Here's how the law should work.

You own the data you produce, both intentionally (writing, making videos) and unintentionally ("metadata", logs). You have to explicitly give others permission to use that data for any purpose where money exchanges hands (and many where it does not). You can limit or revoke the permission at any time.

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Reubachi 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

This is the case.

In every aspect of life in which personal data is indexed/transmitted, the point of origin at least is some place you've explicitly indicated approval of this process. IF you walk into walmart, you are granting them the ability to sell your facial data and card metadata to whoever.

No third party is calling your mobile provider to ask them to leak info. They are PAYING the mobile provider to leak them info that we provided express written consent for them to do so. TO avoid these ToS and binding agreements, you would need to live a disconnected agrarian lifestyle. Literally, can't walk into any corporate store.

yay!

	▲	martin-t 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		And this is exactly the problem. It used to be the case that you exchanged money for a good or service. It was a transaction of 1 thing for 1 thing. Now you're exchanging your money AND personal information for goods or services (sometimes both mixed in a way that is optimized to get as much money out of you as possible). And because those providing goods or services all have the same incentives, you don't have a free choice to pay a competitor who doesn't use these business practices. Freedom absolutists (such as ancaps) will claim you can always start a competitor. But that's just not true, these business practices are so advantageous that you either use them too or go out of business. The real solution is for people to unite and demand change together. And that's what governments are for.

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matheusmoreira 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> You have to explicitly give others permission to use that data for any purpose

This is already the case. All the contracts and terms of service documents already contain these permission clauses. People don't even read such things.

The funniest contracts are the ones that say "by using this site, you agree to [surveillance capitalism]". People have to navigate the site in order to even read the contract so it's logically equivalent to writing "by reading this contract, you accept it".

People need to start making laws that invalidate these silly documents.

	▲	martin-t 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yep, just like it's illegal to sell your organs or sell yourself into slavery, society needs to recognize that even through the severity of exploiting personal data is much lower, the principle is the same - the power differential between the two parties is so large that the weaker one has no choice but to agree. It's the illusion of choice that gives is the veneer of legitimacy.

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mnw21cam 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is kind of the case. Under GDPR, the data can only be used for the specific purpose for which is was collected, unless explicit consent is obtained. Terms buried in contracts do not count as consent - a contract has to be clear about the purpose for collecting the data and why it is necessary to fulfil the contract, and using the data for any other purposes is illegal.

	▲	martin-t 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yes, despite all the hate GDPR gets from people who have to implement it and from companies whose business model is parasitic, it does seem to go in the right direction. However, I doubt it can be extended to training statistical models. LLMs and other models by their nature strip attribution which ironically happens to be the trick they are trying to use to break pretty much all open source licenses.
	▲	richij 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		/me laughs in legitimate-interest