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by oytis
2936 days ago
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Not to start a long philosophical discussion, but hacker culture (you might not like it, but the author seems to be sympathetic to it) has been traditionally critical to the notion of 'intellectual property', that is that by creating some intellectual work I can prohibit the others from redistributing it. The idea that I 'own' my personal data seems to be another step further is diluting the notion of property: this time I don't even need to create anything to impose limitations on the others. It is also not about 'rich' and 'poor', it's about clear rules that are the same for the rich and for the poor alike. |
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However it seems that "hacker culture" as the author likely sees it (also as described in Steven Levy's "Hackers") is really more about privilege than anything else. A lot of the antics that have entered hacker lore were only possible because the kids performing them were in relatively risk-free environments (particularly the notorious MIT Tech Model Railroad Club). Not necessarily privilege in the modern social sense but certainly in the sense of class (unless you believe being able to study at MIT is 100% about merit and nothing else).
It doesn't matter whether the "rules" of hacker culture are the same for those with privilege and those without: just as in startup culture, you're fare freer to experiment if you have a safe environment to fall back on if you screw up. If you're an MIT kid with wealthy parents a botched prank is less likely to land you in jail and this knowledge allows you to take risks more easily.
Sure, there's a level of anarchism in hacker culture but too often the kind of "hacking" that lands you venture capital for your startup (especially "growth hacking") also includes a blatant disregard for others (again remember Zuckerberg and the "suckers").
You may argue that this is a deviation from the original hacker ethos or not "true hacking" but there doesn't seem to be anything in hacker culture to exclude these people by (which is why I mentioned the formal rules you now often find in codes of conduct, which many decry as superfluous and unnecessary because they seem to state the obvious).
As to your real point: the idea of owning data is the polar opposite of what copyright has become to be about (at least in the US): data is owned by the individual. You can grant a company usage rights but they're always highly specific and easily revocable. Personal data is not "intellectual property", it's an aspect of your own identity.
In the years since the "Social Web" we've seen many failed attempts to allow users to "reclaim" ownership of their data. Microformats, decentralisation, software like Diaspora, the Unhosted movement, and so on. Most of them failed for practical reasons. Few of them really addressed privacy concerns, even fewer really enforced data ownership. The GDPR is promising to accomplish what hundreds and thousands of hackers have tried to do for years: not by rebelling against the BigCo's, but by redefining privacy and data ownership as human rights.
If you understand hacker culture, you will also remember that before the Social Web the norm was to be anonymous: "on the Internet nobody knew you were a dog", "men were men, women were men and 14 year old girls were FBI agents". You'd go by pseudonyms by default and freely pick new ones to swap identities. Unmasking people was possible, to a degree, but difficult because of dial-up and dynamic IPs.
Nowadays every single coffee pot in your home could theoretically have a dedicated IP address and most of the Internet we use to share information is accessed using a browser that's often uniquely identifiable without even looking at the IP. It's no longer enough to rely on technology to grant us anonymity. The GDPR restores some of that early '90s anonymity. Not by outlawing technology but by enshrining new human rights and forcing us to respect them.
/rant