Everything you do is being watched, recorded, and sold. Don’t think so? Take a moment to consider how much information about you is posted somewhere online. Many people these days have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and the list goes on. Just like when you surf the internet with cookies enabled, data is recorded every time you like something or post that you have watched, read, or seen something online. And it doesn’t stop there, all manner of technological devices are being built in order to acquire user data. From cars to iPhones, to TVs and game stations, this is an economy fueled by personal data and that economy is booming. So, who owns your data?
Retail businesses, such as Amazon, are looking to better refine their advertising to reflect the interests of their consumers. For these companies, every dollar spent on advertising should have a percentage returned as sales resulting from that advertisement. Raising that percentage of return is easier when they know which consumers are more likely to purchase certain items. Because of this, businesses want that personal data and are willing to pay for it. Social media sites that are collecting this information, for example Facebook tracks this via “likes”, stand to make a lot of money in selling the personal data of their users to retailers.
But if you have a preference for say, Nike running shoes over Under Armor, who owns that information? Do you have a right to it? It is your life after all, but don’t you just freely give it away when you like something on a free Facebook account? Perhaps that information is without value until it is collected by Facebook and combined with that of millions of others to form trend data? Either way, what about privacy? It seems that many people would be upset about all of this information being recorded about them, but they are also the ones putting it all online in the first place.
Personal data in this context in one of the grey areas of technological innovation and law. Legally speaking what type of classification would this data be placed under? Is this a privacy, copy right, or property issue matter? Maybe it is all three, it is hard to say. The way the law will respond to this will be difficult to predict as technology continues to integrate into our daily lives. Things are bound to get interesting, and just think, this blog didn’t even take into account the information the NSA is also collecting about you.
For more information on cybersecurity and intellectual property law, contact the Goosmann Law Firm at info@goosmannlaw.com or call (712) 226-4000.
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