[tedeh]

What grand times we live in, where you can actually get this kind of data from the services that you use.

Having the law say your personal data is owned by you and not some company just because it's on their server may turn out to be a landmark in consumer friendly legislation!

[tensor]

Frankly, I think a lot of this data isn't the users, but rather Spotify's. If Spotify didn't exist then the interaction data with it wouldn't exist. I don't see how it can possibly be "owned" only by the user here. Does a user "own" security footage in a store that they enter? Definitely not.

[lmkg]

Personally I think that GDPR represents a rejection of the idea of "ownership" as it applies to data.

You will note that GDPR does not use "ownership" terminology anywhere. The closest it has is Data Controller, but GDPR makes that nowhere near the same as ownership.

GDPR establishes that data subjects are stakeholders in their data. It doesn't mean that they own the data, but it also doesn't mean that they don't own the data. They have rights to the data, which the Controller has to respect, while the Controller also has their own rights.

It's probably possible to model this situation as ownership (property law is complicated), but I think it's easier not to. Data is not owned, it is controlled and processed. Activities related to data are restricted.

[sbr464]

I’m upvoting and agree in the realistic point you are making, but feel this isn’t the most popular point of view right now? I personally believe info just shouldn’t be captured period, beyond reasons for authentication protection purposes/identifying malicious/off pattern use of my login/auth token. We are releasing a new business/info mgmt product soon that has no GA/full story/user tracking whatsoever. It’s not clear why everyone enables a floodgate of tracking just ‘cause. We are implementing better feedback/reporting channels instead.

[fipple]

One thing that people constantly praise Spotify for is the quality of their music recommendations. You can find so many testimonials of people saying that their "Discover Weekly" playlist suggested them songs which they felt they had been searching for their whole lives.

Needless to say, such accurate recommendations of music, which even close personal friends have trouble doing, is based on building as complete of a psychological profile of the user as possible. There wouldn't be any way to do it without gathering lots of information about your very personality.

Surveillance isn't always bad -- after all, what is a baby monitor?

[xg15]

> Needless to say, such accurate recommendations of music, which even close personal friends have trouble doing, is based on building as complete of a psychological profile of the user as possible.

And then an innovative "security contractor" or "data research agency" makes a backroom deal with Spotify and copies their database of complete psychological profiles. Win-win?

[sbr464]

I definitely agree that certain products create value from tracking, and those should be the exception, as long as everyone involved is ok with it. I don’t really use the recommendations in Spotify, but I don’t think there is a way to use the service in an anonymous/tracking free way (not that it bothers me). I don’t think maintaining a private /purchased collection should be the only alternative to full tracking.

[kungtotte]

GDPR isn't about removing all tracking, it's about empowering users and allowing them to decide for themselves how their data is used.

If someone wants to avail themselves of Spotify's recommendations they have to opt in by sharing their data. So they make an active, informed, decision about what data Spotify gets to use. They also have legal recourse if it turns out Spotify is misusing the data (selling it to record labels, let's say).

We have had an analogous law here in Sweden for ages: if you apply for a permit you're allowed to set up security cameras pretty much anywhere on your property but you have to put up signs informing people that they're being filmed. This is so people can opt into surveillance. 99% of the time it's no big deal that you're being filmed, but it's never secret.

That's a good thing.

[logifail]

At some level, I think one should have privacy concerns with baby monitors ... did your baby choose to opt-in?

(Three kids here, and no, we never used a baby monitor...)

[fgonzag]

I hope the sarcasm is flying over my head here...

[robbiemitchell]

> I personally believe

> It’s not clear why everyone enables a floodgate of tracking just ‘cause.

Have you worked in marketing, product development, or customer support? There are plenty of services that are used to help people generally do their jobs, identify problems, figure out what to build, improve the product, and to enable support folks to support customers.

But yes, there are all sorts of other, third-party trackers and cookies that are not as directly relevant.

[sbr464]

Yes, I have. It’s a tough argument/longer conversation I realize. I feel it’s getting out of hand overall. As technology/saas products make it easier to simply capture everything, including user actions/playback/screenshots, to the point that someone in marketing at X startup is watching my private usage of their app on their MacBook Air somewhere without really caring or realizing how intrusive they are being. I realize 99.9% don’t intend to abuse or don’t even realize the intrusion, there needs to be a reset where companies take a stand and find greater value in simply not engaging in this low hanging fruit.

[robbiemitchell]

I wonder whether there's also a security compliance component here. For example, if you're SOC 2 compliant, does that preclude casual data review like that? If so, perhaps this will lead to greater demand for that kind of certification.

[delinka]

If the user didn't use Spotify, then the interaction data wouldn't exist.

It takes two. Perhaps if these companies had taken that tact (mutual ownership), then there'd have been no need for a law to specifically allow users to get the data created with their own effort.

