"Property" was chosen specifically as a bait and switch. It tries to get people to take a concept that has been understood for thousands of years for physical objects, and apply it to this novel century-or-two long experiment for encouraging the production of easily-copyable things.
This is property.
One of them refers to tangible things, was first codified more than 5000 years ago, and is almost entirely uncontroversial.
The other was popular in 1700's France re: their system of privileges, and the people found it so onerous that they embarked on a campaign of executing nobility until it seemed like the concept was good and dead.
We can use the word however we like, it's just a word, but if we conduct ourselves as if they're the same sort of thing, which France was doing at that time, we're in for the same sort of pain.
So what I'm saying is that its a bad idea for us to let data be property.
Which definition are you referring to?
Debts, wholly intangible legal fictions, have been treated as property for thousands of years.
I wouldn't classify debt as an uncontroversial kind of property. In medieval Europe, Christians were prohibited from owning debt by their religions (Jews weren't, so they ended up being the lenders, which is probably why the stereotypes exist today).
I'd argue that the fungibility/resale of debt is a bad idea because it takes on weird properties when too much of it accumulates in one place.
So Jews ended up gravitating towards being jewelers, bankers, moneylenders, and so on. All of which, yes, did feed into stereotypes.
Do we have evidence around what the Code considered property? It seems to be vague [1]. (“Stealing” is applied to minor sons and slaves, for instance. And the terms “article” and named tangible items are used in some cases, while in others the translators chose the term property per se.)
> wouldn't classify debt as an uncontroversial kind of property
I wouldn’t either. I’m saying it’s old. And I wouldn’t say the concept of privately-owned land is “an uncontroversial kind of property” either, entire races had to be wiped out to consolidate that view.
I think we can agree that data is at least not on the uncontroversial end of that spectrum.
I guess I just don't see a meaningful difference between:
"____ cannot be property"
And
"At some other place or time ____ might be property but as a participant in the consensus for this place and time I am proposing that we not allow ____ to be property"
Its like rights. They only exist if you fight for them. Controversial notions of property are only legitimate if we let them be... so let's interfere with that legitimacy (and if we must, enforcement).
And it's certainly more than "hardly" a monopoly. If the government gives a certain company right to operate on train track infrastructure but denies the same to every other company, then does that first company hardly have a monopoly?
Of course it can. Ownership is a social construct.
It’s more accurate to say data resists being controlled. But honestly, so do e.g. air and mineral rights and the “ownership” of catalytic converters in cars parked on the street.
Why not? I sing song. You sing song. I beat you with stick because that’s my song. You stop singing song.
The operator isn't even called Anna, just in case that wasn't already obvious to literally everyone.
Yes. I kill you. Stealing was usually punishable by death in ancient cultures.
> You don't even know where I am
This isn’t a thing in early human societies.
Like, yes, you could theoretically get away. Lots of thieves of physical property actually get away. That doesn’t make said property indefensible in principle.
> This isn’t a thing in early human societies.
Sure it is. I hear you sing your song. I travel. I sing your song to other people while you're not around to hear it. You don't even know where I am.
(Of course, there was never any "theft", as it were. I even paid to go to your concert!)
There's legal title. And then there's possession.
AA clearly possesses this data. It's not incorrect for them to refer to it as "their" data, until and unless it is removed from their possession.
Totally agree.
We desperately need better social contracts which help us deal with data-about-me and data-i-created, but neither of those align very well with property.
I think it’s fair to argue this makes data something that should not be able to be owned. But saying it can’t be owned is plain wrong.
But regarding the particular implementation as codified in US law (and I think elsewhere also), property rights do not extend to data.
Maybe not in general, though I’m curious for a source. Practically speaking, what separates data and information is a necessarily subjective exercise. And information absolutely can be property.
There are laws about what happens to me if I break into your house and steal your property. I can therefore find you case precedent indicating that a TV is property because people have been charged with violating those laws when they steal a TV.
But I can't present to you the absence of such a thing. We have trademark, copyright, and patent law, but as far as I'm aware there's no crosstalk with things that talk about property, things like armed robbery.
Any lawyer making this argument.
> I can't present to you the absence of such a thing
I’m asking why you’re saying data theft isn’t codified under U.S. law. (It isn’t comprehensively, at least at the federal level. But it’s surprising to claim it doesn’t exist at all.)
Plenty of data becomes stale almost immediately. Plenty of data sources can be owned, but they also tend to be people.
What's usually happening here is that property is being misinterpreted as meaning something like object, but it just refers to a right of ownership which can be of objects.
This is factually incorrect. I don’t know if you’re unaware of the law or introducing your own beliefs about what it should be, but this is not how the law works.