Re: [Social-discuss] Who owns the data once transferred?

[Story Henry]

On 24 Mar 2010, at 17:19, address@hidden wrote:

>> he above license would be dangerous for user privacy in this medium.
>> I'm wondering, what sort of method do you all think would be ideal for
>> protecting data? In the end, as we all know, there is nothing anybody
>> can do to prevent data copying and sharing, unless we try to implement
>> some nasty DRM system, which I'm steadfast against. Decentralization
>> comes at a cost, no? :P
> 
> I think this notion is damaging to the idea that GNU Social should be
> purely P2P; if by sharing data users are pushing it directly to others'
> machines, they essentially have offered that data up for modification,
> storage, etc. by their peers, unless we use something messy like you said.

The whole notion of data ownership is complete nonsense. You cannot own data. 
Like you cannot own mathematical formulae. You can be liable for what you say 
though. So you need to start thinking in terms of speech acts. 

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_acts

Or perhaps publishing acts. 

If a doctor tells you to use some medicine, that has a certain weight, which is 
not at all the same as if someone in the bar says exactly the same thing. The 
difference is what we know of the speaker's skills, his knowledge tracking 
ability if you want - to use a term used by Nozick in his Philosophical 
Explanations analysis of knowledge.

  So if I publish my phone number, that is me saying something about myself. If 
someone else copies that same info, it is THEM saying something about me. For 
one if you build a foaf file, you'll soon see that you don't want to publish 
too much info about your friends: do you want to track their every movement? Do 
you want to be responsible for their mistakes?

  If I post some original text and say that I came up with it, and you 
republish the same text and say you came up with it, I am telling the truth, 
and you are lying. My status in the linked data network goes up, yours goes 
down. 

  If I publish something that is secret for only my friends to hear, and you 
make it public, or resell it to some employer, then on judgement day, if the 
employer is asked why he did not  give me the job, he will be forced to say it 
is because of what you said, and if the judge asks you where you got the 
infromation, you'll have to keep your mouth shut, or else be deemed to be 
breaking the law yourself. Then since you gave the information to the employer 
under the guise that it was truthful, and since you can't form a basis for your 
claim, you will have broken your contract with the employer. So you are in a 
double bind.

   Not everything is about ownership. Much more important is what the old 
nobility understood as your word. You give you word, and you stand by it. Loose 
that and you are for all intent silenced. Or you will end up in the company of 
thieves, which is not a pleasant company to be in.

   Henry Story