[dsp1234]

If I write down every song that I play through Spotify for a year. Does Spotify own that?

[ralusek]

No, but that's you writing down every song. The alternative is them saving one of their interactions to their server. These aren't remotely comparable...

[dsp1234]

Party A records every interaction with Party B. Party B records every interaction with Party A.

Who owns what Party A recorded, and who owns what Party B recorded?

[detaro]

That's why "ownership" is a bad model for this, and (to my knowledge) not really used in any privacy laws. They are not about who owns records, it's about who has which rights to them. Under GDPR, you do not own data about you a company has, but you have rights related to it.

[anonytrary]

Are you suggesting that the user should track their interactions themselves if they want to own a copy?

[fipple]

When Party A is a multibillion dollar corporation and Party B is an individual, the arguments can not be parallelized.

[perpetualpatzer]

What makes them incomparable, in your view? The medium in which it's recorded? The ease with which it's recorded by Spotify? That the recording task is done in a different system than the client-server interaction? That Spotify has interactions with LOTS of people?

I get that they feel different, but every distinction I come up with feels like it either doesn't make sense applied uniformly. If I tracked songs in Excel, Spotify doesn't own that. If I automated tracking the songs I play, Spotify still doesn't own my recording. If I wrote down all my Spotify songs AND all my Skype messages AND all my texts, Spotify, Skype, and Verizon don't suddenly gain an ownership stake in what I've done.

[mmt]

> If I wrote down all my Spotify songs AND all my Skype messages AND all my texts, Spotify, Skype, and Verizon don't suddenly gain an ownership stake in what I've done.

Bringing up actual communication content is where you start to get onto shaky ground, though, especially considering, for example, the existence of "2 party consent" for recording of communications in some US jurisdictions.

Although I believe that context is entirely for criminal, not civil matters, my point is that there's already a precedent, and a long-standing one predating "data", for the idea that all parties being recorded do, automatically, have a legal ("ownership" may not be the best word, as pointed out upthread) stake in that recording, regardless of which party did the recording or holds the record.

I suspect you used Skype and Verizon, specifically, because, as mere carriers of the communication, they're not really parties to the content that they carry. That doesn't really compare, though, since we're not talking about taping the Spotify songs themselves, and the "ownership" situation there is relatively much clearer, if only because the songs existed previously and aren't being created by the interaction itself.

[rsynnott]

Kind of: https://www.dataprotection.ie/docs/Data-Protection-CCTV/242....

You can make a subject access request for CCTV footage.

[robbiemitchell]

Whoa. You're right. This is kind of insanely low fee mandated.

> The data controller may charge up to €6.35 for responding to such a request and must respond within 40 days.

> This normally involves providing a copy of the footage in video format. ... Where stills are supplied, it would be necessary to supply a still for every second of the recording in which the requester's image appears in order to comply with the obligation to supply a copy of all personal data held.

> Where images of parties other than the requesting data subject appear on the CCTV footage the onus lies on the data controller to pixelate or otherwise redact or darken out the images of those other parties before supplying a copy of the footage or stills from the footage to the requestor. Alternatively, the data controller may seek the consent of those other parties whose images appear in the footage to release an unedited copy containing their images to the requester

I wouldn't be surprised if some video workflow products pop up to help companies comply with requests like this. For example, select the target person on video, automatically pixelate the rest, stitch together and export all clips of the target, securely mail it and log the task completion, etc.

[madeofpalk]

This is nothing new. The right to request CCTV footage of you has been about in the UK for 20 years. It's covered by the Data Protection Act 1998. I remember some music video done this requested footage like 10 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LWpzHSOndk

Stop trying to VC-fund everything single idea that pops into your head.

[robbiemitchell]

> Stop trying to VC-fund everything single idea that pops into your head.

Even if had suggested VC funding (I didn't), were an investor (I'm not), lived in the UK (I don't), and had experience with video automation (I don't), why would you care? The background info was helpful enough.

[ncol]

> Does a user "own" security footage in a store that they enter? Definitely not.

Why not? Data is everywhere these days. You won't be able just quit e.g. social media in the future to avoid being tracked. One of your friends will tag you, your face will be indexed, your name will be correlated to your phone number, your phone number to your ip address and now they know everything you read anyway. If that isn't the future you want you can either come up with all sorts of rules for when and where you can and can't take pictures and collect data, which all the companies will try to avoid anyways. Or you can say that people own their own data and only reasonable usage is granted automatically.

Presumably reasonable usage of a security camera would be to, you know, ensure security. Maybe you can opt in to some consumer behavior survey. But they shouldn't just be able to sell the data to a data mining company for face recognition, location tracking and consumer intelligence.

[anonytrary]

> If Spotify didn't exist then the interaction data with it wouldn't exist.

