Who Owns Your Social Data? You Do, Sort of

eweekhickins writes "Mad about Facebook's treatment of Robert Scoble? 'The idea for people to move their social graph from one service to other is a fabulous benefit,' Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales told eWEEK. 'To me, it's a benefit to customers. People should be very wary about services that are uptight about that kind of thing in an effort to lock you out of the customer.' The problem is that while the profile data may be yours and yours alone, your address book contains the names and e-mail addresses of your friends, family and business contacts. So who owns the data?"

But who owns version control?

[G4from128k]

You may "own the data" but you don't control the version of the server software that hosts, accesses, and manipulates that data. If SocialNetworkDuJour.com decides to implement super nifty web 3.0 whizzy stuff that is not compatible with your OS or browser, then your data is no longer accessible to you. Sure, you can complain bitterly about the "upgrade" but if you use a minority OS or browser, your complaints won't get too far. The lack of client-level version control is a real problem with social networks and other web-based software concepts.

The question provides the answer!

[bogaboga]

The answer to "Who Owns Your Social Data?" is in the question itself. It's like asking..."Who owns your shirt?" Of course me. I repeat...I own my property. Period.

I am getting disappointed with the way Slashdot frames questions. The other day, they ran http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/03/1347236 [slashdot.org] whose contents in my opinion were not in sync with the title. May be these Slashdot folks need a refresher course.

Re:Um. The guy with the storage?

[TheBlunderbuss]

I guess the bank owns your money, since they keep it as data in their servers.

hoarders suffer the tragedy of the anti-commons

[christian.einfeldt]

On-line communities are powerful places to be. Just look at Markos Moulitsas [archive.org] (video warning), the founder of the Daily Kos political blog. What started out as a rant against conservative thinking back in 2002 has now become THE place for Democrats to hang out. Jimmy Carter, Teddy Kennedy, Russ Feingold, Nancy Pelosi, and lots of other Democratic leaders have now posted comments on that website, which runs on all Free Open Source Software tools, according to the above-linked interview with Markos.

So if you want to be a participant in the power of on-line communities, maybe you are going to have to give up a wee bit of privacy, depending on the community. But look what you get in return: influence and fun. By contrast, those who do not want to participate risk losing relevance, which is one example of the tragedy of the anti-commons [wikipedia.org]. If you are not willing to share something, then just stay off line. Most communities will require you to give *something* to participate: your thinking, some personal information, *something*. Same thing for communities in the physical world. You have to join a group and shake a few hands to participate in the group.

Robert Scoble is an attention whore. He is ....

[Anonymous Coward]

He is slightly less an attention whore than Jimmy Jimbo Porno Wales. Scoble made 5,000 "friends" on facebook, which begs the question, who the fuck would befriend such a douchebag? (And I use "btc" correctly here.) And then Scoble tried to move his 5,000 friends' data, not his data, but THEIR data to a different site. In response facebook defaced Scoble and Porno Wales edited an exciting entry all about.

Together they are all damage and my Internet routes around them.

Incorrect. The contract defines who owns what.

[imtheguru]

The contract agreed upon by the two parties will specify who can do what to the data. This is usually a series of Ts and Cs followed by an "I Agree" widget or the like.

Always read the fine print.

Cheers.

Re:You do.

[Anonymous Coward]

You own information you created, end of story.

You have something in common with the RIAA - you believe that IP rights are absolute, regardless of whether the owner of the IP wishes to benefit from the distribution of the information. The problem arises when you choose to copy the information that's in your personal address book to a place outside of your personal address book. I don't think the situation remains as simple as you think it does if you choose to do that.

Re:Um. The guy with the storage?

[KlaymenDK]

I guess the bank owns your money, since they keep it as data in their servers.

In a way, they do, yes. For instance, that's how they finance loans: lending your money to someone else, asking a fee for the service, and paying you a prize for letting them use your money while they hold it for you. They earn their money from the fee/prize discrepancy, but your money is what enables their business in the first place.

The difference is that money can't be copied without incurring a loss of value, but information can, and indeed may thereby increase in value. ...There's "just" the matter of who gets to decide whether, how, and with whom that information is shared.