💎 Rethinking data ownership

There is an evolving consensus on the key principle of data ownership: You are the owner of the data that represents you, the data you generate and the data that gets generated as a representation of you.

Whether it’s:

• Data generated from your own health metrics and physical activities
• Data that you generate by capturing information about the world (ie photographs or identification of birds, plants, bugs, water quality measurements etc)
• Data you generate by your consumer or online activities

All these forms of data have a value that should be shared with you in some way. Currently this data and its value is being hoarded by Web 2.0 companies (Healthcare and non-Healthcare related) with little or no meaningful compensation to the rightful owners of that data.

These companies use this data to fuel derivative lines of business that are extremely lucrative. Yet no compensation to the rightful owners (compared to say royalties in the music business) is provided.

Some will argue that services like free email or free social media should count as fair compensation for a person's data.

It's a weak self-serving argument when you consider the cloud-based hyper-automated economies of scale available to Web 2.0 tech giants. Services like free email or social media cost these providers pennies, compared to the dollars they make off your data.

Further reading:

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposes tightened rules on selling sensitive data. See also Verge's explainer.
• FTC Action Against Gravy Analytics - FTC alledges the firm sold location data about consumer visits to churches, labor unions, military sites and other sensitive locations.
• Healthcare data is fragmented and biased - how to clean it up by Juan Carlos Gonzalez