DanahBoyd writes about a site (Facebook) that changed its architecture in a way that users did not appreciate and reminds us: “While digital communities are fantastic, one of the issues is that people don’t actually own the turf in which they’re creating cultural artifacts.” ¹
And that ties in to the concept of data ownership. The European countries will often claim to “protect your data”, and in a way it works. Companies are not allowed to store more information about you than is essential for the business at hand, and it at least worries clients that have custom software built for them. In addition to that, you have a right to know and to correct your data, but they don’t have the duty to report their data about you on their own. You need to suspect, before you can ask. So in sum, there’s some positive developments, and much remains to be done.
When talking about companies like Google or Flickr, however, all of these regulations come to naught. You need to take your own precautions. And a company like Flickr may allow you to retrieve your data using an API of theirs, but who does it? And what use will the data be without the entire site to back it up? It’s a difficult question. It would be nice if sites like Google and Flickr were *publically owned*, in fact!
Publically owned data doesn’t have to be in your possession physically. After all, if you rent space from a web service provider, you don’t have physical access to the data either. The point is, however, that it is no longer at the whim of “benevolent dictators”. Not only free software projects follow this model! When looking at data ownership, Google, Yahoo & Co. are all run by a BenevolentDictator (which most users don’t know, so it’s even worse than free software projects).
FreeSoftware is different from data in that the source code these days usually stands on its own. The RightToFork is an important option to keep the software free. When a large part of the value of the data are the notes, links, and comments “owned” by other people, however, then it’s hard to fork. It’s a CopyrightTrap, and mostly a usability problem.
The Swiss law for associations might serve as an interesting model. See CorporateMembership for some thoughts.
#Web #Copyright #Data
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Well explained. If only your simple and short prose could replace the blather at O'Reilly Radar these issues could catch on a lot quicker with people.
– AaronHawley 2006-09-12 00:35 UTC