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| Authored by: sproggit on Sunday, June 17 2012 @ 05:56 PM EDT |
That's a terrifying article, and no mistake.
I have an open question for Groklawrians with respect to the data mining that is
described in this and other articles. My question here concerns innovation,
creativity and the ownership of intellectual property.
Today, owners of "big data", those who work behind the scenes,
faceless companies with one-pixel images on web pages, spiders, bots, data
harvesters and the like: they all believe that they are free to do whatever they
like with the records that they collect from you.
Once you have been identified by Amazon, they track what items you look at, what
you're interested in. [ Amazon even show you they're doing this, with "the
page you made" feature ]. Other sites are the same, right?
But whilst their abilities to log your actions are designed and built by their
software teams, your actions are your own. They are unique to you. They are
creative, spontaneous and they are *your* actions.
So my question is: at what point do your actions belong to someone else? You are
not being paid by Amazon to surf their web site. you are not being paid by
advertising companies who want to track you. Yet [in an admittedly loose
interpretation of things] the sequence with which you interact with the internet
is an example of your ability to exercise your creativity.
Does that give these faceless companies a right to "own" what you do?
Whose labour is it? Theirs? Or yours?
Let's try and bring some parallels to this topic, as examples.
1. The Artist
Let's suppose that you are an artist, and you are working with canvas and oils
and painting a pure abstract. You move your palette across the canvas, daubing
and patterning with strokes that are bold and delicate, decisive and random. You
paint a masterpiece. If I stood to your side with a camera, recording all that
you did, and if I photographed the finished product, could I claim ownership of
that likeness?
2. The Stalker
Let's try a different example. Suppose you were just a regular citizen, going
about your normal daily routine without a care in the world. But suppose that I
am suddenly interested in your spending habits.
I arrange to have you followed from store to store. I intercept your written
post; I listen to your telephone conversations. I track every store that you
visit; every shelf that you browse. I contact your credit card companies and I
take details of what you buy, where, when, from whom, and how much you pay. I
know where you want to go on holiday, what camera you want to buy to take with
you. I even know what books you're going to read [on your tablet] during your
trip.
If I were another regular citizen, peering into your life with this degree of
accuracy, with this amount of intrusiveness, would I stand within the bounds of
lawful behaviour? [ Actually, that might be debatable depending upon
jurisdiction. In the UK, for example, laws including the Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Act, and the Privacy of Electronic Communications Act,
curtail some of these activities. But, generally speaking, at what point in time
would we consider the monitoring being done by an advertising company to be
stalking? Surveillance?
So it's harmless, right? These are all just small companies, they process tens
of billions of transactions, right? Too much to be able to follow you around,
right? Hmm...
Well, it just so happens that your favourite [restaurant/bar/cafe] is also a
favoured hang-out of a known, three-time convicted felon, a white-collar
criminal who has committed large-scale tax evasion. Or maybe some other crime.
By coincidence, you both happen to like this venue on a Thursday lunch-time,
when it's quiet and their special is particularly good. Also by coincidence, you
happen to have the same credit card provider, and records show that you are both
at the same venue at the same time. This happens twice, three times, five. Now
you're a known associate of a convicted felon.
Where does this stop?
Is this Minority Report, where we are all being profiled and analysed to the
degree that our behaviour patterns can be predicted in advance?
Have we merely become drones whose sole purpose in life is to buy more product?
I would be very interested in seeing someone with the right legal training put
together a case based on the notion that what I click through with my browser is
an act of creativity on my part, that it is therefore automatically subject to
copyright in my name and therefore that my actions may not be used without my
express permission...
any takers? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: nsomos on Sunday, June 17 2012 @ 10:25 PM EDT |
Complex_number gives several excellent suggestions.
I would just like to mention, that one can easily get
an unlimited number of disposable email addresses through
spamgourmet.com
This makes it easy to come up with a unique and site-specific
email address every-time someone asks for an email address.
I've freaked some people out by giving them email addresses
that have their name in them. They wonder how I wound up
with an email address with their name. Usually I explain. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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