Query:
I know you’re probably a busy guy, but if you have a minute or two, I’d like to get your thoughts on, or established articles about, property rights as it pertains to data as physical matter. I have started writing an article about this matter, but before I get too far along, I’d like to see if there have been others who have already tackled this. My essential consideration is how to apply a property-rights framework to the physical matter in which data is contained (EM waves, light pulses, radio, etc.). I initially came up with a simple analogy of driving your personal car along a roadway owned by Others (private or govt as the case may be) and someone physically barricading your car to be able to search it for whatever purpose (without voluntary consent). Similarly, the data we send on our phones which is transformed (homesteaded) by our labor by the use of software on our phone that digitizes the data and packages it into whatever physical EM signal is used to transmit. The data signal is the car on the road, but once that data packet is distributed by the wireless router through fiber-optic cables owned by some private entity, it has now gone onto the street and so becomes subject to some agreement between the owner of the signal and the transport media (fiber cable). Maybe what I am wondering is simply what the “fine print” user agreements amount to when agreeing to use an app. Anyway, I would appreciate any feedback at all regarding this concept, even if just a few quick points of reference or critique.
Answer:
No time at present to reply at length—but very quickly, labor is not ownable and the labor theory of property is wrong. See—
- KOL274 | Nobody Owns Bitcoin (PFS 2019)
- The Libertarian View on Fine Print, Shrinkwrap, Clickwrap
- KOL037 | Locke’s Big Mistake: How the Labor Theory of Property Ruined Political Theory
- Why Airwaves (Electromagnetic Spectra) Are (Arguably) Property (Aug. 9, 2009)
- Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward, Part IV.F “Resources, Properties, Features, and Universals”
- The Nature, Properties, and Characteristics of Goods (Igloo Coolers case)
- The “Ontology” Mistake of Libertarian Creationists
- IP is Not “Not Property”
- Libertarian Answer Man: Self-ownership for slaves and Crusoe; and Yiannopoulos on Accurate Analysis and the term “Property”; Mises distinguishing between juristic and economic categories of “ownership”
