A critique of Data Portability efforts from a Free Network Services point of view

A contribution from Adriana Lukas in the Autonomo.us mailing list, which expresses the point of view of those interested in promoting Free Network Services, and see existing Data Portability approaches as insufficient:

“The problem I have with dataportability.org is that they don’t actually insist on the user owning the data but merely being able to do specified things with it. Much has been said and written by one Elias Bizanes on the foolishness of insisting on literal ownership of one’s data. Having watched the debate, I believe that in order to get the big players on board, they compromised on what data ownership means and what data portability actually entails. The big players like facebook, myspace, Google etc. live off our user data, so the idea of people being to take them out of silos and with them elsewhere didn’t really agree with them. So the idea is some kind of standards and openness that allows the user to see his data from Facebook on myspace, or on google or indeed on any platform/silos that agrees to participate, signs up to dataportability.org and uses their standards. That’s not data portability in my book.

In short, it seems to be that to dataportability.org data portability come to be ability to ‘port’ data in different places on the web, rather than ‘take them’ with me where I want. Certainly not what I imagine and am interested in.”

1 Comment

Elias Bizannes May 9, 2009 at 6:24 am

Hi – I’m the vice-chair of the DataPortability Project. I thought I would add my comments to this – I’ve only every interacted with Adriana in passing on the project VRM list – but I feel my views haven’t been fully explained.

First of all, a clarification – the big players actually do support ownership. You only have to look at Facebook who most recently came out with their bill of rights to say you own all of your information. To say we compromised to satisfy the big players, isn’t true. The reason why we have this different stance, is because we are being practical.

The whole concept of ownership stirs up an emotional reaction in people – the same kind of emotion that can be attributed to nationalism. But from an intellectual point of view (and leaving aside the emotional rhetoric) – try to think about realistically if you really care about ownership. This comment – I technically should have ownership on it. But what’s the point of ownership, if I can’t actually control the fact that people can copy my ideas or remix it to create their own? Ownership is pointless without an enforcement mechanism, and practically speaking, we are never going to get a solid enough enforcement mechanism that can be applied across the Internet, due to its decentralisation.

That’s a good thing for many reasons. And in reality, I want you to steal my ideas, remix it with your own, – it’s helping spread my thoughts. I get no benefit if I control who can do what with my ideas – I only get benefit if people take it on and reuse. The argument about ownership is ridiculously complex. It’s philosophical – and I am going to rank it up there as having the same complexity as truth, which in philosophy, is something people haven’t been able to agree on for thousands of years. It’s all about perspective.

What we’ve done with the DataPortability Project, is we’ve looked at ownership and thought to ourselves that it’s simply a means to an end. Just because you have ownership, doesn’t mean you have the right to use your data. To use an analogy: imagine if you “owned” your house. Now let’s say the government denied you access to your house, due to some legislation which can override your right to your property. What’s the value of ownership, if you are denied access? With DataPortabiliy, instead of going to the courts to prove you “own” something – we are taking the approach of identifying what inalienable rights people have over their data – and then making sure that is respected.

You don’t need ownership to get the rights of usage over your data. If you read my blog post mentioned above, you will understand my point where I say it’s not ownership that matters, but access. Arguably, ownership is a cluster of rights that permit your right of usage. At DataPortability.org, we might not use the word ownership – but that’s simply because we’ve gotten more to the core of the problem.

For us, portability is about being able to import, export, syncronise, and remove your data. You don’t need to own your data to do that, but if you had ownership, that’s what you end up practically getting anyway. The concept of ownership is distracting us from the real fight that we need to be fighting.

1 Comment →

Elias Bizannes May 9, 2009 at 6:24 am
Hi – I’m the vice-chair of the DataPortability Project. I thought I would add my comments to this – I’ve only every interacted with Adriana in passing on the project VRM list – but I feel my views haven’t been fully explained.
First of all, a clarification – the big players actually do support ownership. You only have to look at Facebook who most recently came out with their bill of rights to say you own all of your information. To say we compromised to satisfy the big players, isn’t true. The reason why we have this different stance, is because we are being practical.
The whole concept of ownership stirs up an emotional reaction in people – the same kind of emotion that can be attributed to nationalism. But from an intellectual point of view (and leaving aside the emotional rhetoric) – try to think about realistically if you really care about ownership. This comment – I technically should have ownership on it. But what’s the point of ownership, if I can’t actually control the fact that people can copy my ideas or remix it to create their own? Ownership is pointless without an enforcement mechanism, and practically speaking, we are never going to get a solid enough enforcement mechanism that can be applied across the Internet, due to its decentralisation.
That’s a good thing for many reasons. And in reality, I want you to steal my ideas, remix it with your own, – it’s helping spread my thoughts. I get no benefit if I control who can do what with my ideas – I only get benefit if people take it on and reuse. The argument about ownership is ridiculously complex. It’s philosophical – and I am going to rank it up there as having the same complexity as truth, which in philosophy, is something people haven’t been able to agree on for thousands of years. It’s all about perspective.
What we’ve done with the DataPortability Project, is we’ve looked at ownership and thought to ourselves that it’s simply a means to an end. Just because you have ownership, doesn’t mean you have the right to use your data. To use an analogy: imagine if you “owned” your house. Now let’s say the government denied you access to your house, due to some legislation which can override your right to your property. What’s the value of ownership, if you are denied access? With DataPortabiliy, instead of going to the courts to prove you “own” something – we are taking the approach of identifying what inalienable rights people have over their data – and then making sure that is respected.
You don’t need ownership to get the rights of usage over your data. If you read my blog post mentioned above, you will understand my point where I say it’s not ownership that matters, but access. Arguably, ownership is a cluster of rights that permit your right of usage. At DataPortability.org, we might not use the word ownership – but that’s simply because we’ve gotten more to the core of the problem.
For us, portability is about being able to import, export, syncronise, and remove your data. You don’t need to own your data to do that, but if you had ownership, that’s what you end up practically getting anyway. The concept of ownership is distracting us from the real fight that we need to be fighting.