Private Ownership

Cam Parkes
MIT 2371

Private Ownership

Ownership has always been a thing easily defined. The man who holds the deed to the house owns the house. The woman who has the license and registration to the car owns the car (with the obvious exception of a thief who stole the aforementioned documents, but let’s stick to the topic here). These things, however, are examples only of physical property. In his article “Who Will Own Your Next Good Idea?” Charles Mann makes the distinction between physical and intellectual property when it comes to ownership. He defines intellectual property as “knowledge or [an] expression that is owned by someone” (Mann 1998). Throughout the article, Mann discusses different types of ownership, ranging from CDs to books, and how they’re apt to be controlled in the future. He does not, however, offer a definitive opinion on how ownership should be moderated. While Mann outlines the main issue surrounding ownership as copyright, he doesn’t give any foolproof methods of enforcing it. He offers suggestions, such as a ©-chip, which would be present in every television, telephone, computer, music player, and electronic book, and would moderate how one reads/lends it, as well as copyright boxes, which “let copyright owners subdivide usage rights, creating new markets for information” (ibid.). Mann also touches on both pros and cons of copyright. He states that last year, copyrighted material contributed more than $400 billion to the national economy (ibid.). This implies that copyright should be enforced, as copyrighted materials are the country’s most important export. On the con side, Mann talks about piracy. Obviously it’s much easier to pirate something on the Internet, and according to Mann, it costs firms up to $20 billion a year.

While Mann covers most aspects of ownership, he doesn’t relate it to privacy, so that’s what I am going to try to do. My view is basically, the amount of privacy one has with information dictates the ownership. For example (I hope anecdotal examples are allowed), in the lab last week we went on a scavenger hunt to see how much information we could find on ourselves. When searching my name, I found a startlingly large amount of personal information. Although my personal Facebook page does not appear in searches, my name appeared as a friend of someone, so if someone were to go to their page a link to my profile could be found. My Twitter profile was also readily available, and after a thorough inspection, I could find no way to make it less so. To me this calls in the question of ownership of information. When I, for example, create a Twitter profile, the obvious assumption is that it is my profile, that I own it. I enter information, such as my email and name, maybe the school I attend, a brief description of what I do, etc. Now I’ll bring up two scenarios. The first would be one where all the information I entered was private. Perhaps a screen name could be seen, but no one would be able to find the profile unless provided with the screen name by me. In this case, I would say I have ownership of my information, as I am able to moderate and manage who has access to it.

Unfortunately, that’s not the sort of scenario that is likely to occur. A much more realistic one is what actually happens. As soon as I click “submit” after entering my information for a Twitter account, I lose ownership. This happens because it’s posted to the web, where anyone can see it. Perhaps one could say Twitter owns it, or the Internet, but it certainly isn’t me. As Simson Garfinkel defines it, privacy is “about self-possession, autonomy and integrity” (Garfinkel 2000). Self-possession implies ownership, so one can see a correlation drawn here. The obvious implication is that, if I do not have ownership, or self-possession, I do not have privacy.

I feel as if though Mann could have touched more on this when he was rambling on about ownership. I mean, there is an obvious correlation between ownership and privacy, as discussed above, but so many more questions. Does ownership ensure privacy, for example? Can ownership be had without privacy? I don’t know, but I do know that in this new digital age, new rules are going to be made regarding ownership and privacy—and I don’t know that we’re going to like them.

Works Cited

Garfinkle, Simson. “Privacy and the New Technology: What They Do Know Can Hurt You” Living In The Information Age. Ed. Erik P.Bucy. 2nd ed. Belmont: Thompson Learning Inc. 2005. 322-327.

Mann, Charles. “Who Will own Your next Good Idea?” Living In The Information Age. Ed. Erik P.Bucy. 2nd ed. Belmont: Thompson Learning Inc. 2005. 285-291.