
Data as a Property Right - peter_d_sherman
https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-property-right/
======
throwaway13337
This is the wrong approach.

It doesn't address the biggest privacy concern: the government's collection
and use of personal data. No restrictions there, I guess.

Information wants to be free - even when it's about you. Putting that genie
back in the bottle - the right to be forgotten - creates a world that is less
free.

We should be really going the other direction and not allowing these
corporations to hold this data in private silos to re-enforce their
monopolies. They use the force of law to hold these monopolies over the things
you've written so that it's their property and not the property of the
individual. That's wrong and that's granted by the government.

~~~
umvi
Well, as we are finding out, freedom results in people being hurt. If you
limit the freedom, you can prevent people from getting hurt.

Is freedom worth the harm it enables? That is a choice everyone has to make.
Most people are willing to give up a lot of freedom in exchange for mitigating
harm.

~~~
velosol
Generally yes.

When someone says "I give up this freedom" it's often because they don't use
it or it doesn't affect them. The problem is that what they are really saying
is "I give up this freedom for myself _and everyone else_."

This is bad when you have a large group willing to give up a freedom they
already don't use or care about that only affects a minority of people. The
problem comes that a different, overlapping large group is willing to give up
another freedom and now the minority affected by that loss was part of the
first large group. It's easy for this to continue until everyone has lost a
freedom they enjoyed because they signed up with some large group, often
thinking they were 'right'.

TL;DR: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

------
ihinsdale
The cost of complying with such regulations would effectively fall on
companies as a regressive tax. Which companies benefit in relative terms from
a regressive tax? The already-large ones.

~~~
vkou
Only large companies are capable of building a car that complies with
emissions and safety expectations, but that doesn't mean that we'd be better
off if there were tens of millions of black-smoke-spewing death-trap shitboxes
on the freeway.

Frankly, given the long history of data abuse, security problems, and
generally anti-human practices by IT and tech companies, I'd be perfectly fine
if cowboy developers not be allowed to touch this product space.

That's not to say that large tech companies are blameless angels in any of
this.

~~~
newfangle
Unfortunately I think your view is going to become the prevailing view and the
internet is going to become cable 2.0. People are just obsessed with finding
corners to round.

For some reason people think comparing loss of privacy when voluntarily
visiting a website to deaths caused by car accidents isnt intellectually
dishonest.

~~~
slimed
You're almost right.

Sure, I don't value my privacy, the security of my financial information, etc
as much as my life.

But it's close.

~~~
newfangle
Again a false equivalence. Financial information is already protected by
numerous regulations. We are talking about generic cookies that are being used
for tracking user behavior for a large number of useful and benign purposes.
Most of the data is already pseudonymous.

------
peter_d_sherman
Disclaimer: I am neither for nor against Andrew Yang as President; I merely
find affinity with the idea of _data as a property right_.

In other words, I think it's a good idea.

~~~
prepend
Sort of. I think it falls apart quickly.

If I draw a picture of you, is it your data or mine?

If you walk through my house and I store the pattern you leave in my WiFi
signal, is it your data or mine.

I think we’d have to narrowly define what belongs to an individual and it
would be too narrow to address the problem.

Also data as property would get signed away for nothing like how arbitration
clauses are in practically every contract with no added benefit to the signer.

~~~
umvi
> If I draw a picture of you, is it your data or mine?

Clearly mine. You recorded information about me without my consent.

~~~
MR4D
And when you use a Visa card? Is it yours, visa’s, the store’s, or the bank’s?

Or all of the above?

~~~
falcolas
Who is impacted and fiscally responsible when it's mis-used? That helps
quickly identify whose data it is.

~~~
MR4D
But you are using their card, their network, and their credit. So that is
clearly their information, is it not?

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anigbrowl
I prefer actual privacy rights that are inalienable than having my life
commoditized and made the subject of contractual bargaining for every little
thing.

------
danShumway
>>>

\- The right to be informed as to what data will be collected, and how it will
be used

\- The right to opt out of data collection or sharing

\- The right to be told if a website has data on you, and what that data is

\- The right to be forgotten; to have all data related to you deleted upon
request

\- The right to be informed if ownership of your data changes hands

\- The right to be informed of any data breaches including your information in
a timely manner

\- The right to download all data in a standardized format to port to another
platform

>>>

The vast majority of these rights only work when applied to commercial
entities. They don't protect you from government invasion, and they don't
protect you from individual/social invasion. When applied on the individual
level, many of them are flat-out unconsitutional (the right to be forgotten is
a particularly obvious example).

Does this matter? Is it a problem if we specifically target corporations
first? I think it does matter.

Even though corporations are currently some of the worst privacy offenders, I
think there's real harm in orienting the privacy debate around Capitalist
terms, and I think it sets a really bad precedent for future conversations. I
strongly suspect that a pivot to talking about privacy as a property right
being violated will make it easier for the government to dismiss future
criticism, and easier for malicious groups to claim that data from public
sources should be fair game.

My right to privacy is not based on the idea that I am being economically
harmed. It's based on the idea that I have a fundamental right to hide my
identity, and a fundamental right to choose what I disclose to the people
around me. Money has nothing to do with it.

This proposal also goes against years of collective advocacy from activists
for both an Open web and a private web that _no one can own a fact._ I firmly
believe that the expansion of IP laws are counterproductive, even when
expanded ostensibly for the sake of privacy.

Andrew Yang may speak for some members of the privacy community, but he
doesn't speak for all of them. I really wish the politicians who are just now
jumping on the privacy train would spend more time looking at the history
behind these debates and the history of the activists that were working before
them.

