Abstract
Who owns electronic data, and under what conditions may another take them for his or her own use without being considered a thief? The electronic data processing (EDP) industry's answer to these questions is that electronic data belong to no one before they are collected but once collected they are property, so only those who take collected data without authorization are stealing. Personal privacy is unquestionably involved in the original taking; but the major EDP users routinely sacrifice such concerns to the preeminence of private property. But, I argue, this selective approach to the claims of private property is built on assumptions more readily associated with conquest than with a community of equals.
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