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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

You are not the IRS - you don't have a right to compensation every time your data changes hands, just for each unique copy.

That's like me paying an author for a book, and then the author demanding I pay if I give (or sell) the book to my friend.

I know what you are thinking: "but in this case copies of your data are being resold" in which case I would agree that each party has to buy their own copy from me, or, if they resell to each other, they have to delete the copy they previously bought from me.

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I haven't thought it through much, but on the face of it I like the idea of receiving some compensation whenever my data is _resold_, plus a way for me to see _where_ my data has been resold, maybe even a notification.

It's a bit like a songwriter receiving a royalty whenever their song is played on the radio or in public (see https://www.prsformusic.com/).

Obviously this would be a challenging thing to implement.

here's the way this generally works for music:

1. a musician joins one or more "guilds" and pays dues. there are three major musicians guilds in the US.

2. a public venue pays subscription fees to one or more guilds.

3. the venue is licensed to broadcast music by any of the guilds' members.

4. the guild divides monies from venues proportionally amongst its members, with proportions based largely on the musician's popularity.

that model wouldn't work very well for what you're imagining.

firstly, it wouldn't give you the access to information that you want about who has your data.

secondly, unlike music, user data for advertising purposes doesn't really have differences in value; to an advertiser, data about one person is just as valuable as data about another person. any differences in value have to do with the type of data rather than the source of the data.

"user data for advertising purposes doesn't really have differences in value; to an advertiser, data about one person is just as valuable as data about another person."

That's not really true - there are certain coveted demographics that are worth more than others. In general your value to an advertiser is proportional to how much money you're likely to spend on their product. People with a lot of money are worth more than people without lots of money; people who are likely to spend a lot of money are worth more than people who will save it all; young people are worth more than old people (they have more years of purchases ahead of them); socially connected people are worth more than loners (they influence the buying decisions of others); and people who are easy to influence are worth more than cynics. Also certain industries have very high revenue potential, while others don't; this is why a click on [mesothelioma] or [auto insurance] can fetch over $50, while a click on [f2p games] might be a dollar or two at most.

In old-line (print & TV advertising) they could only determine this in various broad strokes (which is why you'd hear about the coveted 18-34 demographic, or pay more for primetime TV than daytime TV). On the Internet you can divide this up in much greater detail.

5. The guild samples very sparsely so smaller musicians receive no compensation

6. Smaller musicians often arrange their own events and thus have to pay licensing fees to for the privilege of playing their own music, which as the guild doesn't sample the event, is not returned to the musician

Yeah, works well.

I am not the IRS - but I also have not agreed to waive compensation for my data when it is collected by first parties or when it is resold to third parties. Specifically, I have individual rights that have never been knowingly waived to these behemoth data vacuums and yet they continue to violate my right to privacy and track me.

In fact, I refuse to negotiate with FB over my data, I don't participate in that service (or most other social media outlets). If they offered a reasonably priced way to keep up with family on FB without harvesting and tracking everything I do then I would be interested and potentially subscribe to such a service.

> you don't have a right to compensation every time your data changes hands, just for each unique copy

This is just a matter of law, unless there's a hidden moral assumption behind what you're saying. Your comparison to the IRS makes the point quite easy to draw: laws -- say, laws about handling of PII -- can be changed.

I feel like your first and third paragraphs directly contradict each other. What am I missing?

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