not property in the same sense as a table or a knife is someone's property.
(edited for typo)
The fact that makes it your data is that you physically can share it with someone else.
At least that's the value system I live by and I believe should be in place for all because it perfectly reflects the reality of what happens with ones and zeroes.
Tangential but, if a nonhuman takes the photo, that makes it public domain, right? (In this case a monkey, or maybe in the case of a robot?)
Or is it different if there's a human in the photo?
> That's how data should work and eventually will.
If you’re going to argue data ownership at all, it seems to me the creator of the data is the owner, unless transfer ownership to another person or to the public domain.
On the other hand, I can understand a stand that data can never be “owned”, but I don’t think you are saying that.
Particularly when it comes to training AI it's not at all clear to me how traditional copyright benefits society at large. Obviously models regurgitating works wholesale would be problematic. But also obviously models are extremely useful tools and copyright is largely an impediment to creating them.
First of, I am a very reasonable person so you already have one. Second of, even in our sick information economy, public data can be owned when gathered in a database by a third party. The company that created the database can sell access to it and go after people that re-publish the database. Even though it consists 100% of public and free data.
> If you’re going to argue data ownership at all, it seems to me the creator of the data is the owner, unless transfer ownership to another person or to the public domain.
If you go by what's natural, instead of by "please, institutionally protect my obsoleted business model", the creator has the sole ownership of the data until he transfers the data to someone else. If he made a copy and gave it to someone, now they both have the ownership. If he just gave away the data now there's a new single owner of the data. Then IP ownership would work just like ownership of every other actual thing in the universe.
> On the other hand, I can understand a stand that data can never be “owned”, but I don’t think you are saying that.
Oh, it definitely can be owned. I own all zeroes and ones on the computer that I own. Please don't steal them and don't tell me what I can do with them.
If I’m not giving money to the creators, why should I give any to the thieves?
Either pirate for free, or pay the creators.
It definitely belongs to someone. To the person holding it (provided that it wasn't stolen). Just as any other actual thing. Except for borrowed items.
Your definition of data ownership certainly is a definition, but it's far from obvious or mainstream. If you texted an intimate photo to an ex, do you consider them as the owner of the photo, meaning that they're allowed to do whatever they want with that photo (as ownership typically implies)?
Basically only borrowed and stolen. Stealing (actual stealing) is a crime by itself. And it doesn't make sense to borrow data. If somebody borrows you a song, you can just make copy yourself and the copy is yours. Which is how reality always worked. Didn't you have a casette player with two slots? Those weren't for playing two tapes simultaneously. Is the new generation so brainwashed by virtual world of fictional intelectual property, terms and conditions nobody reads and licenses which claim to be source of your rights and don't give you any, that they have forgotten how information exchange actually works in the real world?
> which ignores a bunch of history and legal precedent establishing exactly what it is people mean when they say somebody owns something.
I think copyright ignored more. And doesn't reflect reality on top of that.
> but it's far from obvious or mainstream
It's obvious and spontaneously created by anyone who deals with data and doesn't know or care about the (stupid) concept of intelectual property. "Do you have the file?" What does it mean intuitively? Yes, I have it. I can make you a copy.
> If you texted an intimate photo to an ex, do you consider them as the owner of the photo
Yes. Obviously. Just as much as I am. Thinking otherwise would be believing falsehoods about reality.
> meaning that they're allowed to do whatever they want with that photo (as ownership typically implies)?
They obviously can do with it whatever they want to. Are they allowed? Is the sun allowed to rise up in the morning? What's use there is to forbidding it?
They can do thousand copies or delete it from existence. They can modify it. Print it. Whatever.
When they publish it. Well, what happens next depends entirely about whether I'm entitled to protection of things I consider private from being publicized. Or if I'm protected from harassment. I might be or I might not be. However whatever protections I am awarded in that regard have nothing to do with general rules about the data. If I harass a person with a megaphone that I own it still could be illegal.
> They obviously can do with it whatever they want to. Are they allowed? Is the sun allowed to rise up in the morning? What's use there is to forbidding it?
I obviously can go around punching people in the face on the street. What use is there to forbidding that? Perhaps that it's beneficial for society to discourage people from doing certain things?
As for ignoring history, are you aware that patents (N.b. copyright is far from the only law that applies to intellectual property) were created in order to encourage people to share their ideas, with the incentive of an exclusive right to them for a number of years? Because exactly the sort of "free for all" rights you are arguing for meant a huge incentive to keeping everything as secret as possible.
> Thinking otherwise would be believing falsehoods about reality.
There is no "ground truth" to ownership (neither for data nor physical property), only what people as a collective consider it to be. I'd say you're the one believing a falsehood about ownership, given that your position is in the definite minority.
Finally, can you explain what you think stealing is? Why is it a crime for me to take one bike to work but not the other, if they both stand unlocked outside the building?