I read Chris Brogan’s Have the Data Wars Begun blog entry where he ends with these questions:
I’m not sure my take on this, but wanted to bring it to you for consideration. On one side, I want to be able to move my personal data from site to site, because if I spent the effort building it in there, I want to get it back out. On another side, is the friending process of Facebook THEIR data or is it mine? My friends, yes, but is the link and the semantic data built between us something that Facebook owns?
What’s your take?
Hypothetically, let’s say I own a late model Lamborghini. Burt Roscoe (A hypothetical person) owns a late model Rolls Royce and we both belong to a luxury car club. In this club’s charter they provide a storage facility and services like having your car ready for you when you call ahead, including fueled up, detailed, and they’ll even make sure it gets to the dealership for its scheduled maintenance and they host rallies, dinners and all manner of get-togethers. You’ll have to leave a key at the storage facility in order to take advantage of the services, but that’s part of the membership agreement you sign.
Burt is a respected and well known car guy and supporter of the club, so of course, I’m going to try to get to know him out of the 50 members and I get to the point where we know each other’s face and at one point Burt let me drive his Rolls and I let him drive my Lamborghini and we benefit from knowing each other, undoubtedly me more than him, but still we both benefit in one way or another. Great, everything is going along fine and then the members find out that the club has been renting out our cars to non-members without permission and selling the membership roster to all sorts of advertisers. Well a big battle erupts and is still going on, but it’s now a month later and it’s died down quite a bit.
Burt decides he would like to drive my Lamborghini again and since he’s so well known and respected, he basically has run of the club. He grabs the key to my Lamborghini and starts to drive away. Well one of the valets was on his way to get my car because I called and sees my car leaving. Being smarter than a rock, the valet closes the garage door and won’t open it and goes to get the club manager, who immediately kicks Burt out of the club. Burt grumbles as he leaves and then returns with 18 other members of the club so ensure he can get back into the club. He gets back into the club with the group and explains that he was only going to use the Lamborghini for personal use and that he was also going to store it at another Luxury car club where the eighteen members in his group now are also members there as well and how this is going to be a great thing for all of the members of the club.
The club house breaks out in a battle of cheap theatrics and semantics, finger-pointing and the third grade lemming defense of ‘The club already did it!’ when finally one of the other, very well-respected club members shouts over the mess.
“Who owns the Lamborghini?”
A hush falls over the crowd and the member asks the question again and elaborates.
“Who owns the Lamborghini? The Club or Burt?”
And that’s the problem. It’s the right question, but the wrong set of answers. Neither Facebook nor anyone I’ve designated as a friend would own my name, my e-mail address or my birth date, I own them, plain and simple. My data resides in a Relational Database on Facebook’s servers. And that is the best descriptor of what Facebook and any single ‘friend ‘ on Facebook owns, a relationship. And both Facebook and any individual Facebook member are responsible for using and not abusing that data through a Terms of Service Agreement that applies to both Facebook and the individual users through their acceptance of the terms. It’s called Stewardship.
Very well stated. I agree!
Interesting argument. I tend to agree. I think Facebook may have a decent argument to make in terms of stewardship of their employees’ and investors’ resources as well (which is where things get complicated)
And PS I’ve been told that their TOSA leaves them with your data, even if you delete your account.
A very well crafted analogy. I think, perhaps, the final question should read, “Who owns the Lamborghini? The Club or James or Burt?” In any case, the analogy fails for at least one very good reason: a Lamborghini is not data. There is a clear and distinct (at least, in mt mind) difference between a physical person or object and information about that person or object.
I tried, briefly, to make this point almost a week ago (see http://69.253.47.61:8080/?p=18 ). You may think you own your name, but try to stop me from using it. I can say it all day, I can give it to my child, I can even change my name to yours. Not only that, but if I find out your friend’s and family’s names, I can use those, too.
Names aren’t the only unprotected items. I can look up your address data in the yellow pages and send you a birthday card. You don’t like it, too bad. Are you going to claim I “scraped” your data or the directory’s data?
If I sign up for a service, free or otherwise, and agree to what is almost always an abhorrently oppressive TOS, my only option if I don’t like the terms is to stop using the service. But that doesn’t imply that the often ridiculous terms are legally binding or even reasonable.
This will be an interesting and ongoing debate for some time. That’s one of the great things about the Net: (almost) everyone can voice their opinion (almost) equally.
Tim, thank you for your thoughts. I do want to reply to them.
I agree that’s the way the question should have read, my point was that the question didn’t read that way.
As for a Lamborghini not being Data, that’s what makes that example an analogy instead of a simple comparison. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition defines analogy as
I’ll further the Lamborghini analogy in a bit.
Publicly available information is not the same as unprotected. To understand my position a bit better you can read today’s entry in my blog.
And yes, I can stop you from sending me a Birthday card from the information in the telephone book (you’d be hard pressed to find me in the yellow pages), all I have to do is ask for an unlisted number and my information won’t appear in that hard copy database. I can even take it a step further and add my number to a National “No Call” registry and the telemarketers can’t use my information even if it is publicly available. My Data, my choice.
As for using my name all you want and I can’t stop you? Let’s revisit the Lamborghini analogy. You can buy a publicly available exact replica of my Lamborghini, same make, model, year, even color. That doesn’t make my Lamborghini yours any more than it makes yours mine. And it doesn’t mean they’re unprotected, there are licenses and I doubt that your key would work in my car or that my key would work in your car. Same cars, different owners. Try to take my Lamborghini and drive it away claiming it’s yours, you’d best be ready for Grand Theft Auto charges and a record.
As for TOS agreements, after having spent over two years meeting with a Legal team every other week and whenever else was necessary for creating and posting a TOS agreement on the Website of the Health Benefits Management Corporation for whom I worked, While your statement can be very true, is it worth flaunting to see if your the one to get caught? Well,that’s your choice.
And yes, This will go on for a very long time, if HIPAA is any indication. And the more it’s discussed, the better.