Control and Benefit Are Morally Owed to the Source
Richard A. Wright
1. Introduction
2. Reframing the Issues
3. The “High Cost to Industry” Defense
3.1 Raw Materials as a Cost of Doing Business
3.2 The Cost of Correcting Past Inequities as a Cost of Doing Business
3.3 Originator Control of Materials as a Feature of Doing Business
4. The “Private” is “Public” Defense
4.1 Private Information and “Voluntary” Release
4.2 Private Information in the “Public” Domain
4.3 Autonomy as the Basis for Understanding Privacy
5. Toward a Resolution
6. Concluding Thoughts
There would be nothing much to talk about if personal information were worthless.
Because it is not, as evidenced by the growth and expansion of the information
industry, the question must be how to structure that industry in a manner which
allows proportional benefits to the source of information as a primary objective.
The first relevant question to be asked is not “Who has a stake here?”
but rather, “What is at stake here?” or, “What is the primary
material of production in this industry?” The answer, of course, is first
and foremost personal information about individuals, secondarily information
about groups or companies. Without information, the “information industry”
cannot function, any more than the steel making industry can function without
iron ore.
Recognition of this point is crucial, because it reframes the issue. For there
is no other major industry which can obtain its material of production for free,
and generally without the knowledge of the individuals who are the source of
that material. There is no other industry which can so cavalierly define itself
and its materials to avoid responsible recognition of their material’s
source. As a result, the information industry’s position on privacy issues,
as described by Ware, is untenable.
The only possible way the industry can avoid this untenable position on privacy
is to accept one of three alternatives: deny that it is an industry and/or that
information is its basic material, thus the critique does not hold; or, accept
in principle the critique and its legitimacy, but reject its application for
some reason other than its correctness; or, finally, prove that information
as material is so different from other materials of production that the critique
is not valid because it simply does not fit.
The first alternative is obviously absurd given today’s information industry,
although as Ware pointed out, 20 years ago it would have been plausible. That
alternative will thus be rejected out of hand. The second alternative has some
promise, and in fact underlies the industry argument that nothing should be
done about understanding or resolving the privacy violation problems because
the cost to the information industry would be too high. This alternative will
be discussed in Section 3 below. The third alternative has more promise, and
in fact underlies industry claims that most relevant information is actually
“public” thus does not admit of the same treatment as other types
of materials, such as iron ore, which are “private.” This alternative
will be broached in Section 4 of the paper, although its complexity will require
much fuller treatment.
Before we go further, however, it is necessary to distinguish between two categories
of information, original and derivative. Original information is that which
is usable in its presenting form and which derives from the directly from the
source. Such information, which may be “public” or “private,”
has as its fundamental characteristic some fact(s) about the source. Derivative
information, on the other hand, is that gained by inference, extrapolation,
statistical analysis, or other manipulation, or interpretation, of original
information. Ware’s example of CNI is an instance of original information,
as is a mailing list compiled from mail order customers. His example of statistically
projecting bill paying habits is an instance of derived information, as is projection
of demographic trends from current census data.
The importance of this distinction is that all arguments concerning information
acquisition must first be made concerning original information, since without
such information, the derived is of little consequence or concern. Additionally,
derived information raises concerns peripheral to the privacy issue, such as
accuracy of predictions and legitimacy of predictive information in factual
decision making. This paper will focus exclusively on considerations relevant
to original information.
Go to: 3. The “High Cost to Industry” Defense
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