Slashdot Mirror
Why Not A Free Market In Privacy?
leviramsey writes: "Julian Sanchez has written an article analyzing the privacy debate and suggesting a free market solution to the privacy issue on Liberzine.com. Very interesting idea that seems to make sense to me." While this essay doesn't lay out how this market might work in practice, it raises the interesting and often scoffed-at idea that sometimes we like to trade some of our privacy for various things, online and off, as a visit to Yahoo personals will prove.
They all assume perfect market conditions
Nonsense. Sure, economic reasoning presumes rational action on the part of people. It's the only way to predict how people will behave. Even if people are only rational half the time, at least you can predict half their behavior. If you presume that people will be irrational (as you seem to expect), then you can't make ANY predictions. That would be of no value.
You make a really weird argument. You say that a free market would work fine until government interferes with it. And you use that to object to any attempt to establish a more libertarian society. Well, I hate to tell you, but ANYTHING that works will stop working if you interfere with its proper operation. That's no argument against trying to make something work.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
No sane person will make "his own decisions" when confronted on any important issue
You have an odd idea of what constitutes sanity. Perhaps you are insane yourself?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Your example does not apply to one of a free market. You are elitist and dismissive of the people whom you wish to protect. Perhaps you should pay attention to their choices?
1. I am not at all dismissive of myself! 2. I based that on observed behaviour, I just calls it as I sees it!
3. You will note that I indicated that even with the highest level of education generally recognized, the consumer is still at a disadvantage. Note also that I am not in that highest educated group.
4. Note also that if every consumer reached that level of education, the economy and job markets would be in real trouble. It's hard to get a PhD to dig ditches, wait tables, collect trash, etc. for a living.
5. I have spent a good bit of time as 'Joe Sixpack' except that my name's not Joe.
In theory, that is. In practice government has its own pitfalls, but this is not to deny that it also has its legitimate and beneficial uses.
--
Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
This thread is kinda offtopic, but I gotta comment anyway...
Mainly, we are talking about the difference between a necessity and a non-necessity. The large corporations can exist without buying and selling huge databases with "our" information...they can get it from the phone book if they really want it, it is public domain already. However, they cannot exist without electricity to run their business. In theory, the system works as long as their is not already a shortage with the item in demand, such as electricity or consumber databases for instance. Here in PA, deregulation is working great, but we have so much power that if company X goes outta business, company Y can pick up the slack without too much trouble. This was CA oversite...they were already overloading their grid.
Umm, I'd argue that they really don't coincide. If we take the shops, for example, there is no law saying that their customers can't use the parks. In all likelyhood, their customers won't even know that they're part of the group. So what's the draw back from sitting on the sidelines, saving a little money, and still enjoying the same benefits? I don't see this as being a
meeting of local and global minimums.
Anyways, I'd argue that your argument that the local and global minimums meet in any of my examples, are because of tertiary factors that often take care of those problems without the need for any sort of leap of faith. i.e., your friends, family, coworkers, community, business, or what have you, make your reconsider what might otherwise be a myopic and self-centered approach. In fact, I'd argue that these kinds of situations are more real world oriented than the laboratory or psuedo-socialist inspired ideas of the counterexamples, not to mention more common than you think. Did you ever consider that they're all around you, just that you don't notice them because you take them for granted?
Whether it can or not is debatable, but it DOESN'T happen that way. Participation is the norm with many of these successful projects.
Many people might do so without their explicit approval, however that doesn't mean that most people still don't often sacrifice privacy for the right incentive. In fact, there have been a large number of studies, both in society and in the lab, where the majority of people explicitely agree to the incentive in exchange for loss of privacy. Anyways, the initial argument was never that the consumer should be put in the dark, it's that two parties (including the customer) know what the conditions of the agreement are, live by it, and both profit from it. We should certainly enforce violations of it, but those violations are largely extraneous to the argument. Furthermore, your dilema example is entirely different; if the individual does not know, it's simply not up to the individual to seek any minimum in this context.
But I think you do. On one hand you'll imply that the credit card situation is a problem of global minumums, while on the other hand claiming that the consumer is ignorant. If the consumer is ignorant, then it's not the "Dilema", that's a problem of ignorance. Frankly, I think it's both. Consumers sometimes do some things out of ignorance--what the industry does not tell them (and there, I argue we should regulate out). But othertimes they very definitely agree, both explicitely or implicitely, to the conditions. When they agree, it simply is not a minimum at all.
Now I know you argue that they have no "choice", but I simply disagree with that. The industry did not roll out some cannon and say "you all will accept this". They can't do that any more than they can impose an abitrary price, unless they are a monopoly, in which case they're already in the justice departments sites. The only way it can possibly reach the kind of critical mass that you describe is if the majority of people either do things out of ignorance (less common then you think) or if they willingly agree to give up their privacy--which, I would argue, is a global minimum.
What's more, to the extent that there are competitive markets, if there is a truely substantial demand (which I really don't believe there is) for privacy, there will be a market for that. Companies will try to meet those demands if it is economical and ultimately desirable to those same customers [i.e., if they're really willing to pay what privacy costs].
Interest != Demand. People are also interested in charity, but by and large, most people would rather have a new car. The same goes for privacy in my opinion. They may like the idea of privacy in theory, but when it comes time to actually shop, and they have a choice between something that costs 5% less or privacy (especially when it's something as inane as Cola preferences), they generally decide the former.
Again, this is pretty much the same argument. Most people aren't willing to pay what it costs. Slashdot and your probably liberally oriented friends are hardly representive of the population as a whole, but even there, I'd argue that they take the discount route. Anyways, there are a large number of websites and such that "gaurantee" your privacy, especially where people might care, like on a porn site.
Anarch-capitalism is a contradiction in terms. Capitalism exists because of hierarchy. Anarchy requires the elimination of hierarchy. Anyone claiming to be an anarcho-capitalist is pulling a fast one and should NEVER be trusted.
And, returning from off-topicness: yes, I agree.
half-assed deregulatory system like this,
At least we agree on that. Perhaps we could call it "misregulation" instead of "deregulation"?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
A "fundamental right" is not protected at all if one cannot choose when, how, and if to exercise it, or even whether to waive it. If someone wants to waive it for money, what business is that of yours or mine?
Oh and by the way, a government-imposed tax speech would be the very antithesis of the market. Methinks I spy a strawman.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
We all deserve to be protected from prying. Email should have the same protections as US mail. A free market can not exist without trust.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I can't believe people are still posting that kind of claim. Every time the topic comes up, the following facts have to be pointed out:
- It was the utilities that pushed the legislation in the first place. They didn't complain a whit then about "partial deregulation". Instead, they arranged their investors a $28,500,000,000 bail-out at taxpayer expense, and billed it as a 10% rate cut.
- When Californians figured out how badly they had been screwed, they put up Proposition 9 to void part of the deal. The utilities put up $30,000,000 to fight P9.
- Since the legislation took effect, PG&E has reorganized itself into a parent company and two siblings. Now the left hand is making record profits by selling power to the right hand at scalper's prices, and the right hand is demanding another bailout due to all the money it's "losing".
This is a Royal Scam of the finest water. Don't let your "all regulation is bad" ideology blind you to that fact.--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
One of the principle features of the free market is that the results will be wholly unpredictable. If you could anticipate how such a system would work, then it's actually an argument against the free market system. Dispose of the millions of different experiements you see in the free market and central plan it.
Of course the idea is that no _one_ person can discover the best solution to these (and lots of other) problems. But the free market will discover one or several that will stick.
One solution that only occured to me after reading slashdot today has been in use for years: The use of discount cards that people have to sign up for. Many people (including myself) are willing to offer information on their purchase habits for 5-10% off..
-Snoot
Did you know that studies have been done which demonstrate fairly conclusively that the relative performance of CEOs can be explained by chance alone ?
That's debatable. If you had a family and you saw businesses willing to pay $400,000 for a logo your kid could create and a webpage that took you 5 minutes to make, wouldn't you go for it? I would.
I think playing the market is acceptable from that perspective. Even futures traders have to make an informed decision. Like why milk might go up at a certain time or certain fruits that don't grow during a particular season. Done right, futures trading could be a good teaching device.
Daytrading is the big one for me. On the one hand it could be a way to get significant investnent (just pick a really cheesy name for your company, people will fall for it). On the other hand, once your compasny begins growing you've got to pull some of those stocks back otherwise complete idiots high on high school economics will sue you (they own your stock) for not patenting bread and cheese.
This is why I think public ownership of stocks is similar to public property collectivists like to preach about. Bose, known for its high quality audio products is a private company. I truly envy Dr. Amman Bose because he can lead his life as he pleases.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Why did California have price controls in the first place?
Because the electricity utilities were monopolists -- if prices hadn't been regulated, the suppliers would have acted like classic monopolists and reduced supply to jack up prices.
Why the hell did they allow monopoly suppliers of electricity? They must have been smoking crack!
No, it would have been crack-smoking to do it any other way. Electricity supply is a natural monopoly, because it's ludicrously inefficient to have two or three sets of competing power cables running everywhere. Quite apart from the obvious duplication of effort, city streets as they are currently designed could not bear this level of cabling.
So what's the real source of the problem?
Well, at privatisation, the existing, regulated utilities split themselves into a price-controlled supply company and a deregulated generation company. The generation company was meant to charge what the market would bear, while the supply company would supply to consumers, with a price ceiling.
What the hell was the idea of that?
Well, it was believed that, when freed of the dead hand of government, the supply company would make huge improvements in productivity. Everyone envisaged that these productivity improvements would be enough to allow them to reduce the cost to consumers, while competition among generators would keep prices down.
What actually happened?
