Is information in your head your information or mine?
Stories have many characters. If I cheat you, lie to you, call you names, win over your girlfriend, and steal your dog, can I prevent you from using my story without permission?
This notion of information ownership is relevant in practical things. Look at the use of SLAPPs [1], for example. Or credit reporting, or Yelp, or even reporting crimes. All could be impacted by the radical version of personal ownership of personal data.
The right of ownership of fiction is mainly a commercial right: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." So it doesn't really apply in non-commercial contexts. It's very limited in practice.
The book The Quantum Thief [2] has an interesting society where information ownership extends that far. If you don't have contract agreement to see or remember somebody, you won't.
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it would be ideal, I am saying that I could cope. Certainly fear of this sort of future would not put me off campaigning for slowing the erosion of privacy, as it seems to for jamesaguilar.
Nevertheless, I think you are seeing problems where there would be none. Reporting a crime involves violating the perpetrates privacy? Well sometimes stopping a crime or defending yourself violates the perpetrators right to not be struck or even killed. We seem to operate pretty well with self-defense exceptions to general bans on violence. It is easy to imagine analogues.
Stories have many characters. If I cheat you, lie to you, call you names, win over your girlfriend, and steal your dog, can I prevent you from using my story without permission?
This notion of information ownership is relevant in practical things. Look at the use of SLAPPs [1], for example. Or credit reporting, or Yelp, or even reporting crimes. All could be impacted by the radical version of personal ownership of personal data.
The right of ownership of fiction is mainly a commercial right: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." So it doesn't really apply in non-commercial contexts. It's very limited in practice.
The book The Quantum Thief [2] has an interesting society where information ownership extends that far. If you don't have contract agreement to see or remember somebody, you won't.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief