101–110 of 203 posts
I love how we understand the value of intellectual property, but when we talk about private personal information we are unable.
Looking at actual bill, it proposes: - Creating a paid "no tracking" option. Obvious failure mode: the option price is $100M, and anybody who uses it is unable to use 99% of the functionality, since it requires some form of tracking. Obvious next step - the law requiring this option to be no more than 10% more expensive than regular membership. Obvious next failure mode: inapplicable to sites that do not charge for m…
So, you either have to come up with something constructive, or someone else will.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not about Facebook, it is about some startup you have never heard of that actually is doing something positive for the world and suddenly finds its business smothered by poorly thought out regulations. Considering that we have powerful congressmen who do not even understand Facebook's business model (and whose staff failed to explain it to them) does not give me confidence in Congress' ability to craft construct…
That's a terrifying possibility. Are there any actual case studies and examples of tech startups being killed by regulation? Or is this a campfire story that is retold whenever the possibility of regulation is mentioned.
An example of regulation I'm glad didn't pass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
Is personal information really a kind of property, that can be stolen? If it is, aren’t we doing this all the time, any time we perceive anything about anyone? How is this different than taking a picture of someone? The image is owned by the photographer, not the subject(s) according to current laws. if I meet someone on the street, and record their name, the conversation we had, and the location where I met them, an…
> Is personal information really a kind of property, that can be stolen? If it is, aren’t we doing this all the time, any time we perceive anything about anyone? We are flexible and smarter than Vulcans. Something doesn't have to be necessarily expressible into a single, unambiguous universal formula to be made illegal. We can e.g. allow people to perceive things about other people in their brains (or even notebooks)…
It doesn't have to be expressed with a precise mathematical formula, but it does need to be expressed with a clear legal formula.
Otherwise, people cannot know whether or not their actions are legal, and the law becomes a fearsome weapon in the hands of its interpreters.
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EDIT: I'm not claiming it's impossible for such a rule to be formulated in this case; I merely point out that clarity is absolutely necessary.
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> that data is meta data and it's not yours, it was generated by machines you don't own and have no claim over I'm pretty sure that, for example, the list of grocery brands someone buys using a store loyalty card isn't "metadata", and while "stealing" is hyperbole, I'm pretty sure most people would be upset upon realizing how far and wide that information is being sold.
People might be upset about a lot of things, the question is whether you have legal ownership on the knowledge about the facts about you. Can you sue somebody for disclosing true information about you as "theft"? Is writing a Wikipedia article about you means "stealing" your life facts? Does making your photo steal your soul? I'm pretty sure the only reason to use "steal" in this context is to hopelessly confuse the…
I think even if you have no ownership of the data and stealing is not involved, that does not give the collecting or managing party the right to sell or publicize or share that data, necessarily.
There have been studies about the value (and impact) of inferences from metadata e.g. https://www.pnas.org/content/113/20/5536.short .
((Edit) Agreeing with you, steal is incorrect term in a lot of cases, however I am not sure if we can say it is not applicable in general.)
I love how we understand the value of intellectual property, but when we talk about private personal information we are unable.
It's strange how some people think that gossip and intellectual property are somehow the same thing. You have no right to be paid when people talk about you.
> There is no reason why any person on Capitol Hill should vote against this. If I were an elected official, one reason why I would be very cautious about voting for this is that, if we make allowing a data breach a felony punishable by imprisonment, it is likely to have a somewhat chilling effect on the likelihood of engineers to start new companies where they as founders would be potentially prosecutable for such f…
> it is likely to have a somewhat chilling effect on the likelihood of engineers to start new companies where they as founders would be potentially prosecutable for such failures You seem to think that's a bad thing, for some reason.
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It's strange how some people think that gossip and intellectual property are somehow the same thing. You have no right to be paid when people talk about you.
But I think everyone understands that it's shitty to be on the receiving end of gossip, especially if the rumors are untrue or can be used against you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is personal information really a kind of property, that can be stolen? If it is, aren’t we doing this all the time, any time we perceive anything about anyone? We are flexible and smarter than Vulcans. Something doesn't have to be necessarily expressible into a single, unambiguous universal formula to be made illegal. We can e.g. allow people to perceive things about other people in their brains (or even notebooks)…
Rule of law demands it be clear what is and is not illegal. Make it illegal to film people in public and the guy who made the Rodney King tape is going to jail.
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Considering right now companies like Facebook are very actively making the world a worse place I would say this would be a strong move towards something better.
Facebook is people and people suck. Facebook is also a scapegoat and to the contrary of what a resentful media industry would like you to believe the sum of their contributions to the world is overwhelmingly positive
While I don't doubt there's been many good things coming out of the release and growth of Facebook, if only for their contribution to the ecosystem, I think you might be hyping it quite a bit there.
Care to elaborate on your thought?