UK Court Says Information Stored Electronically Is Not 'Property'
from the for-intellectual-property-read-intellectual-monopoly dept
More and more of our activities take place in the digital rather than analog realm. But what exactly is the legal status of that digital stuff as it flows around the Internet, or sits inside databases? A recent judgment in the UK provides important guidance:
Information stored electronically does not constitute property which someone can exercise possession of, judges in the UK have ruled.
The details of that case can be read in the useful post on Out-law.com quoted above. The basic facts are as follows. The publisher Datateam Business Media Limited wanted to outsource the management of its subscriber database. The company Your Response Ltd took on the job, but the publisher became dissatisfied with its services, and sought to terminate the contract. In the following dispute over the payment of fees, Your Response Ltd claimed possession of the database -- hence the court case. The analysis of one of the judges is interesting:
The Court of Appeal rejected arguments to the contrary and refused to interpret existing laws in a manner which would, it admitted, "have the beneficial effect of extending the protection of property rights in a way that would take account of recent technological developments".
The judges said that whilst it is possible to exert control over electronic information it is not possible to gain possession of it. The distinction was drawn in a case concerning a dispute between a publisher and an IT supplier."An electronic database consists of structured information," Lord Justice Floyd said. "Although information may give rise to intellectual property rights, such as database right and copyright, the law has been reluctant to treat information itself as property. When information is created and recorded there are sharp distinctions between the information itself, the physical medium on which the information is recorded and the rights to which the information gives rise. Whilst the physical medium and the rights are treated as property, the information itself has never been."
That's an important statement that touches on many aspects of the online world, not least digital copyright. It confirms that the property of "intellectual property" is of monopoly rights, not of the information in the creative work. And since that information cannot be possessed, it therefore cannot be stolen, despite what copyright maximalists would have us believe.
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Filed Under: digital, information, property, uk
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So, to sum up...
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Awesome.
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Re: So, to sum up...
I don't think this impacts copyright..
It may impact who owns your personal data.
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Re: Re: So, to sum up...
It won't. The Data Protection Act is quite clear that *your* personally identifiable data is always *yours*, while it remains in a state where it can be used to identify you (you have no rights over anonymised data *about* you).
Any company that holds data that could personally identify you is holding that data on your behalf, and at your grace. You have rights to see it, and you have rights to force them to remove it.
This is why the Government's Care.Data program, which claims that you lose your rights to your personally identifiable data once uploaded, is illegal in the eyes of the DPA.
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How do they define PII? I ask because how it's defined by most companies and the US government is ludicrous and excludes lots of data that can be used to identify you personally (the IMEI of your phone, etc.)
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Just like when a 'thief' who 'steals' your mp3 collection means you no longer have a copy.
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Property
But it does mean that the MP3's that Garner has bought from Apple, from Microsoft, from Amazon, and so forth are not his property.
Another battle going on right now is over the right to inherit what has rightfully been paid for by your legal predecessor, be it parent, spouse, etc in the event of their death.
The idea that this is Garner's property, to be inherited by heirs at some future stage has always been something the granters of 'licences, not ownwership' in big copyright have always been keen to avoid.
This ruling may help them in that regard.
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And on the topic of classified documents
Reminds me of reading about some luddite claiming that he sent an email to someone and they need to send it back to him because it was mistakenly sent to the wrong person.
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Re: And on the topic of classified documents
http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html
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Re: And on the topic of classified documents
teacher: "Here is how you receive a fax. . . . then you tear it off here."
learner: Okay
teacher: "Now here is how you send a fax. But remember to only use good quality paper for your original that you put into the fax machine."
learner: "But then, how can *they* get away with using such cheap, flimsy paper that came out of our fax machine?"
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Re: And on the topic of classified documents
When it stops making sense is when copies (electronic or otherwise) are involved.
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Other than that, one major score for file sharing too ;)
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http://www.oed.com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=licence&_searchBtn=Search
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I like the idea others exposed though, that once inside my hdd it's mine to do whatever because the hdd itself is my property. Sounds very reasonable.
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This ruling will not stand. Which is a good thing. People who sell digital goods need to be forced to give full property rights to people who buy their goods. That means consumers are allowed to sell the things they purchased used, that sellers are not allowed to come along and forbid access, etc.
Every industry in history has tried to pull this shit, digital businesspeople are no different. And every industry has failed. They don't get to just collect money without ever actually conveying any property rights to buyers.
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This concept certainly warrants more thought than I just gave it, but my initial reaction was that this is a slippery slope considering that an increasing amount of our valuables are Bytes of data on our HDDs.
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"The judges said that whilst it is possible to exert control over electronic information it is not possible to gain possession of it"
in your bitcoin example, nobody possess it, but you exert control of it.
Theft *is* narrowly defined to apply to physical objects.
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I'm not the OP, but I'd guess it's because he's talking about the fourth amendment to the US constitution. Since the ruling is not in the US, it has no effect on the US law.
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Copyright industries are going to try to control stuff even more
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Re: Copyright industries are going to try to control stuff even more
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(Both paper tape and punched card are less efficient as a storage medium than the printed page, its just that they enabled mechanical processing)
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Secret Documents
He did not 'steal' anything only copied electronic data and works produced by the government are not copyrightable thus they have no claim of intellectual or property rights on the information.
Maybe some day the governments will realize that information wants to be free and if revealing information embarrass them then maybe they should not be performing embarrassing acts in the first place....
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Re: Secret Documents
The government is the reflection of its people. So the government's records are the public's.
What Snowden did was release public documents from their long lasting archive, just like a librarian will archive books of historic merit.
Even though the government is embarrassed, Snowden completed the job that they would not. And that makes it all the more telling that the people are the least informed on what their government is doing.
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Since digital info isn't property, guess what? File sharing isn't theft either. So what are you buying when you buy a song or movie? You're buying something like air apparently.
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that being the case, why do all the powers that be allow the entertainment industries and others user the phrase that 'their property has been stolen'? more to the point, if information (ideas) cant be classed as possessed, how come those same industries mentioned above can still sue the ass off of as many people as they can get named on a court document?
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1/ Influence
2/ Most people would rather die than think: many do. (Bertrand Russell)
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UK Court Says Information Stored Electronically Is Not 'Property'
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copyright is property
Patents have been a form of property since long before they were awarded for "inventions". Forms of Royal monopoly - such as market, fair and harbourage rights - were forms of property long ago. English law has recognised some very odd things as property. Eg, an advowson (a right to nominate a Church of England priest to a benefice) is one of the oldest forms of real property and they are still owned and inheritable.
So: the idea of "intellectual property" wasn't invented to make life for law tutors easier.
Copyright is property: (a) because the 1988 Act says it is - and if Parliament says it is property it is; (b) it quacks like property.
If you don't like copyright much (and I don't) this is a stilly place to have the fight. English law doesn't recognise things as property because they are morally or naturally good things for people to own, it does so because law says so usually (but not always) because powerful people have lobbied to make it so.
Copyright isn't a possessory form of property - it is a chose in action not a chose in possession as we would technically say. So you can't steal it - just as you can't steal money in a bank account which is another example of a chose in action (see R v Preddy where the House of Lords nailed this point down). Anyone who suggests you can steal copyright or that copyright infringement is a bit like theft, is legally ignorant at best.
In this case the main question was whether there could be a lien over the information in a database. A lien is a possessory right so of course you can't. Stupid thing to argue. The court also thought there were no property rights in information per se, which may be true but it isn't all that helpful.
Eg, in the EU we do recognise a property right in collection of information of certain kinds (known as databases). While you can't own it, if someone extracts data from your protected database you may well be able to sue them. If they say "well you can't own information" your response could be "just so". Your claim is to ownership of a right not the data, but that distinction is rather too nice for most people.
This case seems to me to be a straightforward one of the Court of Appeal refusing to stray from well understood principles of property law.
Those principles do also make "ownership" of ebooks problematic and that is a serious issue but this is not a case that really has much impact on that.
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Re: copyright is property
Please can you provide a citation for this?
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query...
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