alt Hacker News> Data can't be owned in the first place
Of course it can. Ownership is a social construct.
It’s more accurate to say data resists being controlled. But honestly, so do e.g. air and mineral rights and the “ownership” of catalytic converters in cars parked on the street.
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There's multiple types of ownership.
There's legal title. And then there's possession.
AA clearly possesses this data. It's not incorrect for them to refer to it as "their" data, until and unless it is removed from their possession.
Yes, but it is a social contract governing things that can't be easily copied.
We desperately need better social contracts which help us deal with data-about-me and data-i-created, but neither of those align very well with property.
You don't distinguish between the data and the data source.
Plenty of data becomes stale almost immediately. Plenty of data sources can be owned, but they also tend to be people.
We've built a lot of layers of social machinery on top of it, but looking at the behavior of animals, ownership predates humanity, let alone social convention. Coming at it from that direction, something can be private property only if it is defensible in principle. Physical objects meet this bar, but concepts and types do not.