~~~
jjuel
How is the right to be forgotten unconstitutional? I would think me being able
to have my data deleted upon my request wouldn't necessarily infringe on my
own freedoms, but I could be wrong.

~~~
newfangle
Freedom of speech includes the right to spread the truth about others. The
"right" to be forgotten is the right to silence others.

~~~
krapp
Why are you implying that the right to be forgotten only applies to silencing
"truths?"

What truth am I forcing someone to be silent about if I simply don't want my
personal data used for malicious or unwarranted commercial purposes?

~~~
danShumway
It not that the Right to be Forgotten only applies to truths, it's that in
addition to everything else, it _also_ applies to truths.

If people are spreading lies about you in the US, you can sue them for
defamation. Beyond that, silencing someone because what they're saying 'isn't
relevant' goes against the US interpretation of the 1st Amendment.

Arguably, we can create exceptions there for corporations (although we should
expect a few court cases about it). But the (US) government can't restrict me
as an individual from talking about another person's past in private or public
spaces.

~~~
krapp
The right to keep and bear arms exists, yet it's illegal to commit murder with
a firearm. The right to vote exists, but not the right to commit vote fraud.
The fact that a right can be abused is not a valid argument that it doesn't,
or shouldn't exist.

If one objects to the right to be forgotten altogether, then one objects to
the right to demand that even false and libelous content can be removed from
the internet. You can sue for defamation, but you can't prevent the
publication and spread of defaming content.

>But the (US) government can't restrict me as an individual from talking about
another person's past in private or public spaces.

Yes but the right to be forgotten doesn't apply to private or public spaces,
it applies to data on the internet, or am I mistaken?

~~~
bduerst
Harm principle.

The government doesn't ban firearms, automobiles, knives, etc. because they
have _potential_ to cause harm, so why would the government break freedoms to
censor information on the basis that it has _potential_ to cause harm?

Defamation (libel/slander) is not a crime and is not censurable as such, but
you can be sued for the damages (harm) that it causes. You are free within
your first amendment rights to leave that defaming information up after it is
proven to cause harm in civil court, but then you are still liable for the
damage it continues to cause.

~~~
danShumway
> You are free within your first amendment rights to leave that defaming
> information up after it is proven to cause harm in civil court, but then you
> are still liable for the damage it continues to cause.

IANAL, but this is a weird interpretation to me. I'm not sure how to describe
a court fining you for publishing information other than, "compelling you to
remove that information."

I dunno, this really doesn't line up with my understanding of libel laws.

Of course, bear in mind that the Right to Be Forgotten has very, very little
to do with libel. If we were just talking about libel, we'd use existing libel
laws. The fact that Right to Be Forgotten exists _in addition_ to libel laws
should be enough to show that it is targeting different information.

I dislike that people bring up libel when debating Right to Be Forgotten,
because I view libel laws as largely irrelevant to the debate. It's just trope
#3 again[0].

[0]: [https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-
critique-...](https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-
censorship-tropes-in-the-medias-coverage-of-free-speech-controversies/)

~~~
bduerst
I didn't bring it up - I was explaining how it's different and not a form of
government censorship.

------
wefarrell
I appreciate Yang as a candidate and I hope his ideas gain traction. That
having been said, implementing these rights is a huge task. For example: "The
right to download all data in a standardized format to port to another
platform" Just deciding on a standardized format for all data will involve
significant political effort and technical effort.

I don't think it's even possible to apply these as blanket rights to all data.
Focusing on certain domains (healthcare, finance, etc...) will help.

~~~
phiresky
All of those rights or stronger are already in effect in the EU since last
year, which means most companies doing online business already have to comply
with them. In fact it's pretty clear that Yang mostly just copied GDPR with
this whole proposal. I'm not complaining, it's a great law if you're for
consumer protection.

Many companies already provide the option to download all data, and I've
written GDPR data request mails to multiple US based companies with success.
Mostly you get the data in JSON files (without schema).

Right now, many companies are trying as hard as they can to skirt the law, but
there's land mark cases happening already that will hopefully put an and to
that soon [1].

[1]: [https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/01/europes-top-court-says-
act...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/01/europes-top-court-says-active-
consent-is-needed-for-tracking-cookies/) ironically, techcrunch is a prime
example of a "tracking cookie consent" popup that is absolutely illegal and
will hopefully get them huge fines once the data protection agencies have
their hands less full with bigger fish (google, facebook, etc).

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RenRav
Some control over this stuff would be nice.

