or even pseudo-incriminated for attempting to maintain our own life.
It seems so stupid that I’m like a suspect for wanting an exchange of information without dropping my pants and bending over. No, I don’t want cookies. Yes I want to read the article but no, I don’t want to “sign up.”
It makes me feel like being a f*cking hermit. But I prefer to pirate. Even though I’m not that good at it. Screw them. I got two private trackers, a VPN, and I hope that’s enough.
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That’s the wrong attitude to have. It can change, and arguably it will change once a critical mass of people realise the value being stolen from them.
You can’t build a car without paying for the nuts and bolts. The people who make nuts and bolts don’t know how to build a car, but they’re still paid a fair value based on the fact their product can be used in cars.
We don’t know how to do anything with our data, but we should be paid based on the value derived from it by those that do.
This problem affects everyone, including the people who make laws. It is entirely feasible that we can get enough people on side to change things and make it more fair. Incumbent businesses won’t like that, because it will reduce their profits (100% down to 30%), but what they’re doing now is absolutely wrong. They’d still be taking the piss at 30%, but at least that’s more in line with other industries.
That critical mass will never come because people don’t feel the data has been stolen from them.
Rather, it’s traded in exchange for whatever online services they use.
And to them it’s a decent trade.
I think that’s fair if the service is free. If I’m paying for it then they shouldn’t be double dipping with my data as well.
But that’s the thing, that isn’t what’s happening. The website is provided free of charge.
Then, the website tries to shoehorn in another, separate transaction and hide it in the fine print, where you give up your data free of charge.
There is a huge amount of deception involved. The whole point of my comment here is to try and dispel that deception, by putting hard numbers to it to show that there is significant value being taken.
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That would be nice, I agree. However, like you say, the data is already being used, and it’s much harder to put the cat back in the bag. Rather than trying to do so and ban all data collection, it’s much more practicable to embrace it but ensure that people are at least fairly compensated.