Interesting reading - dropping the concept of ownership

[Elias Bizannes]

http://gerdleonhard.typepad.com/the_future_of_music/files/joost_smiers_imagine_a_world_without_copyright_feb_2005.pdf

"The concept of usufruct is better known in societies under civil law
than in those that are governed by common law, like the Anglo-Saxon
parts of the world. Characteristic for usufruct is that one does not
have the ownership of an item; however, one is entitled to the usage
of the fruits of the item. If the item is, say, a house, the
entitlement could be, for instance, the usage of the house without
owning it.
The person that holds usufruct is, for example, allowed to live there
for free or to receive the proceeds of any rental activity. In our
case, the item might be a book; from the moment of its publication it
belongs to the public domain and the holder of the usufruct is
entitled to the takings and receipts of the book. Under the present
system of law, usufruct can only emerge when it is derived from an
ownership title. What we envision is that the creative work, as we
will argue below, exists only in the public domain, its ownership is
shared amongst all, and thus belongs to the commons. Whoever enjoys
the temporary usufruct of a certain artistic work, has thus received
it from the public domain. The usufruct keeps unimpeded the freedom of
everybody to adapt works of art – creations and performances – in a
creative manner. The technical details concerning the implementation
of this matter still will have to be worked out."

[Elias Bizannes]

"Our alternative redefines ownership and property of creativity and
knowledge. Creative works are not
owned in the same way as, for instance, a table. A table is the
property of person A, but not at the
same time also of person B, unless they are married. But this is not
the case with artistic creativity and
knowledge. After its usage by someone it has not been exhausted. It is
a public good. That is as we
have argued before, why those works of the intellect and of the
creative mind belong to the public
domain. Strategically it is important to underpin this public
character of knowledge and creativity time
and time again. Jack Valenti, the former president of the Motion
Picture Association of America, once
unhesitatingly said: ‘Creative property owners must be accorded the
same rights and protection
resident in all other property owners in the nation.’ (in Lessig 2004:
117) This quote makes clear why
it is necessary to make a distinction between knowledge and creativity
at one side and the ownership
of, for instance, a house at the other side. They are not the same and
should not be treated the same."

[Gordon Rae]

I think we can also make the distinction between 'knowledge and
creativity at one side' and a person's rights in respect of data which
identifies and describes them. Data Portability is about your rights
over the personal data other organizations hold about you. As Steve
Holcombe said in another thread, legal ownership over information is
about privacy regulations covering non-artistic content, and copyright
regulations covering artistic content. Jerry Springer doesn't have
any rights over 'Jerry Springer: The Opera', for example.

I think that the Australian 'Information Privacy Principles' are one
of the best explanations of the topic I've read. See the text of the
Privacy Act at the attorney-General's website
http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/0/157/0/PA000470.htm
and the impressive survey of the world's laws held by the Australian
Privacy Foundation
http://www.privacy.org.au/Resources/PLawsWorld.html

Bearing in mind Elias' comments on the concept of ownership, I think
it's significant that the concept of ownership doesn't seem be relied
upon anywhere; the Information Privacy Principles are all about
'collecting' and 'soliciting' information, and keeping and altering
records. So I think you could be pushing on a door that's already
ajar, at least in some parts of the world.

[Steven Greenberg]

I think that I'm missing an obvious point here, so please feel free to point out whatever that is.

To my way of looking at the world, the questions of portability and privacy are connected but distinct.  Your points about privacy are all valid, but they're not data portability.

Data portability (or, as Recordon calls it, "lowercase data portability") is about me being able to move my data rather than having to reconstruct it. 

That's it. 

There are a lot of related issues, but they're ultimately just that... related.  In fact, I believe that the large companies intend to use the confusion around these related questions to avoid real providing data portability.

Once we achieve data portability, we can start thinking about these other things. 

    Steve

[Gordon Rae]

Thanks Steve. You are right, but I think the "obvious point" is that
most countries now have laws on data protection. These are, without
exception AFAIK, built on top of laws relating to privacy. We need to
align data portability with data protection.

On Jun 18, 6:38 am, "Steven Greenberg" <green...@puzzlingevidence.net>
wrote: