Denmark has decided to take the first step toward protecting Danes' personal information by giving them ownership rights to their own image and voice. The Danish culture minister told The Guardian: “In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features, which is apparently not how the current law is protecting people against generative AI.” The purpose is to prevent "deep fakes" of an individual and to force such "deep fakes" to be taken down when an individual requests it. Under the law those violating it may have to pay compensation.
I have previously floated the idea of a constitutional amendment that gives all persons ownership of their information. How far that should extend is open to discussion. But it really ought to extend, for example, to the photos many people are taking over this holiday weekend in the United States at family gatherings.
However, the minute those photos are posted, the owner immediately loses control of them, either through the sweeps of artificial intelligence (AI) bots hoovering up everything on the internet or through websites where the photos are posted. These websites may have user agreements that give those websites certain rights to your pictures.
The law in most countries has long recognized the rights of celebrities to control the use of their image and voice. Try using the image of a prominent celebrity to promote your products without getting permission (and normally paying a fee) and you will likely find yourself in receipt of a letter from the celebrity's law firm demanding that you cease and desist and also pay a fee for use up to that date.
Why can't all of us have that protection? And, why can't we have protection that includes all related identifying information such as our phone number, address, place of employment, family members, email address and so on?
Well, the answer is that the companies that gather information on us are powerful and have generally prevented such protection from being enacted. These companies justify the information gathering as a business necessity. If it is a business necessity and that valuable, surely those companies should compensate those who choose to hand over some or all of their information.
I asked the Brave browser's AI about the components of a system that allows people to own and sell their personal information. I thought it put together a credible starting point.
Online retailers at one time complained that having to collect state and local sales taxes would be very complicated and cumbersome. (I was there. I'm not making this up!) Anyone with a brain figured out very quickly that all those retailers needed was a database of rates and in what locales they apply in order to solve what turned out to be a trivial problem. The states and localities today are getting their taxes.
No doubt as more jurisdictions move toward allowing people to own their own data, the tech industry will howl at how impractical this is. But companies of all kinds already participate in marketplaces with many data brokers and bid on such information regularly. All a system of personal ownership would be doing is extending access to such marketplaces to individuals. The scale would be larger, of course. But in principle the systems for data buying and selling would remain the same. It would just have a large new group of participants.
As for those new participants, they could 1) actively participate, 2) refuse to allow any sale of their information, or 3) set their preferences and then put their accounts on autopilot. Different people will have different priorities and values and be able to express them through such a marketplace. Right now they don't have that choice.
Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Naked Capitalism, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.
Many years ago I thought about joining Facebook. I startd to sign up, but then read the terms and conditions, which gave Facebook total ownership of everything I posted to 'my' page. I didn't join.
ReplyDeleteI just don't use Facebook at all, I could never understand why people used it in the first place, prior to social media people just had a mailing list which they used to send info to family and friends. I just don't get why people use these websites?
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