Under Norwegian law, data is not protected, hence it cannot be owned. If you have access to some data, by all means, it's "yours" (under Norwegian jurisdiction).
Phone book I get but recipes? Technically speaking, how is a recipe different then technical instructions on how to build a specific microchip? The latter not being considered as just 'data'.
Not that I think recipes should be copyrighted, the question is more for how legally they are different.
If you write a manual for making a TSMC microchip that presentstion is copyrighted.
It may also contain patented and trademarked things.
But the process itself of
- get sand
- mold
- make wafer
Is not copyrighted.
This is called idea - expression.
You can’t copyright the idea but you can copyright the expression. (It’s why recipes have stories about grandma. If someone scrapes that story that’s copyright infringement)
You an definitely patent a recipe for most manufacturable items. You can't copyright it.
As an extension, you can copyright an operation manual, but not the "general" expression of the pure operational steps themselves. Someone else could rewrite the operational manual "from scratch".
Then how do software patents work? Aren't they mostly general expressions of steps used by computers? I can see that actual code would be copyrightable but how is it patentable?
- Copyright: "I" created $thing. I have the right to distribute copies of that exact thing. I may grant others the right to distribute $thing I've made.
- Patent: I have written down $process. No one else before me wrote down this process (that the patent office has record of.) This process makes a thing. No one else has the right to use that process unless I agree to it for about 20 years in the US.
And for good measure:
- Trademark: I sell $thing under $brand. No one else has the right to sell similar $things with a $brand that sounds like mine.
What about the precise configuration of 1s and 0s that just happen to induce playback of human-interpretable audio and video when interpreted by specific software? What about the digital representation of a film doesn't count as "data"?
Well, that's exactly it. You won't find it anywhere in Lovdata, because data isn't covered by Norwegian law. You can essentially find data protection two places, under Opphavsrett (Åndsverksloven), the general copyright law, which only cover creative work, and database systems.
Interestingly, it's not clear that seismic imaging of a mountain (say) is copyrightable, but if you point your camera to that same mountain, it's suddenly creative, and therefore protected.
There is a thing called Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) where ships voluntarily transmit weather and sea condition data for meteorological studies. Someone realized there are all these floating sensor suites moving around an managed to organize all the various ship owners to participate because it helps weather predictions for all. It's nice when people can work together.
I'd love to be able to purchase something like this and a weather station that will submit data to a free public service so people can receive better and more accurate / timely weather data. I can't tell if that is possible out of the box via AirGradient from this website (or if such a service even exists, as they only mention "24 months AirGradient data platform / map" which implies proprietary)? Do people know of a similar solution for a weather station?
We are working on an integration with openAQ [1] to share air quality with them (opt-in for people that use our data platform). OpenAQ is an NGO with the mission to collect air quality data from all kinds of sources from around the world and make it available to the public with its free API.
However this would only cover the air quality part -not weather data.
It smells like an abusive clause. I would be tempted to ignore it and never tell anyone if I had to collect data from those sensors. They would be named sensors from company "A" in the reports and papers.
But to do things in a pleasing way for legal people, how could we proceed ?
A little off-topic but does anyone know of pressure sensors suitable for home-baked blood pressure monitor?
I'm planning to build a little Arduino- or raspi-based device to own the data. All I managed to find were (non-blood) pressure sensors and I'm unsure whether these could be used for blood pressure monitoring and how I'd place them against the hand to get readings of reasonable quality.
If this approach is a no-go, a ready device with some physical interface (and no "cloud"-related garbage) allowing readings would do.
Yep! I have the Evolv, and I use the third-party MedM BP apps[1][2] to sync the readings from the device via bluetooth to my phone (and HealthKit). No first-party app needed.
Is it possible to connect to these devices from BT-enabled device like raspi with a dongle? I'd like to avoid sharing any health-related data with VC-funded businesses (Apple, Google, not only app developers)
The usual blood pressure measure instruments[1] work AFAIK just like the "old" manual way, what is measured is the (air) pressure in the band, though they use an oscillometric (tiny variations in the pressure) approach to detect the heart beats as opposed to the stethoscope (auscultatory).
1) you place the stethoscope between the arm and the inflatable band
2) you pump air in the band
3) at a certain pressure you will start hearing the heart beats
4) you continue pumping until you cannot hear them anymore + a little bit more
5) you start slowly release pressure until you can hear the heart beats (at this point what you read on the manometer is the max pressure or systolic)
6) you continue slowly releasing pressure until you cannot hear the heart beats anymore (at this point what you read on the manometer is the min pressure or diastolic)
The electronic device replace the hand pump with an electric pump, the manometer with a pressure sensor and the stethoscope with the capability to detect oscillations in the pressure from the same sensor.
I believe that the issue in a home made electronic device is not so much the sensor but rather the conversion from raw data of the sensor (oscillometric waveform) into heartbeats and the speed with which the band is inflated and deflated (size and speed of pump, accuracy of the release valve).
[1] both the ones that take pressure on the arm and those that take it at the wrist
The article is missing some details. It doesn’t say how you agree to the contract. I assume there’s some software you have to install to get data out of the device, and this term is in the EULA?
Is the software necessary to use the device - you could just not install it, or someone could write a third party driver that doesn’t make you agree to these terms.
How do they protect from false data injection? Are the sensors cryptographically signing their data?
BTW are there any sensors that encrypt and sign data before sending out for real security? I am not able to construct such a device, so I hope anybody did already? preferably open hardware?
So is the take that average people think that facts about the current air quality should be owned by people.
If you ask an average person what's the current temperature is or if it's raining outside they will likely tell you if they know. People don't feel a need to try and monopolize the knowledge of things like that.
I'm quite wary of talking about "average people" in general, at least without specifying what exactly is average about them, and having concrete data on where that average lies.
Also, when asking people, framing is a huge confounder.
If you ask a bunch of people of average or below average tech literacy if they care whether they own the data from their fitness trackers, the majority would probably say no.
But if instead you asked them whether they like the fact that they have to pay a monthly subscription fee to Google/Oura/whatever, the distribution would likely change quite a lot.
We of course know these questions are secretly the same question.
In fact if there's somewhere I can contribute my air quality data I would like to. I have self-hosted sensors which feed data to my own monitoring software but now that you say it like that I want to put it to use.
It's also true as well. If it's low friction and easy to use your average person doesn't care and isn't aware of T&C's. And even when made aware don't care either.
The average consumer of smart devices is exactly that, that is the metric. Tacking on further metrics buy which to divid a group is a never ending game. How much specificity do you actually want? Shall we take in a person's DNA? How many electrons are in their body? What timescale shall we set.
Without generalisation, or being able to group things together you'll find it hard to make any statements about anything.
You may not, there are communities though that might. People who live in the “blast radius” of a polluting entity like a refinery might want to aggregate data over time to see if there’s a slow leak or whether the entity is emitting excessively at night which I recently learned is quite common. Knowing the instantaneous value at one point is not as valuable as owning the aggregate data over a region over time. So owning the data allows contributing to such aggregates which allow speaking truth to power about the reality of particulates in the air.
Measuring air pollution is increasingly becoming a political act.
Suppose Corp.X distributes free cloud connected air quality monitors across neighbourhood Z in an act of seeming largesse.
Fifteen years later the surviving members of the District Z Carcinoma Club are still fighting appeals to gain access to the pooled historic data which each of them have contributed to.
At the very least log your own data | buy your own monitors | be sure you have right of access regardless of "ownership" | etc.