The productivity improvements never happened. The supply companies were actually less efficient than the integrated utilities had been. They were never able to pay enough for electricity to make it worth the while for the power companies to invest in more capacity.
Wasn't it incredibly naive to expect that the simple act of deregulation would magically make everything more efficient?
Hey don't ask me, ask a libertarian.
So what happened then?
Power demand went through the roof, and there was no spare capacity. Oil prices rose, which didn't exactly help.
So, in a classic example of the market working to all our benefit, the power companies realised they had nothing to gain from driving their customers (the supply companies) out of business, and increased capacity, tiding over the supply companies?
None such luck. The generating companies correctly guessed that in a half-assed deregulatory system like this, losses are socialised while profits are privatised, and that it was time to make out like gang busters.
So whose fault was it?
Everybody's. The price regime was silly, because it didn't allow for incentives to increase generation capcity. But it would have been far sillier to deregulate prices to customers -- this would have simply shifted the excess profits from the generators to the suppliers, and entrenched the same problem forever.
The real lesson is that, despite what everyone tells us about that nasty, evil, incompetent government, it managed to keep the freaking lights on in California. A subsidiary lesson is that Californians use approximately five times as much electricity as would be reasonable. And finally, that we should always be suspicious of people pushing miracle solutions to economic problems which, as a first step, involve large resource transfers to themselves.
thanks
-- the most controversial site on the Web
1. How on earth can you have a market in a commodity, unless you have specified all of the ownership rights pertaining to that commodity?
2. Once you have specified all of the ownership rights relating to personal information, precisely what problem is there which remains to be solved?
The "market in privacy" is a non-solution to a non-problem. It requires as one of its preconditions, a solution to the only political problem of interest. But it's got the magic word "market" in it, which apparently makes a lot of otherwise intelligent people suspend all their critical faculties, for fear of being mistaken for a socialist.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Maybe it's the fault of my high school econ teacher who convinced us that the market was the most efficient solution to many problems, but I really like this idea.
The biggest reason this makes sense to me is that when I'm online, I have no expectation of privacy. I expect that unless I make efforts with encryption, etc. that my communication online isn't private. There are certain orgainizations that I trust more than others online, but when it comes down to it, I have no idea who's looking at my data once it hits the network.
Since I already feel like anyone who wants my personal information can buy it, I'd like them to buy it from me at my price.
Of course, he violated the contract and therefore you could probably win a civil suit to cover the costs of the resulting divorce.
Now if we get all the naked... erm... careless people off the net we might have a chance.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
"Let's declare that something can be traded on a free market, and everything will automagically adjust itself".
Things don't work this way -- if a decision how to value something is left for everyone in each case, ones with more negotiating power, force their decisions on everybody else. In this case corporations who will create their (low) privacy standards will easily leave consumers with no choice, and consumers would have to resort to inefficient and extremely hard to organize boycotts to get anything back.
I have seen people who honestly believed in Communist utopia, and they made more sense than people who honestly believe in this Libertarian utopia.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
People will just hand out their privacy given any percieved benefit, no matter how small. That's how all the quote-on-quote "spyware" companies survive - people either do not know about the side effects, or care.
Has anyone here actually looked at a web site privacy policy? They're pretty scary at times. "Basic usage information" can mean an awful lot - in fact, whatever someone can dream of.
This is a good article, but the writer misses a next logical step. Counterfit information. If we as members of the market counterfit information (make crap up) then we are polluting the informatio market. Once the information collectors have no easy way to determine if the information is valid or invalid the collected information can not be used for analysis. We must all do our part to destroy these databases which belive they are entitled to our information. GO to nytimes and register with fake information. Delete your cookies and repeat.
Also, to find an hot analogy, what kind of free market does the author think would give a fair deal to slaves ? This is not really just a troll, at some times and in some places people who had debts would actually do that for a limited time. And today we sign working contracts - but we have the right not to work and to choose the employer.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
The author is overlooking the primary problem with a "free market" in personal information: information is replicable.
I may well choose, for rational reasons, to sell my name, address, etc. to one party. But due to the nature of information, that party is capable in turn sell it to a third party (and a fourth, and a fifth), without my consent. And if this is the case, I cannot know what I'm selling, short of negotiating a contract. Have I given my address to one party, or many?
This is the problem that Lessig's proposed strong property right in personal information is intended to solve. (In the same way that a strong property right with regard to copying literature, music, and computer code, is intended to solve the problem of the underproduction of creative works. Whether this solution is worth its price is a separate question.)
If I have a strong property right in my personal information, the transaction costs of selling my personal information are lowered: I know that, unless I have *explicitly* permitted someone to do so, they may not transfer my personal information to a third party.
--
I do not believe the constitution guarantees a right to privacy. Some people will definitely argue that it is a derived right.
When you say marketize, you are somehow redefining it. How would "marketizing speech" be putting a tax (definitely not a free market behavior) on speech.
I see some serious problems with what you are trying to say. Could you restate it better so that I can understand what you are saying?
Rationality is of course the crux of libertarian beliefs.
Rational behavior is what seperates you from an animal. You may decide not to think about certain things all the time, but because you are rational, you probably only do it for low impact decisions.
If somone cannot act in a rational manner for important things (e.g. Ronald Regan), then they must be cared for by others. It really is not that radical of a belief.
If you are irrational, then your comments are meaningless...you haven't thought about them.
If everyone is irrational, then how can we possibly decide what laws to enact?
Someone must be rational and capable of deciding things. I say everyone human is rational (with a few exceptions for insanity, alzheimers, etc.) and if we all don't accept this then we don't need society. Because clearly irrational people making laws to govern other irrational people is stupid and dangerous.
Your argument undermines your argument.
Yeah, it's a real barrier to commerce, having to ask explicit questions like "Can I buy your car for $1000? Can I buy your car for $2000?" It's much easier to just hot-wire the car you want and drive away, leaving a $500 bill in the parking space.
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
see, i trade my privacy for all the free stuff on hotdeals forums :)
Runnin' On Empty
Consider the discussion we're having. One of us is being irrational (you, in this case). ;) But that doesn't mean that you're incapable of rational thought, just that you're judgement in this case is clouded by how you want the world to work rather than how it really does work. Likewise for the poor, their judgement will be clouded by unfounded hope, as sold to them by unscrupulous vendors (as indeed, it is today).
Perhaps I should not have been so absolutist myself. I hate to sound Ayn Rand-ian here, but what do we mean by "rational" here, anyway? I maintain that everybody acts irrationally at times. I also maintain that for groups of people (heck, for certain individuals as well), that this is not a random, unpredictable behaviour. This predictability is what allows us to make laws for the betterment of all, not some supposed rationality that does not exist. We can be irrational, perhaps even most of the time, and still create useful laws if we accept that.
I wonder if the counterpoint to this post will get moderated up as well? :P
We lived in California for just over 7 years, and during the period when they finally got the utility de-regulation plan enacted. And, I swear, I could never figure out why in the world most people wanted to do this. The utility situation in California (and you could include water in this as well) is a truly classic example of where markets will have a rougher time, because virtually every major change or transaction involves an external party who would not be taking part in the transaction if it were a conventional market.
The building and siting of power plants, for example, is a problem that comes up almost everywhere, but the costs to other parties of putting them wherever the grid thinks them most efficient are vastly greater in California than in most places. California generates a huge amount of it gross state product from the fact that it *is* California, the idyllic (-looking) paradise. In California, a huge determinant of the value of any piece of land is, to be quite frank, the view, and the clarity of the air and water, which are both kinds of "rights" that are extremely hard to deal with if the holders aren't a party to the transaction.
Now, what actually happened was the way people became party to these kinds of transactions was through the political system. Most specifically, the PUC and their right to regulate the placement and operation of power plants and the prices that could be charged. In return for this power, utilities were essentially granted a guaranteed rate of return (like most other places), which is a boring but perfectly profitable way to do business. Yes, there is no doubt that there were inefficiencies in that system, but, because it was political, all the affected parties were involved, and everybody could play. This was the reason why I find it hard to consider the PUC to be truly a central planning agency: everybody could and did put tremendous amounts of pressure on the PUC to have things their way, but always got compromise solutions. The problem, of course, was that some users believed that they could get better prices through a different system, and that it was worth the huge monetary cost of pushing hard on the political system in the usual fashion. This would have been okay, except that the compromise solution that was reached had some spectacular bugs in it that weren't fully appreciated at the time, but which could be (and have been) exploited to the hilt by power suppliers, who were (by law) completely separated from the utility companies themselves.
So, when I see what happened, I don't think of it as a market failure or a central planning failure, but as a political failure of the type that so very often crops up in California. Why California more than most other places? I think it is because the stakes are so much higher there than other places, and because there are incredibly strong regional political differences that make the place basically ungovernable. I cannot possibly imagine something like this happening in, say, Iowa. Or in a California that consisted of two or even three independent states.
Babar
Now they would have to pay for it.
Maybe they would accept it, if it were forced on them, but otherwise there are alot of interests pushing for continuing the free ride.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
A more secure way of providing the same social benefit would be:
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
I can see that this idea will be very appealling to libertarians and Republicans, but I think that it is only so on a Prima Facie level. Only the rich will gain freedom and privacy from this idea. The rest, the poor, will be forced by necessity to sacrifice.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
The California misregulation of the electricity market was primarily caused by price controls. If you limit the amount that a price can rise, then if the product demand increases, supply will not increase to meet the demand. This is simple economic theory. Did you sleep through that class, too?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
that's a pretty goofy article..."Their next argument is similarly perverse." Their argument? that the way things are going, when email is universal, there will always be some people still getting spam. I hope the author is one of them.
he didn't go into detail, but everything he agreed with sounds like the trend that's been growing. like shoppers club cards at supermarkets. He's just pushing more of the same.
I can't stand those little cards. They are almost as bad as coupons. Both do nothing more than make the market less efficient for consumers. I used to shop at Safeway regularly, and another thing I noticed is that the "savings" come mostly on name-brand products that are junk food or heavily laced with additives. They practicly never "save" you anything on healthy staples like rice or bananas.
There may be hope though. Coupons seem to have peaked now, and I actually recall one chain advertising that they had simply lowered the prices so that "you don't have to pay for somebody elses double coupons". Unfortunately, the cards seem to have sprung up in their place. I eagerly await the day Safeway launches an ad campaign saying "No coupons, no cards, no hassles--just low prices and prompt service".
Are there any aspiring young Sam Walton types reading this? I hope so.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
We already have a free market in privacy!! Why, just the other day, I was offered 10,000 guaranteed email addresses for a trivial sum!
Wah!
If every time people try to use the benefits of the internet business model, consumers yowl for their privacy, the internet will die.
You know that saying, how you always kill the one you love? Well, it works both ways.
There are many different types of electronic privacy:
/. providing for a level of privacy that I can be comfortable with. That and the opportunity to post AC. Now if this all became negotiable - it would take legislation, and I am not sure the current regime in the US would do it because they feel pressure from companies and not people who they have managed to insulate themselves from - I might be more free in my associations on the Web, but I doubt it. I have determined not to change my behavior regardless of who knows about it, but not everyone is that way. Many people regard online transactions as foolish: "you gave out your Credit Card on the web?" That sort of thing. "You admitted that you killed someone in a chat room?" Clearly that would be foolish, but if we protect privacies it cannot be case-specific, it would have to be like in that movie where Mickey Rourke confesses a murder to the priest who happens to be the only witness and the priest couldn't then testify against Mickey.
/.
- Credit card numbers
- Where you visit on the Web
- What you bought on the Web
- Your emails and other things you've typed in forums like slashdot and say, deja vu
- other stuff that I can't think of right now.
- coming soon: genetic data on you (a la GATTACA)
So which are they dealing with in this article? Maybe it's me, but the argument is too abstract for me. But let me address the above list.
It is already illegal to give out credit card numbers, but it is apparently legal for companies to keep your number on file. Recall Egghead recently got cracked and numbers may have been compromised. In the discussion here, it was pointed out that some companies have a policy to delete numbers after the sale, but many don't. Because of the accessibility of these numbers to crackers, a valuable adjunct to the current law might be a stipulation that CC numbers be discarded after, oh, thirty days or a year or something that makes sense. Certainly, if a company asked me if I wanted a discount for not making them 'forget' my CC number it would seem absurd.
Where you visit on the Web and what you purchase and what you say need to have protection from our governments, IMO. The author argues that these could be negotiable: I don't mind you knowing that I bought a TiVO from Buy.com, but the teen who needs help about his homosexual urges might never get help if (s)he thought it would be revealed. If someone could produce all my postings to even this place it might prove embarrassing in a certain context, which is why I appreciate
The fact that email can be used against someone in a court of law seems to me to be an invasion of privacy, but there ya have it, folks. Careful what you say in emails, in chat rooms, in
But when I get spammed with emails telling me how to lose weight fast (I am not by any stretch of the imagination fat), I have to wonder who sent that out, how they got my email addy, and when did I make the mistake of allowing that company to get information on me. This should not be allowed, IMO. Not without my permission. Jeez, everyone posting here has a fake email addy so that some moronic company (or maybe 50 mc's) don't grab 'em all, make up a list and spam the crap out of us with "Win a free Linux t-shirt!" offers.
One last point on privacy: it used to be that it was Illegal for a company to ask for your Social Security Number (please correct me if I am wrong). Now it seems that everyone feels entitled to ask you for the "Number of the Beast". I used to try to protest, but they tell me that it is required. The centralization of all this data (or its mere potential) should give us all pause. I think that the dangers inherent in the massive compilation capabilities offered to evil corps should give us all pause...
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
In the grocery store. The people who were the big push in bringing you Universal Product Codes, instant coupons based on what you bought, and, let's face it, the entire shopping cart metaphor on which the internet is based (:-)), have also brought you, in many markets, the Value Card. (OK, sometimes it's a key-chain or dongle these days.) The only thing you need to do to get one is to fill out the handy form...and then, from then on, everything you buy from there is recorded as having been bought by you. Everything from avacados to zesta saltines, and from birth control pills to Prozac.
It's a marketer's dream.
Now, you do, of course, get something for your trouble: sales and price breaks that, in my experience, never amount to anything more than you could have gotten from the same grocery store before they had the "Value" program, or more than you could get from a competing grocery store that did not have a "Rewards" program (or whatever they might call it). So let's calculate the value of your privacy, as estimated by the market:
Hmm, that looks like about Zero, to me. Now maybe it's possible that when all stores have these programs, and many people are essentially forced to join one to get the kind of prices they used to get without selling all of their privacy, it's possible then that we would see market competition between grocery stores concerning what you get for your privacy rights. Or not. What we might more likely see is a vast expansion of the "instant coupons" idea, where your price and my price for the same good can vary depending on the rest of our buying habits, and which brands are willing to shell out a little bit more in price breaks for their least loyal customers.
Babar
The tragedy of the commons is not a demonstration of irrationality, quite the contrary, it's a demonstration of rationality and self centeredness. It is an apt demonstration of one of the reasons why socialism and communism fail. If I am rational and self-centered, and if sharing costs me something, I simply won't share unless I profit as a result of sharing. Put simply, you have no assurances if you share that you'll gain anything; the only assurance is that you'll lose something in the process of sharing.
If most other people don't share, it's a losing proposition. Though it may be true that we would be better off if everyone shared (this is debatable), it presumes COORDINATION of interests. Rationality simply does not gaurantee this, that is a seperate issue entirely. We are rational as individuals. Thus the example is not proof that people are irrational.
You might call someone irrational, if they can share 1 unit and are assured to get 3 unit in return, and refuse to share, but this is simply not the case with the tragedy in the commons. People are generally good when they can directly control their own welfare. Leaving it up to the individual makes sense when the effects of their action primarily just affect and benefit themselves. This privacy issue is just such a case.
There are of course times where we require a certain coordination and enlightened self-interest, where we require by law or as a society that a person MUST do a thing (i.e., taxes, speed limits, other laws, etc), but these do not contradict rationality--they contradict COORDINATION. A libertarian might reject the arguments for them, but they aren't, or shouldn't be, making them solely on the grounds of rationality.
Anyways, I am a capitalist and, if anything, a Republican, not a Libertarian.
PS: People may not be perfectly rational, but we don't need perfection to do a vastly better job on the aggregate. For that matter, we're not perfect in anything, so why should presume our reasoning for our laws are any better?
...article. But its author doesn't seem to realize how close his ideas really are to Lessig's and to the more extreme privacy-as-a-right advocates.
We probably can arrive at some way of painlessly negotiating a privacy agreement with each web site we visit. The degree to which that would produce an Antioch-like solution is more a matter of technology and establishing open protocols for machine negotiation than any legal, moral or social issue. (BTW, it is my personal belief that anyone who cannot figure out a way to ask permission without "breaking the mood" shouldn't be in college, probably doesn't deserve sex, and definitely shouldn't have their genes passed on to the next generation. Not that the Antioch policy is particularly well thought out, but anyone who whines about it probably can't get sex without it or with it.)
The real problem with such a market is not the spectre of the Antioch dean of students writing our pop-up permissions boxes. The real problem derives from the fact that the very people who will pay for the privacy are the only ones the marketers want, while the poor who trade away such rights do not have the addresses and phone numbers which make for valuable mailing lists. But that's a problem for telemarketers and their ilk, not one civilized people will lose much sleep over.
The author of the article, however, fails to realize (as libertarians frequently do) the importance of big government to their free markets. I can only trade in the value of my personal information if I can own it (as Lessig suggests) or if others cannot trade in it (as the more extreme privacy-right advocates urge). These two are probably not as different as the author seems to believe. But maybe he is just being intellectually careful about accurately stating the positions of others (something which is always attractive, especially in libertarians).
If a web site can violate the terms of their agreement with me about my personal data, then only a fairly strong governmental role can enable me to consistently detect such a violation. Much of the trade in personal information is deliberately hidden from the subject of the information. For instance, your credit report (probably the most expensive personal data around) is provided to your bank with the explicit promise on their part not to allow you to see it. You may have the right to ask the reporting service to reveal your report (a right which only exists because the government has legislated it), but the users of that data are explicitly prohibited from making it available to you.
Because the value assigned to each item of personal data are necessarily going to be small, enforcement by individuals is only possible if the government regulates the personal-data industry in such a way that requires fairly complete records of the way the data is acquired, sold and distributed. Such records must be fairly easy for the average person to access (the web suggests itself as an obvious solution) but must themselves be protected from abuse.
In short, as attractive as the liberal arguments put forward by the writer are, the market he imagines cannot be fleshed out without a fairly large governmental presence: both regulatory and judicial (a kind of microclaims court or Privacy Rights Part of the Civil Court).
His arguments are strong and convincing. But, if he imagines he is miles away from Lessig and the others, he is simply looking through the wrong end of his binoculars.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the concept of trading personal information for goods or services. Nor is there anything inherently wrong with the concept of a free market, where companies can offer a wide range of products, services, and TERMS. In fact, both are appealing and I can understand why many people would be hesitant to put limitations on said. In order to understand why others feel the need to do just that, one must give due consideration to the REALITIES of the free market.
Theoretically, consumers have the power to decide which practices continue and which practices don't. We can, after all, provide feedback and vote with our feet. Companies wanting to stay in business must satisfy the wishes of their customers. Where there is unfullfilled demand, companies will see an opportunity to profit and move to satisfy that demand. Etc. However, as the saying goes, reality bites.
In a world where corporations have hundreds of thousands, millions, and in some cases tens of millions of customers... and where corporations have a tremendous amount of power, money, and influence (individually, let alone collectively), it is very difficult for consumers to exert enough pressure to change things. Sure, extremely serious situations, such as those involving a threat to one's health, ma [eventually] generate enough public attention, outrage, and lawsuits to force a change. But for less serious situations, say privacy or unethical direct marketing practices in general, a strong and broad "movement" is unlikely to materialize. Even if most people object to the practices in question. Why? Because people are busy with the burdens and responsibilities of every day life. They simply don't have the TIME to actively combat every problem they come across. Even if they do, many are overwhelmed and discouraged by the daunting task of combating a corporation or industry.
So what happens, over time, is that more and more corporations end up having their way. Which is, naturally, to collect and use as much information as possible. After all, where only a minority of consumers are actively objecting, secondary use of collected information and unsolicited direct marketing pays handsomely. Corporations tend to follow each other's lead. You need to stay abreast, if not ahead, of the competition. If the competition is out-profiting you by using such practices, you better get in the game too. This produces a trend where companies, particularly large publically traded companies that emphasize the bottom line above all else, keep pushing the limits. Mainstream companies are some of the worse offenders in terms of requiring people to cough up information and then using that information for secondary purposes (usually without their explicit consent). This greatly exacerbates the problem, for people are strongly compelled to do business with such "reputable" companies. To say that the mainstream companies have a captive audience wouldn't be too far off the mark. Again, realistically speaking. Can you imagine how much more difficult and expensive life would be if you couldn't, because of objectionable practices, do business with any of the top 5 or 10 businesses in an essential industry like computers or health care or banking, or the like? This is the situation/risk privacy conscious people are facing. To give in to such practices or restructure their life so as to avoid such practices. Practically speaking, that's not much of choice IMO.
I value my privacy very highly.
But I dont think that making something mandatory, either for 'opt in' or 'opt out' is the answer. Its all just falls back to supply and demand / quid pro quo. If you dont think that what you want, whatever that might be, is worth what you have to give for it... Don't do it.
Of course the reverse is true as well.
In my youth I gave the US military free rein into my personal life so that I could get what I thought was a good job in electronics. 10 years ago I would have said that it was the worst mistake of my life letting them root around my personal affairs. Now? I have a great job that I can trace back to alot of things I learned as a result of my military service. Today I say that it was worth it. Give me another 10 years and I might say otherwise. But in the end it was my choice to say "Here, jump into my personal affairs, and give me room, board, and money in my pocket in exchange." I could have just as easily went to work at the local muffler shop and gotten paid under the table. No one the wiser.
Especially me.
My point is that I think it should be a personal decision to what information you give out. Not some oversight committee that has agendas that may or may not align with yours. Every time you let someone else make a decision or draw a line so that you dont have to think about it or make an informed decision yourself (or haggle with the other party for the best deal you can get for what you are willing to give them), you lose a little freedom. And before you know it, you fi1%&^$
*** The rest of this comment has been censored ***
***by those who have your best interests in mind***
Who would ever purchase privacy from you again? You obviously don't live up to your agreements. For that matter, how does sarah know that you're telling the truth? Perhaps you're lying again.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Especially the bit at odds with Shapiro thinking there is a need for "saving our digital souls" Shapiro's implicit hyperbole is rediculous. My soul is anything but digital. A little privacy lost is not remotely comparable a "lost soul." Let the Market work things out. Privacy up for bargain is no problem as long as the user has control. Certainly gov. regulation would be inefficient and out of place. Standing offer: give me $100 and I'll give my email address to anyone! Spammers welcome too! Oh Yeah! $500 and every spammer in the world can have it.
" if x then... !x "
I rather like this idea, but I see one huge flaw in it: free markets are based fundamentally on rationality, and to behave rationally, you have to be informed. But in general, most people are not informed about what is being done with their personal information, and moreover, in a lot of cases it is impossible to be informed.
In order for this to work, sites that use personal information need to make their privacy policies publicly available (before they grab your personal info), and actually stick to those policies. That way you can make the choice about your privacy.
The article addressed this to a certain extent but sort of glossed over it. I don't think that the mechanisms are in place for people to make informed choices about privacy at the moment, and I'm not sure that they ever will be.
On the other hand, I don't think government regulation is going to work for this issue any more than it has worked for anything else on the net.
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010205S0004
Marketeer 1: You gave this guy $20 for what? /. and conversatron hundreds of times a day! It's as if this person is a complete and utter nerd! We can't get any usefull research out of this!
Marketeer 2: For his complete web history. Isn't trading privacy on the free market great? Now we can use this for market research!
Marketeer 1: But all this guy does is reload
Marketeer 2: But it only cost $20! It cost more if the person has a life...
Stupid like a fox!
I have two examples of "good spam"
/., on a daily basis. I gave my info to My Yahoo - because their service is not available at any other price - and it's the best I've found so far. Would I pay for identical services if it meant that my personal data were safe? Yes, but I'm not sure how much I would pay. $5/mo?
I am a My Yahoo person. It's my portal of choice. My web-habits bring me to several common sites, including
Anyway, their posession of my personal data led to a targeted ad, a Yahoo platinum Visa, at 9.9%. I was sick of being screwed by credit card companies with 18% interest, so I dumped my other cards and got the Yahoo Visa, and I've used that card for over two years now.
Sometimes, Yahoo deliberately allows obvious bulk email advertising find it's way into my email inbox, instead of the bulk email folder. Of course, they're probably getting a cut. I don't like that, I deal with it, I delete it, but I think it is - unethical, considering that I paid my "personal info" to them, and responded to a rather lucrative ad for them. I have reached my limit of 100 blocked addresses.
On the other hand, one email that DID find it's way into yahoo mail's bulk mail folder, was an ad from a car parts shop. I had ordered their catalog about a year ago, they emailed me to inform me of a 20% off sale. That was FAR MORE desirable an ad than "Get rich at home in your spare time" or "hot sexy high school girls want to strip for you". In fact, I responded to THAT ad, and ordered about $900 worth of parts for my project car. I was VERY happy to have saved about $170 on this sale. I was VERY happy to have been notified.
Would I be as happy if that Car Parts sales company sold my address to the "hot sexy high school girls want to give you head in your convertible" people? No, I'd be fucking pissed. It would be unethical. Companies should not do that, and this kind of thing really ought to be explicitly Opt In, with a yearly expiration.
I don't think that use of this information should stop - but I think the unethical practices of selective spam filtering by email providers, and the unsolicited selling of personal data to third parties, need to stop.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
At least HALF the fault lies with the utilities, who lobbied the brain-dead politicians for exactly the situation they got. They knew that as long as commodity prices for Gas stayed low, they would make huge profits, and if they got out of hand, there would really be no choice other than a Government bailout. Both ways, consumers get fucked.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The RIAA, has, for some time, been moaning about the perils of digital piracy. A digital medium, by its very nature, involves no generational loss when it is copied. Thus, once a recording gets on the internet, there a few technical barriers (besides bandwidth) to mass "unauthorized" distribution.
So while the RIAA might not care about me taping an LP to give to a friend, it cares a great deal about my distribution of same song (in mp3 format) on the internet.
At the same time, while my local druggist might knwo that I purchase a particular combination of drugs each month, that information did not, (until recently) go into a central computer so as to inform hordes of people unknown to me, that I had such and such a combination of health problems.
In a sense, the mantra of the RIAA is correct. Digital is different. It allows the effortless transmission of information-- sometimes in a manner that may not be completely benign.
To extend this analogy-- if I copy a tape for my own personal use-- or let a friend borrow an album, my actions fall under "fair use." In the same manner, the corner drugstore is perfectly justified in using my purchase information to plan its inventory. It is a "fair use". It may even store information about my address, phone number, etc., so as to conduct an appropriate commercial relationship with me. If I have a problem with its discretion, I can and will shop elsewhere.
But if information is bought and sold on a free wheeling basis, and a complete list of my medications is transmitted to "Blackmail-drugs.com", what's to stop them from selling a complete pristine, "generation loss free" copy of my data to everybody?
Even if I value my privacy highly, and only let the most trustworthy individuals have access to my personal details, it only takes one previously trustworthy individual to sell that data to multiple non-discrete orginizations, reducing the value of my privacy.
If John gives me 10$ to keep my mouth shut, I can keep my mouth shut, I can accept $11 from sarah, and tell her, or I can accept 25$ from a newspaper intent on reveling the details of Congressman John's "secret life." The newspaper, of course, will sell these details to 50,000 people, for $0.25 each...
The tragedy of the commons is not a demonstration of irrationality, quite the contrary, it's a demonstration of rationality and self centeredness. It is an apt demonstration of one of the reasons why socialism and communism fail.
Actually, it is the opposite. It can be summed up in the Prisoners' Dilemma. The best outcome for the prisoners taken together can only happen if they both keep silent. The best outcome for each prisoner individually is if he rats the other out and the other keeps silent. Result: both rat the other out, and both loose collectivly and individually.
Have a look at http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/playground/pd.html for a minor variation involving gold coins. It shows quite clearly that two equal competitors making rational self interested decisions will average 2.5 gold coins each round rather than a certainty of 3/round unless they act collectivly with mutual trust.
A psychologist has tried that in real life (minus the horrible fate) by placing $5 into a bowl each round with 5 players. When the buzzer sounds, they are each free to grab all the money they can out of the bowl. If there is still money in the bowl, he adds another $5 and play continues. He set a maximum payout of $500. He never had to pay out the whole $500. (I may have the amounts wrong, but that's the jist of the experiment).
The problem in all such situations is that if each individual has complete freedom to choose, all it takes is one moron to ruin the game for everyone. There is no shortage of morons out there.
We will never have total privacy because as a human race we are total snoops and gossips which in themselves are a invasion of privacy. Unless we can convince everyone that no one other then themselves are important we will never have total privacy. We must first gain privacy in our personnal lives before we gain privacy in our informational lives.
The author mentions that society couldn't function without the help of reputation; that "In the older days, we relied on gossip for the exchange of that information" and suggests that the technological private information that travels around now is an equal to that.
This is wrong in one critical way. In the olden days, gossip followed one around for a year or so. More if you were horrible, forever only if you were an infamous evil/good person.
TODAY: Every small detail of everything you've ever done, all transactions you've made - the time you wrote a mean letter to your newspaper online. All of that follows you Indefinately!.
This is the critical difference. The need to protect privacy is more than just protecting your anonymity. It's also about protecting yourself from the dumb things you did at age 17 coming back to haunt you when it's time to get credit on your car.
A classic example would be the ever topical goatse.cx
This is a very important point that people are much too quick to brush under the rug because it is closely tied to sexual conventions. The assumption is always that those who give up their privacy are victims. This dynamic of exposed victim and sadistic voyeur is an icon of the pornographic market.
Those officials who prefer to take the knight in shining armor identity are merely palying out their fetish for conventional sexual identities.
I agree with the author of the article that the argument that "not even the government" can sort out privacy issues is hardly a valid reason to have officials play out their twisted sexual perversions in protective legislation.
The tools for privacy protection are readily avaliable to those who seek them. In fact, it has been the US government who has sought to control encryption technology with this same knight in shining armor bullshit. When the game is "protecting" the people from sex, drugs and rock and roll the government is all opposed to privacy. Here we have officials taking on the same persona in the name of defending people's privacy. I think the fundamental problem is the rhetorical force of the image of the defender.
The one genre where this rhetoric is exposed and ridiculed more than any other is pornography. Thus taking us back to the original point. How bout these fuckers just back off.
The American system has found that it is best to prohibit the sale of basic human rights. You can't sell your kids; you can't sell your vote; you can't sell yourself into slavery. Long term contracts for personal services are generally unenforceable -- hockey contracts are 15 years, that's the longest I know of -- too long is slavery. Loss of privacy is forever. Read the slip the lab makes you sign when you go for your pre-employment drug test -- you give them right to your medical records for the next 30 years. Ought to be illegal!
The piece is not very thought-out, or it is designed to fool (an eighth grader). The Antioch College comparison is an obvious straw man, set up to be knocked down.
If we take away the property rights of privacy, do we make it a public good? If so, it's subject to the Tragedy of the Commons. Want that? That's what I thought you'd say.
"Never bullshit a bullshitter" All That Jazz
No, the problem is that the cost of getting electricity to California is above the cost you can sell it at. There's a cap on consumer rates (effectively, not in detail), and the supply market is artificially overpriced. Oh, and you can't build any new plants because it's bad for the environment. And only gas plants have been built for like the past 20 years, which are the most expensive around. Oh, yeah, did we mention that the same environmentalists who keep people from building plants want to mandate electric cars?
Fucking communists should move to China, and leave us alone.
Call the IRS and ask for a Tax ID number. After you fill out the paperwork you will be given a number which has the same number of digits as an SSN and can be used as one anywhere. Anytime people ask for your SSN give them your Tax ID number instead. It's legal, it's easy and it's safe.
War is necrophilia.
Well, rhetorical as it may be, I just had to answer this question with a story about a bunch of bored college kids and an all-night Wal-Mart. We didn't actually do this, mind you, but in our small college town there wasn't much to do on weeknights aside from renting movies or mindlessly roaming the Wal-Mart trying to pick up the few townies who were actually attractive and had all their teeth intact. But one night we were spitballing stuff to do and someone jokingly came up with a good way to freak out underpaid overworked teenage chack-out girls. Go with a bunch of guys to the Wal-Mart, or any such, and gather all the following, and anything else questionable when taken together: the biggest box of condoms, a length of nylon rope, some Polaroid film, duct tape, one of those sleeping masks, several pairs of junior-miss sized panties, whipped cream, K-Y, ski mask, some lollipops, some Lady Gillette razors and women's shaving gel, a couple issues of children's magazines like Nickelodeon Kids or Teen Beat or something, and anything else either sexual, related to youngsters, or with possible bondage uses. That poor, poor clerk wouldn't quite know what to make of all that stuff purchased together by a bunch of college boys--separately, it's entirely innocent; bought at once, it looks quite suspicious. Of course, I don't actually recommend purchasing all that stuff together, unless you're prepared to explain your sick joke to some authorities if the clerk really freaks out.
But, getting back on topic, those privacy-stealing store discount cards you mentioned are a real nuisance. So few people who have them realize that their shopping habits are being kept in databases, sold to marketers, and being put in a position to be used against them. I can't vouch for its truthfulness, but I did read an account that someone in a small town who was suspected of being the local marijuana and coke connection had had his shopping records used against him--the sheriff's office convinced a judge they had cause for a warrant on various other accounts, and subpoenad his purchase records to see if he bought unusual quantities of plastic baggies, straws, and other potential tools of the drug trade. Now, the story may well be spurious, like the old man-wakes-up-in-tub-of-ice-with-kidney-gone story, but it does illustrate the dangers here. Your purchasing records persist if you use such a card under your own name, and your buying habits could be used against you. In this case, it was a drug dealer who had his buying habits examined--but even discounting the popular opposition to this War-on-Drugs rhetoric bullshit, you can never know where this could lead. What if you're suspected of tax evasion, and the IRS decides your shopping records might show that you live above your reported means? Should they get your shopping records? What if they don't even need a subpoena, what if they can just buy your data on the open market, with no oversight? Background checks are now commonplace in job screenings and insurance applications--what if employers and insurance companies start looking at people's buying habits, to weed out people who buy too much alcohol or too many unhealthy foods? We live in an information society, and it's not at all extremist or unrealistic to think it's just a few steps from where we are now to a very Orwellian state of affairs...
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
I'm a bit surprised, but naturally quite happy, that my little piece has generated so much discussion. Let me respond to a few criticisms.
-julian sanchez
Doesn't that exceed your IP quota for the day? Just watch yourself, buster.
The licensing of personal data would be just about mandatory for the "free market" proposal in the article to work. And, if the technology exists to do it for music, it certainly would work for spammers and telemarketers who could be required to use software that won't violate any license. This might even be a valid use for the DMCA.
I doubt that the GPL would be an appropriate license, however, since it not only allows infinite distribution rights but also REQUIRES the IP covered be published if amended. I don't think I want anyone to be required to publish my personal info if they add a note to their database describing what I said to them when they called me a 6pm. (I work nights and telemarketers almost always wake me from a sound sleep.)
And I really like the idea of a web site which autogens fake but valid addresses. Be sure to let us know when you've got it running. I'd be a little careful about randomly generating apparently valid phone numbers because the rightful owners of those numbers might feel they were being treated unfairly. But, if you could make so it randomly chooses a spammer's home number, I might even be willing to pay for the service.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
... is that we have a choice. The way matters stand now, marketers (a) treat our personal information as their property, and (b) buy and sell it like mad. "Fine," says Sanchez, "do business with someone who doesn't do that." Sure -- show me one! Unless you want to spend your entire life only purchasing with cash (and don't even think of using the internet), this is simply not an option. When *everyone* is selling what they know, there just isn't a private alternative. Without the government to stand behind the idea that I own my personal data, there is no incentive whatsoever to stop marketers from swapping it around.
That is not opposite. In fact, it's essentially the same phenomenon. In both situations, all involved parties may theoretically benefit more, as an individuals, if they COORDINATE their actions. They do not, because in their own little, immediate, and self-centered microcosms it does not benefit them. [One could take this argument even further and argue the theoretical outcome versus the intuited and the empirical outcomes--where a person might not be a "moron" at all, because the theory is impossible.]
Whether you wish to call this irrationality or not is a semantic argument that is largely irrelvent to the underlying question. There is a large, but subtle distinction to be made. In the "tragedy of the commons" and in the "Dilema", you involve an outside universe, beyond just self, that necessarily involves a great many additional factors. None of this says that a person cannot decide, for instance, whether he'd rather have 4 dollars or 5 dollars. Likewise, it also does not say that a person is too irrational as to decide if he'd rather have 5m (or any number) dollars [in exchange for interested business entities knowing his shopping habits] or his "privacy".
How is this different from the way things are now? I'll send in rebate forms, fill out sweepstakes entries, wtc. because I'm too poor to afford my geek lifestyle otherwise. On the other extreme, it takes a good deal of moolah to get a swiss bank account. The rich have privacy and the poor don't. End of story.
Debian - the distro for the sensible Linux user. Now available in 3 delicious varieties!
I didn't intend to cover personal data under the GPL, I just called it the GNU Privacy License as a bit of a joke. It would be an entirely new license. Involving GNU or Stallman would be a good idea though - not only adds a big name proponent to the effort, but keeps RMS busy and off the streets, which is generally a good thing.
And I was a little leery, too, of using real phone numbers, but I wanted my fake data to be as close to perfect as possible. Maybe the best way to accomplish it to build a big database of businesses and groups that annoy me, and randomly choose one of those addresses and phone numbers. McDonalds, Baby Bell business offices, aluminum siding salesmen, Scientologists, that sort o' thing. Just like when I registered a bunch of goofy domain names on a free reg service and used addresses for Graceland, a Dairy Queen in Janis Joplin's hometown, &etc. Maybe I'll do an Ask Slashdot on it.
Regards,
reemul
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
Apart from believing that Mr. Sanchez's views are silly and ignorant for social reasons, even economicallys speaking I don't think his proposal is wise or even plausable. Here's why. If I know that I can get a discount in exchange for releasing my information, then I will do whatever I can to FALSIFY anything that I can get away with falsifing. If it became easy for me to falsify most of the information that I provide, then the value of the information that I give would go down, and companies would not be able to provide significant added value for that information. In order for such an information market to work, it would therefore ironically need REGULATION from an external entity, such as the government (Can you imagine Mr. Sanchez asking the government to regulate his market?) Think that that is speculation? Why is it illegal to falsify information to credit agencies and bureaus? Because the businesses that take your credit card numbers need to be able to trust that the credit card company will pay them. And how do the credit card companies ensure that trust? They take LEGAL action against you when you don't pay. Since they need to know who you are in order to take legal action, credit card agencies obviously rely on the accuracy of the information that you provide to stay in business. Thus the credit market needs regulation to avoid disaster. So laissez faire capitalists such as Mr. Sanchez are left with two unpaletable options. On the one hand they can let the market fail, and the other they can hypocritically ask the government to intervene. What would government intervention mean? I certainly would be in jail by now if the information that I provide to any old website were held to the same legal standards as information I provide to my bank!
Yeah, yeah. Now, ask yourself -- why did they want to deregulate in the first place? What was the incentive for deregulation?
Well, because some people thought that the market would become more effecient, and power would become cheaper.
Now a few people realized that any utilities market where the infrastructure is as expensive and hard to create as our current power market wouldn't work like a commodoties market.
So they introduced price controls as a compromise. After all, since the market was going to get more effecient, nobody should have had to fear raising prices, right?
Ooops.
Granted, it is stupid to half-deregulate a market and expect it to work like a market. But let me reiterate again: it's just like phone service or any other infrastructure-expensive utility. The bar to entry into the market and the lock in to a prevailing system is too high for power companies to become a truly free market.
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
What needs to be done in order for this plan (which I like, otherwise why would I have submitted the article?) to work in any way is for privacy policies to be fixed and legally binding and enforceable.
This is sort of similar to my modest proposal for insurance for credit card databases. If information=power, and money=power, doesn't it follow that information=money? By looking at it that way, I can see the logic in both proposals. [which is not to say that I fail to see the logic in other proposals.]
Free market is used for things that are scarse by nature.
Privacy (in this context) is not one of those. It is not a God given right for companies to collect data about the public.
So: Absolutely ridiculous.
The physicist suggests that she climb a tree and drop the can onto a stone in such a way as to pop the top.
The chemist replies that such an action would also spill the beans out over the sand. The chemist proposes that he whip up a solution from sea water to corrode the top off.
The economist who had been sitting quietly finally chimes in. "You two are making this far too difficult," said the economist. "First, let's assume a can opener."
This idea relies on a lot of assumptions that are made in highschool economics classes. A beautiful framework of ideas to say the least. Too bad they don't work. They mainly serve to redistribute wealth from the bottom up. Adam Smith would be rolling in his grave if he heard his theories so butchered.
Smith's model presupposed a level of economic equality as a prerequisite. Incidentally, he also disliked corporations, because he argued that a businesses capital must be rooted in one place.
The moral of this story is that the free market really shouldn't exist.
The Cult of the Free Market would have us believe that the free market will optimally distribute wealth and resources. The fact is that it hasn't. The free market is not a well oiled machine. Just like a good Linux box, the economy does require some system administration.
Good system administrators don't rule with an iron fist, but they also know that 2 percent of their users shouldn't be sucking 90% of the system resources.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
I realize that privacy is a very hot topic amongst the Slashdot crowd, but lets face it: the average Joe Sixpack computer user is your typical aliterate moron who gets all of his information about the world by watching the local news on television. He'd give graphic descriptions of his wife's nipples to the folks at Amazon (C) (R) (TM) for $1.50 off of his next order. People routinely put up with (pranks suggested during a previous story not withstanding) mountains of junk mail, annoying telemarketers calling during dinner, and those assholes who want you to "vote for them" by purchasing magazines they're selling door to door while you're trying to get your vital information about life on Earth by watching the local news.
Let's face it: privacy isn't an issue. The only way it will become an issue is if it is featured in a story on the local news, in which case the subject will be exaggerated and misreported, and then the people will demand that the government outlaw the Internet. And then how will we stea^H^H^H^H sample music and download pr0n?
The best solution is to just to turn off cookies, use a reasonably good spam filter, and accept the fact that 3 billion people will find out that you purchased that bootleg video of Natalie Portman eating hot grits.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
This article is simply an application of Coase's Law*: when the actions of an agent impose a negative externality on another agent one can rely on private bargining to produce an optimal outcome. However, this "law" only applies when a variety of assumptions hold.
In this case, it seems to me the most important issue is imperfect information. In order for a consumer to bargain to an optimal level of privacy, IT MUST BE POSSIBLE FOR THAT CONSUMER TO MONITOR THE DEGREE TO WHICH COMPANIES COMPLY WITH THE RESULTING CONTRACT. What good does it do to enter a privacy contract with the owner of a web-site if you have no ability to determine whether or not the company fulfills it's side of the bargin??
Another issue involves the distributed nature of the problem, an issue alluded to in the article. Even if a technical solution can be found to the information issue mentioned above, EACH CONSUMER WOULD NEED TO NEGOTIATE A PRIVACY CONTRACT WITH MANY COMPANIES. As a result, there will be substantial transaction costs (ie, the time necessary to form all these contracts). Such transaction costs can result in inefficiently low levels of contracting.
* See Ronald Coase's "The Problem of Social Cost" in the Journal of Law and Economics, October 1960.
My girlfriend would be pissed off that we didn't bring her along.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
P3Pv1 does *not* allow you to "bargain with websites for ... privacy", as the article states.
This capability was in earlier versions of the protocol (it has a long history), but it was taken out for a number of reasons.
The current Candidate Recommendation only allows sites to 'advertise' what their privacy policy is, allowing the client to decide whether or not to send privacy-sensitive information (like cookies, etc.), or whether to make the request at all.
Much as I'd agree with the "No coupons etc. just low prices and prompt service" concept, it's been tried before and failed. I don't have the link handy right now, but one of the big U.S. department-store chains -- maybe K-Mart -- attempted this a few years ago. Basically what they discovered is that people don't go there because of everyday low prices. They are drawn by sales and the promise of a discount, even if in the long run they're being irrational by not choosing the "everyday low prices" option. This and other research I've seen leads me to believe that many people are motivated not by the absolute price of goods as much as by the feeling that they're "getting a bargain". (Why else would you be mad if you thought you got a deal one day, and then discovered the next day that your best friend bought the same thing from the same place at the same time and paid less?)
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
It is true, that if you allocate any good, that the market cna find some kind of 'efficient' way of distributing that good. For example pollution credits. Of course, we all know that the market, given a free hand, will not necessarily distribute goods in a socially efficient manner. In California, many plants closed because they used up their pollution credits producing extra electricity for a market that would suck up as much as they put out. Now, nobody is profiting and electricity distributors are threatened with bankruptcy. A little government intervention could have forestalled this greed.
Privacy is of value but it is also political. Surely the privacy of many can be protected if privacy is purely a commodity. However, the privacies that are most important- those of the people that would threaten the established order of things- are far less likely to be able to afford that protection.
In a healthy "liberal" society, with at least the basic "freedom of opportunity" that substitutes for real egalitarianism in America, everyone must enjoy a sphere of confidentiality in which he or she can get honest advice and betray his or her real strengths and weaknesses. Only in privacy can you be youraself without fear of exposing your vulnerabilities.
Goat sex free since 2001
Explicit permission at every step puts an enormous damper on sexual relations (and by extension, on commercial relations). The entire notion of contract presupposes the need to lubricate (no pun intended) financial dealings so that each new transaction is not as the first and most awkward. To throw out these fundamental principles would be to throw out the very foundations of our economy.
Can you imagine what would happen if you had to get explicit permission for every time you wanted to use an article of commerce? You'd be spending so much time negotiating that you'd never get anything done. This is precisely the same criticism that is leveled against Antioch's policies, and it surprises me that they'd leave themselves open to it by design.
Implicit permission is all that is needed, here. It's clear what people want, so just go on assumption and you'll be just fine. If there's a problem after the fact, then raise it in a civil suit the way other breaches of contract have been handled for the past millennium. There's no need to reinvent the wheel, here.
Read the rest of this comment...
Whether you wish to call this irrationality or not is a semantic argument that is largely irrelvent to the underlying question.
Any rational person (no matter what sort of economic system they prefer) would rather have more than less income if all else is the same. Ask any single person what would be the most rational choice, $4 or $5 all else being equal, and if they are rational, they'll choose $5 every time.
Put them in a situation where they may get $5 by cooperating and $4 by thje every man for himself plan, and you'll see a lot of people walk away with $4. Contract law can come into play when there are just two people.
The players (given enough time to prepare) could contract to cooperate with substantial damages for violating the agreement and both walk away with $5. That would be the rational thing to do in the absense of trust.
Unfortunatly, it is quite difficult to sign a contract with millions of people, no matter how rational the idea might otherwise be. That's the problem. The system as a whole will always seek a local minimum even if the global minimum is in sight and is a considerably better solution. That is the tragedy of the commons.
All of this does relate back to buying and selling privacy. Eventually, with millions of consumers and a much smaller number of businesses, choice will go away. You will either go along with the masses or become a hermit in the woods. This ties back to the reason the games I mentioned have the outcome that they do. The two players compete rather than cooperate because though 3 gold pieces beats 2.5, 2.5 beats none. The players make the cash grab in the first round because whatever they get looks better than the nothing they believe they'll get by waiting.
Given a situation of 3 major credit cards, you will find 3 remarkably similar privacy policies. You will have not get the choice of more privacy vs. better interest rates, you'll get the choice of privacy or credit card.
And where does he draw the line? Perhaps he's comfortable giving his Social Security and Credit Card numbers to the world, but I'm not. And I doubt if he'd be comfortable with everyone on the planet knowing which brand of condoms he uses, how many he buys each month, where he buys them, and where he goes after buying them. The United States Government is currently mandating systems that will enable them to learn this about you, if they wish (think GPS in your cell phone).
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Who was it who said, "He who trades privacy for safety deserves neither." or something to that effect.
-------------------------------------------------
Telemarketers read the phone book and call me unless I pay extra for an unlisted number.
I recieve RadioShack catalogs because they won't take a return without your address
I buy floppy disks online and get on the AOL 6.0 mailing list.
The real crime is not that people sell information for money. Its that they sell my information and I NEVER SEE A BLOODY CENT!!
---- Smokin' another sig.
This is an entirely seperate argument than the one presented, that "poor" people are essentially too desperate to make a rational decision. That said, I simply disagree with your premises and your conclusions.
First, you presume that we CAN'T contract on the whole. Now maybe contracting is less efficient, but it is sufficiently efficient. Even if it's not, we could make a law that assures that is the ONLY way such an exchange would take place. If it's not sufficiently efficient, then the exchange of privacy would not happen ( at least no more so than if we were ban it outright ). Furthermore, the market tends to present solutions to these kinds of problems. For instance, rather than pooling a communal rainy day fund, we have these entities called insurance companies. Rather than contracting with the community as a whole, each person contracts with an entity that takes care of enforcement, payment, etc.
Second, it's not proven that the system will "always" seek, as you call it, a local minimum in favor of a global minimum. It may tend to happen as the environment gets larger, but it's not assured. If it is, then how do you explain various strikes and protests without those binding contracts (i.e., mandatory union strikes)? How do you explain local shops banding together to clean up a parks in numerous cities, where the city itself has proven itself incapable? There are many other similar examples.
Third, just to be clear, the tragedy of the commons is not that any particular individual is irrational. The individual is rational in the context of the situation of which he operates. When you refer to the "system", you're referring to the result of low coordination of that system.
Third, you refer to the masses of individuals CHOOSING lack of privacy, all the while ignoring that it is a choice that the majority of them make independent of the community as a whole. When we're talking about sharing resources, those examples are relevant. But when we're talking about a choice that two parties make privately amongst themselves that has no direct negative bearing on any third party, it's largely immaterial.
Now you might say that maybe if 9 in 10 of those individuals choose plan A (reduced privacy), then 1 in 10 individuals will probably has less choice in the matter. This may be true, but you can't get around the fact that each and every person saw it wiser to choose plan A. In essense, it's a vote, one that was just won by a landslide.
But even there, if there is a sizable minority, there is a market for meeting those demands. That solution may not be perfect, but it's better than denying everyone else their say.
Fourth, more empirically speaking, who says most people really prefer privacy? I'd argue from the evidence, that people consistently choose cheap and convenient over privacy.
Fifth, I think you're largely mistaken if you think there ever was a viable choice between privacy and credit. The key word is credit, meaning that someone is giving you money before you pay them back with interest. People simply don't do this blind. They require information. The less information you give them, the less likely it is that you'll recieve credit, not because the credit card companies or banks are mean, or because of a "commons" situation, but rather because it's a necessary element of lending and credit. Risk and return are tied together at the hip. If you put the industry in the dark, you increase their risk in many different ways. The only way to obtain additional credit in this situation is to increase their return (read: your interest rate and/or penalties)
Fine. Let people trade their privacy for money. We do it already with these ad banners that send cookies that track what sites you visit and what ads you click. We do it with "free" internet service providers and "free" services like hotmail that require cookies and javascript and the latest browsers. Consumer profiling is BIG business because advertisers want to target the right audience. You know what? Fine. All I care about is the ability to opt out. Let me pay to NOT see ads. Let me pay to NOT be tracked and profiled. You know what? I have a policy of not doing business with anyone that can't win my business based on the merits of their product.
This is NOT a rich guy/poor guy issue. This is a clueful/cluless guy issue. People can't protect themselves or make informaed choices if they have no understanding of what's involved. They get their PC, get their winmodem, and get their free email account. I want to stop short of adding "...so they have to be protected by law", but the law already protects ME from lots of things I have no clue about - such as chemical additives in food, right? I'm not a biochemist and I am not going to run an analysis on every bit of good I buy - I can't make an informed choice about this - so I expect the law to set out rules for what may and what may not be put in the stuff I eat. It's really rather simple - blind belief in a free market is as wrong as any blind belief.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
In the real world, tragedy of the commons often occurs when the government tries to manage some common resource (say, grazing land) and doesn't let interested private parties negotiate and contract with one another in order to resolve territory disputes, just as the police didn't let those criminals negotiate and contract with one another.
The tragedy of the commons thus suggests we shouldn't let government regulate privacy but should rather let the producers and consumers of information contract freely.
Does this psychologist let the kids discuss and form a strategy? In real life, people do that...I play Nerd-Folk!
Some of the article talks about consent, which should be built into the client not the server, with the client notifying the user of the concequences of their actions. Netscape does this somewhat, but could be greatly improved.
World Socialist Web Site
Let me put it to you this way, you have two seperate universes.
In universe A, you have rich people and you have poor people. None of them are allowed sell their privacy--privacy is MANDATORY!
In universe B, you have equally rich and poor people. The difference, of course, would be that the poor person now has a choice to make themselves a little bit richer by sacrificing a little bit of their privacy.
Unless you presume that person irrational, that person is better off in universe B. If poor person makes a rational decision, the poor person is better off in his eyes. The key word being "better".
Your problem is the poorness in the first place. What you fail to realize is that that poor person would be poor anyways. If the person's situation is so down and out as to have to "prostitute" his privacy, the thing that sucks is his poverty, not his choice. In other words, put bluntly, his life already sucks, but in universe B, his life sucks a little less.
Anyways, you presume that this would break down along those lines. I simply don't see it that way. I'd be willing to sacrifice a little bit of my privacy for the right incentive, hell I already do, I'm sure you do too. Speaking for myself, it's not for want of money (I'd be considered rich by most anyone's definition), intelligence, education, etc. I don't see MANDATORY privacy as being a basic human right. In fact, I don't even see it as desirable.
We can have RIGHTS without them being MANDATORY. We have the RIGHT to own land, but we can also sell it. We can OWN money, but we can sell it. We have freedom of speech, but we can sell some of it for a price. We have the right to liberty, but most every person willingly reports to a boss. This is not too dissimilar.
Furthermore, I'd also like to add that people have been selling their privacy for so long. When you advertise your business, you're giving just a little bit of your privacy up. When you put your ad in the personals, same. And so on and so on.
It seems that everyone is so scared by all of these "giant databases" that hold all of this personal information on everyone, and everyone believes they are just getting bigger every day.
But really, who has them, and who sells them> Can anyone show me a website that sells this "detailed personal info and buying habits" information? I find it hard to believe that it exists.
I have a Kroger card. I get a piddly discount with it. I made up every damn word on the form I filled out - name, address, all of it... All they get is info on what I (Anonymous Consumer) buy in their store, and I get ripped off a bit less by their high prices... I could not care less.
In my job as a service manager for a computer repair company, we do occassionally get (spam) email advertising "CD's full of targeted customer information"." Is this what we are scared of? Are the major corporations buying these CD's from "www.spamco.ru" or wherever? Is this the big scare? I delete this crap immediately, hee...
In short, I don't believe it exists. How could they uniquely "key" each individual? If there is a big database, how is it sorted? Can't be by name, too many people have the same name... Can't be by SSN, these aren't usually revealed... How the hell could they keep up with John Smith in Idaho vs. John Smith in Iowa?
I don't believe any company is even CAPABLE of keeping and maintaining such a database. Prove me wrong.
---START OF SIG---
PK: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Privacy is a "negative" good; it represents the absence of something undesirable --- namely unseemly exposure. That it is subjective in what constitutes "unseemly" is mostly irrelevant.
If you look closely at the underpinnings of economic theory and the logic of market-based solutions to distribution and allocation problems, you will see why "negative" goods don't quite fit in. (Hint: look at marginal cost of production curves)
It is easier to understand this by considering a paradigmatic example of a "negative" good: A burly man holding a brick offers to sell you a contract guaranteeing that your window won't be broken. You value your window not being broken. So you pay the burly businessman what it is worth to you. A few blocks down, a slightly less affluent citizen decides that he would rather eat and be able to buy medicines. His window is broken.
Market based solutions are quite effective for a substantial range of "positive" goods. We also know how to implement them. But it would be silly mistake ease of implementation with appropriateness. Sorry folks. If you want to address the real situation, we're stuck with other more messy ways of distributed decision-making and allocation.
People are already selling their privacy, in the form of Giant food cards (and department store cards too I think). In exchange for discounts, you allow them to track what you buy and when, which is valuable demographic info. What do YOU buy at the same time as condoms?
The author seems to make no reference to information pimps like AllAdvantage (now defunct) who collected private information in the form of users' online habbits, instead focusing on relatively unverifiable data. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to find that the majority of slashdot readers always give their ZIP code as 90210. Just how valuable will my personal information be if the company interested in "purchasing" it has reasoned there to be a 90% of it's being inaccurate? I think the author needs to come back down to earth and spend more time examining the very real flaws in the collection process of personally identifiable information instead of fantasizing about an online market for bogus info.
[ This space for rent ] - Your full service media whore
Does the name DoubleClick ring a bell? The thing you don't believe in - it's their business model.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
First, you presume that we CAN'T contract on the whole. Now maybe contracting is less efficient, but it is sufficiently efficient. Even if it's not, we could make a law that assures that is the ONLY way such an exchange would take place. If it's not sufficiently efficient, then the exchange of privacy would not happen.
If we make a law that assures that is the only way such an exchange would take place, then we're not talking about a free market anymore. In fact, your arguing for my point.
Second, it's not proven that the system will "always" seek, as you call it, a local minimum in favor of a global minimum. It may tend to happen as the environment gets larger, but it's not assured. If it is, then how do you explain various strikes and protests without those binding contracts (i.e., mandatory union strikes)? How do you explain local shops banding together to clean up a parks in numerous cities, where the city itself has proven itself incapable? There are many other similar examples.
Sometimes, by luck, the local and global minimum coincide. In the case of strikes, the contract is social and does carry substantial penelties for violation (ranging from ostrisization and loss of benefits (in recent times) to being beaten to a pulp (earlier in the history of unions).
Cleaning up parks has little to do with the discussion since it has none of the elements of the prisoner's dilemma or the tragedy of the commons. Cleaning up the park can happen even if 90% DON'T buy in.
Now you might say that maybe if 9 in 10 of those individuals choose plan A (reduced privacy), then 1 in 10 individuals will probably has less choice in the matter. This may be true, but you can't get around the fact that each and every person saw it wiser to choose plan A. In essense, it's a vote, one that was just won by a landslide.
Actually, I would argue that many of those people have no knowledge of making any choice regarding privacy. Most companies are very secretive about how they share personal information and with whom. Some deny any such sharing in the face of evidence to the contrary. I use variations on my name when I subscribe to magazines. Shortly after, I start getting junk mail addressed to that particular variant of my name when I never did before. Nowhere in the subscription card did they mention selling my name and address on a mailing list. The card listed the terms of the subscription. I pay $X and I get Y issues of the magazine. There was nothing about I pay $X and allow them to sell my name and address and I get Y issues. I have yet to see a magazine subscription card that makes any statement at all about privacy.
I do not ignore that choices happen independant of the community as a whole. In fact, that's my point! That's THE problem.
Now you might say that maybe if 9 in 10 of those individuals choose plan A (reduced privacy), then 1 in 10 individuals will probably has less choice in the matter. This may be true, but you can't get around the fact that each and every person saw it wiser to choose plan A. In essense, it's a vote, one that was just won by a landslide.
I argue that it was Hobson's choice. They 'chose' to give up privacy in order to not become hermits in the woods living off the land. Some choice!
But even there, if there is a sizable minority, there is a market for meeting those demands. That solution may not be perfect, but it's better than denying everyone else their say.
I know plenty of people who value their privacy. There are plenty on /. Every few weeks, the news talks about corperate violations of privacy, so there must be some interest (even if the news is lowest common denominator TV at it's 'finest'). I don't see a lot of businesses making offerings catering to those who want their privacy respected. The closest I've seen is that mail order medical supplies commercial where they offer to ship in an unmarked box (but make no promises about sharing your info with other companies). How many do you see?
Fourth, more empirically speaking, who says most people really prefer privacy? I'd argue from the evidence, that people consistently choose cheap and convenient over privacy.
Once again, I argue that it's Hobson's choice. Very few people have enough income to support any other choice. I must admit that there are companies that respect privacy. Their only advertising is word of mouth at the exclusive country club. Many people can't even afford the attire necessary to enter the store and be recognized as a customer, much less the merchandise in the store.
Fifth, I think you're largely mistaken if you think there ever was a viable choice between privacy and credit. The key word is credit, meaning that someone is giving you money before you pay them back with interest. People simply don't do this blind. They require information. The less information you give them, the less likely it is that you'll recieve credit, not because the credit card companies or banks are mean, or because of a "commons" situation, but rather because it's a necessary element of lending and credit. Risk and return are tied together at the hip. If you put the industry in the dark, you increase their risk in many different ways. The only way to obtain additional credit in this situation is to increase their return (read: your interest rate and/or penalties)
Yes, they do need to know some of my personal information in order to manage risk. No, they don't have to share it with other corperations w/o my permission, yet that's exactly what they do. I have never seen a credit card offer that says something like "We need your personal information in order to extend credit, however, we will not under any circumstances share that information with a third party". You will notice that no permission is required to make inquiries into your credit history. It's treated as implicit. Furthermore, many lenders consider a 'large' number of inquiries into your credit (which they can and do find out about) to be an additional risk factor. Your only recourse is to forego a credit card. For that matter, the same applies to having a checking account.
Unless you presume that person irrational, that person is better off in universe B.
This seems to be the crux of all/many libertarian beliefs, and I certainly do presume that people are irrational. That I am irrational. If we weren't on the internet, I'd ask you to take a look at my ears. Hint: they're not pointy. I'm not a vulcan. I am not 100% rational.
Let me ask: how are people in the tragedy of commons acting rationally? And don't try to pretend that the tragedy of commons is merely some hypothetical situation. It happens countless times every day.
This article and much of this discussion comes up real short. While I have seen some reference to Coase, which is the obvious reference to make, I have also seen a reference to The Tragedy of the Commons. Big points for both. But the real Coase article to take a look at is "The Marginal Cost Controversy". The points are not entirely applicable, but he discusses some important aspects of price theory. Basically, over time the price of a product has a tendency to approach its marginal cost, the cost to make each new product, unless there is some sort of external intervention. A perfect example is drugs. The only reason more effecient producers don't spring up is that there are artificially strong property right enforced by the government. The same goes for software. Just look at the market in pirated software in countries that do not have the same patent laws as the US and our friends. And again for music, literature, etc. So now we get to my personal information. Lessig hits the nail on the head when he recommends a strong property interest in personal information. More generically, a strong property interest in data is the only way that corporations will be able to make money reselling my personal information and yours. Corporations will declare that they have "added value" or some such thing to protect the data they have collected. How do you think direct mail companies make money? Just to make sure, these coporations seed their data with false information to ensure that their lists to not leave their control. So why should a corporation have a property interest in my information and not me? I don't care how much value they added when collating my data with other private individuals. I added a lot of value and it took me my whole life to assemble the data, not a few cpu cycles to build the data warehouse. The only way to make money on a product that is not a scarce resource is not artificially enforce the scarcity. And the only way to do that is through the force of law or some sort of regulation. As for a solution, perhaps some sort of syndication scheme where you license your personal information and corporations pay per use, just like Ricardo Montalban get a check every time Fantasy Island is re-reun. And just like the Antioch sexual harrassment policy, a whole new way of thinking will spring up. At Antioch, if memory serves, people started propositioning each other by saying "Do you want to initiate the policy?" And you will see software solutions that implement the property rights assigned to personal data.
They run a network that hides your browsing and mail reading. It's pretty slick. Of course you have to pay to support it, but the price isn't bad. It's something like $50/year.
One of the biggest problems of privacy now is that once we give out some information, we have mostly lost control over that data forever. Whoever got the data can largely do as they like with it, because we have retained no control over it. But it doesn't have to be this way.
/license/ it to them. There are enough privacy mavens and licensing gurus lurking around here on /. that they should be able to put there heads together and come up with some legal boilerplate for this. Anyone allowed to use a person's data under such a license could not resell it, transfer it, print it on bumper stickers, &etc. without violating the terms. Legal remedy would work through tried and true contract law, instead of iffy untested privacy statutes. The license would state that the given data could only legally be used by a specific entity, for specific purposes, with no unannounced policy amendments, forever and ever amen. It couldn't be sold off to creditors of a dead dotcom, because the dotcom never owned it.
Why can't we treat personal data like any other intellectual property, and instead of simply giving the data away to businesses,
(I know that the slashdot crowd hates restrictions on IP, but lets make it work for us for once. Just think of the irony...)
Once such a thing exists, simply refuse to give correct demographic data or personal information to any entity that does not explicity acknowledge that your data is yours, and is only licensed to them (and only them) under the terms of the (GNU Privacy License?). If site somenewsmonkey.org wants me to go through a registration process to access their site, they either let me give them use of the data through the license, or I'll fill in all the blanks with crap. Simple as that. If they want useful data for their internal (and explicity specifed) purposes, they'd better go along with the license.
As an aside, the fake data should be as pristine as possible, so that the company can't just filter it out. (That's what caught the perl guy who tried to rig the online baseball allstar vote a few years back.) If I can't stop them from selling the data, I can gut its resale value and make the database worthless. I'm working on a site that will generate fake people data with a correct set of city/state/zip/areacode, if anyone has suggestions email me at bob_dobbs_666 at-sign hotmail dot-thingy com. I am also still looking for a copy of the area code / exchange database so I can build better fake phone numbers. This lets me know if, say, area code 777 has any 333-xxxx phone numbers. I've found sites that allow one-off lookups, but no sign of the full database.
Regards,
reemul
who registers software to J. R. "Bob" Dobbs using the address of a church of scientology in Austin, TX.
I still wonder how much mail they get for him.
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
[john] Here are $10 for you, so you don't tell my wife Sarah where we went this evening.
[me] ok.
the next day...
[sarah] So where did you and John go last night?
[me] John gave me $10 to keep it shut.
[sarah] Here are $11 for you.
[me] Nude dancers
I personally can't stand these stupid little "value" cards, but my wife thinks they're great. I can't believe she's willing to provide Shopper's Drug Mart with information about her purchasing habits, tied directly to her via the card number, in return for what amounts to a 0.1% discount.
I don't disagree with the deal on principle, but rather I think she's selling our privacy too cheaply