No Free Labour, No Free Personal Data
Recently, Democrats introduced a set of principles to protect the internet users, called Bill of Rights for the internet. The last one demand that companies that collect personal data practice “reasonable business practices and accountability to protect your privacy”.When it comes to the topic of digital privacy, there are many companies that make money out of your personal data, Google and Facebook are just two of them. So the question raises is that is it fair that the organizations make profits using your personal data?
The Answer is NO
According to American author and law professor Eric Posner’s theory, data creation is labour. While Walmart is paying nearly 80% of its company revenue on labour, the shares of income of the largest technology organizations are only about 5%-10%. If you are agree with Posner’s theory, too, you may have the same opinion as me that the companies should pay for the data.
Why the Data is Valuable?
It is not a myth that companies like Facebook and Google can exploit the personal data and make huge profits out of it, but how do they do so and why the data is so valuable? They basically don’t sell your data directly to make profits, but use targeting advertisement to sell access to you. It is a big business, and Facebook reported $40 billion revenue on that last year.
The “Internet of me” Philosophy
Placing power of data back to the hands of people that belongs to reveals the concept of the philosophy. Indeed, there are some companies already pay for the personal data. Youtube pays creators for posts; Opinion Outpost pays you for voicing your opinion; Datacoup promises to allow users to trade their valuable data to the third parties for money or credit.
