>Forget computers for a moment. If you tell me the statement "foo is bar", then the default state of affairs is that I now have heard from you that "foo is bar", and I can tell other people "foo is bar" or "X said 'foo is bar'". That's what I'm referring to as "natural" or "default".

Sure but if you learn a dirty secret about me then the default state of affairs is that I can kill you or steal your server. A law which prevents that murder or theft is "artificial." Your position as I understand it is that you have a legal right to that data AND legal protection from "natural" modes of recourse. Which puts our disagreement into context – one "artifical" state of affairs versus a different but also "artificial" state of affairs.

>Why don't we talk about policies and not analogies, here, since policies are both more concrete?

Because this is a thread about an analogy - how our relationship with online data mimics the relationship serfs had with the land they worked aka data feudalism.

>Still rejecting this framing device, and not agreeing to it as a premise.

Then I'm not sure what you're doing here. The discussion is explicitly about framing our relationship with our data as feudalism. Nothing you've said so far has disproved the framing. To you my labor isn't "my labor", it's "labor provided by me" and anything which restricts the feudal lord from extracting or using that labor in any way is "artificial" because the "natural" state of labor relations is feudalism. When this discussion started I was really interested in seeing what your personal problems are with feudalism. I thought maybe it'd be something about base human rights or the power relation a lord has over a serf but it seems your main problem is that serfs couldn't switch between lords, not that lords existed at all.

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Non-feudalism discussion:

>Try making that observation without using the phrase "my data" to describe "data about you" (or perhaps more generally "data that in some way mentions you"; it's not clear what you intend here, which is all the more reason to clarify). You might find that the resulting observation provides less support for your assertion.

Well no, I do see it as my data. If I am in front of you in line at a bank and while signing a form you glimpse my credit card number is it now not "my credit card number?" Of course not. What if your coworker figures out your HN password? Is it no longer "your" HN password? (In the ownership sense, not in the sense that you'd obviously change it.)

> The framing "my data" is presuming the point you have yet to prove.

Prove it? There's nothing to prove, you and I have a philosophical disagreement about the nature of ownership and data.

>Of course you are; you can stop using the site at any time. You cannot, on the other hand, un-say what you've already said. While you may ask that someone pretend they've never heard it, I don't believe you should have the ability to demand that. You said it, someone observed and noted that you said it, and now you want their record of that observation destroyed.

Do you feel similarly about HIPAA? Should a doctor be able to take anything you've said to them and have ultimate power over what they do with that information? What about things you mention to your lawyer or psychiatrist?