De Jonge: health data is not encrypted with end-to-end encryption – Computer – News

*raises hand*

Legally, you can only own a “thing,” a physical object subject to human control as the law calls it. The Supreme Court once ruled (1923) that electricity falls under this, because you can control it (pulling power cables, etc) and take it away (if I use the power, you can no longer).

You can control digital data (put it on an HD, read it to working memory, transport it over a cable) but you cannot remove it. You can copy it and you can delete it, but that’s two operations. The atomic operation “move data” does not exist. This means that data is not suitable to be seen as business.

Think of it this way: you have data that you own. You give me a copy for a fee, do I now own the copy? Or from the original? Do we jointly own the data, do we each have separate properties on identical data that happen to be identical? I’ve just had my third coffee and this is already giving me a headache.

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