@siegel I want to express my appreciation for your responses, simply discussing this has made me more at ease.

I had time to mull this over. I even went so far as to draft a few emails and even started in on a business plan for a business which could offer this type of certification.

I have had to reconsider. There is no finality to this solution. The details of the certification would have to be ironed out beforehand and would need to be fluid enough to allow for changes as needed. Then there would have to be a penal framework defined around the entire process. In fact the only real benefit to this would be that the barrier to entry for starting a new business (or NGO) is less than that for getting a law passed.

I feel the need to accommodate both sides of the isle here as I love creating and using technology, so I would never want to hurt the technology sector. I, however, feel very strongly that some fundamental, undefined right of ours is being violated.

We have absolutely no idea what is happening with the data collected about us, therefore I do not believe that we have the ability to enter into a contract in any sensible way. Some might argue that we have no right to know what a company is doing with the money we gave to them, but that argument is flawed because money has no significant attachment to ourselves after we tender payment.

Copyright law provides a default of no rights except to the author of a creative work, could this be used to enforce the duplication of our data or at least force some sort of dual-licensing for the co-creators of the data.

As an example:

I am a user of a fictional online service, monitor.com.

I interact with the service in a variety of ways which in turn generates a lot of data about my use of the service.

Also present on the page is a social network integration (ie. a facebook "like" button) which also reports on data generated by not only my interaction with monitor.com, but also correlates this with my actions on other sites.

Now in this scenario, monitor.com and myself work together to create a series of data-points. At the same time, I am working with the social network to create a larger data set.

If we could be acknowledged as co-creators of the data, what ramifications could that have on the legalities involving the duplication of the data?

When the data is transmitted over a network, it is indeed copied. Does one co-creator have an inerrant right to use the data without a specific license being granted, more importantly can a co-creator grant licenses to third parties without the explicit consent of the other co-creator?

This is probably a false argument based on a certain level of legal ignorance on my part.

Ideally, I would simply like an established right to know when data about me is collected or used so I can make an informed decision on whether or not to continue using the service.

I believe a law is necessary as a free-market solution could not provide a consistent level of assurances, there would always be doubts. I am not looking to punish anyone or to be petty, but I would like it to be established that this right exists.

Violations could be a civil matter, I could sue or initiate a class action lawsuit. Is it possible to simply pass a law without specifically defining the penalties and governance policies?