Likewise, if you didn't exist, then the interaction data wouldn't exist either. I agree that the ownership is more complex in this case and is hard to attribute solely to one party. One party provides a system where interactions can take place, another party provides the interactions. Who owns the interactions? Clearly both parties are required for them to exist.

[snowwrestler]

Try to use recognizable in-store footage of a person in a commercial advertisement without their consent and see what the lawyers say. It's not as clear-cut as you are making it out to be. You cannot just use photos or video of a person however you want without their consent.

[jamescostian]

Spotify is not making commercial advertisements showing all the raw data they have collected on you. Instead, they are probably doing things like aggregating data on their users and looking for trends.

It's more like watching security footage (or having machines watch it and let you know what they've observed) and then making decisions with that information.

[tapoxi]

That's because footage of them uses their image/likeness. If I used an amalgamation of all my customers it would be fine.

[lostlogin]

A lot of countries have laws that allow you to have access to any information stored that relates to you, health, education, criminal justice, etc. I think this logical but ‘ownership’ seems a bit of a reach.

[tomtimtall]

Your income wouldn’t exist without the existance of your parents. This does not mean they own your income. You are arguing based on a contrived and unuseful philosophical basis. Who owns the data is a matter of law not philosophy, and having laws like GDPR looks like a great way to empower consumers, so who cares if the data would not be there without Spotify? It would not be there without the consumer either, in fact Spotify itself would not be there without the consumers... should the consumers then “logically” own Spotify?

[xg15]

> Does a user "own" security footage in a store that they enter? Definitely not.

I recently visited the main station in Cologne, Germany. They literally had notices posted next to the time tables about CCTV being conducted and about your GDPR rights concerning CCTV footage taken from you.

While this wasn't a straight "you own the footage", they did acknowledge you have certain rights regarding the footage.

[MR4D]

Damn - you bring up a good point. I wonder what a lawyer would say.

Taking your thought one more step, what happens to the data the store creates thru a facial recognition system tied to the footage? Is that covered? I don’t know, but there are thousands of further permutations on his thought. Another reason I hate the GDPR (great intent, horrible execution).

[xg15]

I think the general point of decision is still about "personally identifiable information".

So my (IANAL) understanding is: If the data is somehow tied to your real life identity, it's protected. E.g., the headphone brand might be protected because it's uniquely associated with your user account which is uniquely tied to a real-life identity.

I guess, whether or not the facial recognition output is protected, might depend on whether you want to use it to identify the person behind it - e.g., if it's an identifier to a database, it might be protected. If it's an emotion score or eye tracking analysis, it might not be protected, unless it's associated with your identity by some other process.

[dorkwood]

If Spotify invented a device that could read my thoughts, and stored them all in a file, who would own them? Me or Spotify?

[trav4225]

Exactly.

Don't use logic though. Logic is cold and hateful. ;)

[heisenbergs]

That's the wrong analogy. The camera isn't some "security footage" in a random store, it's security footage from my own living room.

A better analogy is this: if i install a video camera in my home and pay a service to store and process that data (think nest cam), but that i'm paying monthly for, then that data should be mine. Stuff going on in my living room (aka my music listening habits) should be mine and i should have access to my habits and restrict others from using it if i want to.

Update: more importantly, without having access to data stored by any service, i can't make an informed decision as to whether the service is storing dubious information about myself that it shouldn't. Services can no longer hide the data they store about people.

[nickysielicki]

None of these analogies make any sense or have any relevance to the nature of what's going on when you use a service. Fundamentally you are sending requests from your computer to their computers, and their computers are sending things back to your computer in response. They have every right to log what activities their own computers are doing, and (in my mind) they have every right to claim sole ownership over the logs that they create.

The fact that they have to legally release this kind of thing is really twisted, at least to me. If you want to have logs of your listening data --- if you want to have logs of what your computer is doing --- how about you log it yourself? If that's too much work for you, whose fault is that? Don't use it if you don't like it.

Music services are a dime a dozen nowadays. The biggest reason that any given consumer stays with a given service has to do with recommendations and playlists and the profile that they've built on you. The fact that these companies now have to give that data back to consumers, which they could presumably feed into another (cheaper) service, disincentivizes companies from building better recommendation engines and down the line it ultimately makes for a worse experience for music listeners.

[_r_o_y_]

With that logic you could argue that almost nothing should be regulated, as the "work" nowadays is always done by someone else, what is the different between this and a credit score?

[zerotolerance]

I don't think everyone agrees people have the right to claim ownership to all data exchanged in a multi-party interaction. Further I don't think anyone understands Identity well enough to be able to provide transitively collected data without breaching confidence of similar third-parties.

Nothing is as simple as a quip can make it sound.

[simias]

>Further I don't think anyone understands Identity well enough to be able to provide transitively collected data without breaching confidence of similar third-parties.

I'm obviously not a lawyer or anything but I think that this would be more compeling if Spotify was open source. "You don't want to share this? Well just remove the code then."

Here not only can't I do that but I've been a paying customer of Spotify for years and I had no idea that they even collected 90% of that stuff. In these conditions how can it be argued that I gave them ownership of data I didn't even know existed?

[zerotolerance]

Everything is data. Anybody can remember anything they want. You didn't give them anything, they experience the same reality as you when you chose to interact with them. ... It takes two baby...

[iamdave]

Further I don't think anyone understands Identity well enough to be able to provide transitively collected data without breaching confidence of similar third-parties.

Would you be willing to unpack this statement a bit, please? I'm not quite sure I understand.

[emiliobumachar]

If I may intrude, I think they mean that revealing to you data that involves you and other people could invade the privacy of those other people.

[Silhouette]

This is one of the issues in personal data and privacy that I think we're going to have to acknowledge and confront some time very soon: often, data about an individual in isolation is less telling than data about that individual's relationships, but relationships always involve multiple parties. Right now, we've barely established a consensus on the ethical and legal principles of a relationship between a single data subject and a second party using data about them.

The big social networks have amassed their huge databases not only through information volunteered by individual members, but also by co-opting people who know those individuals (or just happened to be nearby) to provide more. For example, every time a social network's mobile app uploads an address book from someone I know when they install on their new phone, and consequently that social network knows my name and contact details, they have potentially violated my privacy with neither my knowledge nor consent. With the advent of ubiquitous devices with cameras, microphones, network connectivity, GPS and other sensors, and at the same time the developments in automatic recognition technologies based on photos, audio or video footage, the risks of exploiting network effects to gather data on unwilling subjects have increased dramatically.

I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect every person I've ever shared my contact details with or anyone who ever took a photo with me in the background to understand the implications of their devices and the software they run on them. In any case, there are going to be difficult ethical questions about balancing the rights and freedoms of multiple parties.

However, I am quite sure it's fair to require businesses on the scale of Facebook to understand the basic situation and at least not to retain or use personal data for any longer than is necessary. The GDPR and similar proposals starting to appear elsewhere are clearly trying to enshrine something like that principle in law, but everything I have seen so far suggests that the biggest data hoarders are paying lip service but still trying to get away with anything they can.

[iamdave]

Gotcha. Thank you, for some reason that wasn't immediately clicking in my brain.

[Klathmon]

For a bit more context, this was recently discussed a LOT with the Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal.

The issue being that if you text me, and I give that to Facebook, does facebook have the right to ask me for permission to give it to a 4th party? Should facebook be required to give you that information if you don't have a facebook account and request it?

[detaro]

It's not actually "ownership": You have control over it, but you don't own it, and laws are careful to make that distinction. I emphasize this since at least in parts of the debate, people advocating for "data ownership" are advocating for weaker data protection laws, with the idea that rights derive from ownership of data means companies can gain ownership of data too, and you then do not have those rights.

You have rights to your personal data, you do not need to own it to have those.

[yani]

Do you remember how much negativity there was the few days before GDPR "doomsday". I kept saying that it is a beautiful thing but all I got ... I have requested my data from many services that I use and I learned a lot about myself by reviewing my data, searches, marketubg tags etc.

[pteredactyl]

Interesting.

Can they still sell it if it's owned by you?

They are collecting and storing it, for sure. What limitations do they have from there?

Also, how would the government patrol this without having access to all companies databases, servers, and policies?

[alkonaut]

They have to ask me if they can use it and for what purpose. And even better, they can’t condition the use of the site/product on me accepting that they sell it.

[et-al]

Is this actually happening, though?

I feel most sites don't comply with the latter half of your statement (conditioning based on acceptance).

[alkonaut]

This is very true. Many sites and services seem to have deliberately misinterpreted the legal text. I hope a high profile target will be taken to court over this, to establish a cautionary precedent. It just hasn’t happened yet.

[pteredactyl]

That sounds good. How is it enforced?

( not being sarcastic )

[jdietrich]

Every EU country has a data regulator. These regulators have a range of enforcement options at their disposal, from politely asking a company to comply up to a fine of €20m or 4% of global revenues.

You can see a list of previous enforcement action and adjudication decisions by the British Information Commissioner's Office at the link below. These are all under the old Data Protection Directive, which was broadly similar to GDPR but somewhat lacking in teeth. You'll see everything from a slap on the wrist to six-figure fines.

https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/enforcement/

https://icosearch.ico.org.uk/s/search.html?collection=ico-me...

[alkonaut]

It’s not (yet). The GDPR is still new and as far as I know there haven’t been many (or perhaps not any) legal processes.

[simion314]

>Also, how would the government patrol this without having access to all companies databases, servers, and policies?

As in many other cases you assume the companies are not doing illegal stuff and you act when someone reports them. A developer that is asked to do something illegal like hiding something from the exported data can report it .