Chapter 10
Who Owns the Information?

In March 2010, U.K. publisher Datateam Business Media (DBM) contracted a third party, Your Response (YR), to manage its database of subscribers. As part of this agreement, YR was given access to the database to perform its management duties. After a year or so, DBM became dissatisfied with YR’s services and sought to terminate their contract. A dispute arose when DBM refused to pay the fees it owed YR until YR returned the database which had been moved to its servers. In response to non-payment of fees, YR discontinued providing services prior to the contract termination date yet refused to give DBM access to the database in its control.

This case ultimately found its way to the England and Wales Court of Appeal in 2014. YR had argued that the database should be considered a “physical object” because it “exists in a physical form,” and therefore could be held as a lien. YR also argued that it maintained physical control over the database just as if it were a “document,” therefore they should be able to claim ownership of it.

The court, however, rejected these arguments, ruling that, “Whilst the physical medium and the rights are treated as property, the information itself has never been,” and that rendering a database as physical property would upend property rights law, resulting in “unanticipated consequences in other contexts.”

Not every justice agreed. Lord Justice Davis wrote in dissent:

[T]he courts should not leave the common law possessory lien stuck in its eighteenth and nineteenth century origins and development; rather the courts should go on to give it a twenty-first century application, appropriate to modern times and modern commercial activities. That appeal to modernism has its attractions.1

Even as the court ruled information should not be considered property, it also acknowledged such a ruling was based on ignorant notions of information and antiquated property laws, whereas we now live in an electronic world in which information holds legitimate commercial value.

Where does this leave an organization whose executives, business leaders, information leaders, and even legal counsel believe and speak about information ownership, and behave as if it legally owns (not just possesses) information?

This chapter explores the notion of information ownership from several angles:

  • What legal precedent exists for claiming ownership of information?
  • Do present accounting principles help in answering questions of information ownership?
  • What about the casual use of the term “information owners” used within organizations?
  • Do we even own personal information about ourselves?
  • If we can’t own information per se, is there something related to it we can own?

How the Law Weighs In on Ownership

Information ownership is a topic lawmakers have skirted since the invention of the database. Perhaps it could be a simple issue. But when we remember that information can be integrated, moved, stored remotely (even across borders), copied, modified, updated, and deleted without a trace, the issue becomes wildly complex.

The Australian Computer Society’s Data Taskforce working paper clearly and concisely articulated the challenge and the solution:

The ability to use, replicate and share data means it cannot be considered in the same way as a physical asset with an “owner.” Rather, it is important to think of rights, roles, responsibilities and limitations for those who access data in the various process from collection, use, sharing and storage.2

A Brief History of Ownership

The process and mechanisms of ownership, even for tangible assets, are somewhat complex. One can gain, transfer, and lose ownership of property in any number of ways. Laws differ by system (e.g., civil versus common law), differ by property type (e.g., moveable versus immovable, and tangible versus intangible), and differ in the way they interpret and ascribe possession, rights, and responsibilities, and shared ownership, and transfer.

Think about your own home. You may own it. And you may also own the land it sits on. Or do you? In some countries, such as Mozambique, Nigeria, and Cambodia, land ownership is actually a 99-year or less lease—though sometimes only imposed on foreigners.34 And in countries like the U.S., it is continually contingent upon the future claims of others. This is why landowners in the U.S. purchase title insurance—to financially protect against such claims. And let’s not forget that if you have a mortgage, a bank actually shares ownership of “your” home.

The notion of property ownership dates back to biblical times, with the first government statutes appearing in Napoleonic laws to replace a patchwork of feudal laws.5 And while property law has evolved into big business, such laws have not kept up with the needs and opportunities of the Information Age.

Information Location Matters

Case in point is the case against Microsoft with regard to the jurisdiction of information based on its location. Like most of today’s digerati, Microsoft often receives court orders initiated by the U.S. Justice Department for information on its servers. Usually these orders relate to fraud, other federal crimes, or homeland security situations. But one such order gave Microsoft pause. The U.S. court order demanded Microsoft relinquish information in one of its data centers located in Ireland. Naturally, Microsoft believed the data it maintained on foreign soil was ensconced against prying U.S. government eyes, especially U.S. search and seizure laws. This holds true for physical property abroad. At question was the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which allows law enforcement agents to obtain information from internet service providers (ISPs) through subpoenas, court orders, or warrants. But in 2014, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska and U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV ruled against Microsoft. According to Justice Preska:

Congress intended in this statute for ISPs to produce information under their control, albeit stored abroad, to law enforcement in the United States. As Judge Francis found, it is a question of control, not a question of the location of that information.6

Microsoft’s attorney, E. Joshua Rosenkranz, argued that the government was seeking to “conscript Microsoft here in the United States to search files abroad.” He suggested that if other countries required Microsoft to provide them with emails of customers located in the U.S., “we would consider that an astounding infringement of our sovereignty.” Ironically, that happened the same week as Rosenkranz’s argument when officials in China had demanded a password for a Chinese citizen to retrieve emails for a resident stored on servers in the U.S.78

This ruling may serve to spook the cloud storage businesses and unnerve the IT and executive leadership of any multinational businesses. Whereas previously we may have believed that the physical location of the servers upon which information sits is a key ingredient in questions of jurisdiction and propriety, apparently neither the U.S. government nor the U.S. justice system concur. Therefore, IT and business leaders are well advised to limit their assumptions with regard to the locality of information.

As for executives becoming unnerved by this issue, Microsoft ultimately took the bold step of having local companies own the hardware and data centers upon which Microsoft data sits. In Germany, for example, the telecom giant Deutsche Telekom now hosts Microsoft’s data. This not only keeps the U.S. government’s prying eyes away from the data, but also helps Microsoft maintain compliance with strict German data privacy laws.9

But what happens when the hardware upon which the information sits is seized? In early 2012, the servers of the then-popular file sharing service, Megaupload, were seized by the U.S. government. Although much of the files are known to be pirated music, fi lms, software, and other content, various businesses used the service for legitimate purposes. Still, the U.S. authorities neglected to sort out how information would be returned or made available to its rightful owners. This presupposes that authorities believe the information is owned or that anyone has any rights to it.1011

Certainly cloud data storage has its advantages, but the Megaupload situation is a cautionary tale for information and business leaders or CIOs who may be considering storing their information anywhere outside the four walls of their organization.

Infothievery

Sometimes the courts do come through on the behalf of plaintiffs in matters of information propriety.

In 2011, a U.K. court ruled on a case in which Beechwood House Publishing licensed part of its database to Bespoke Data Organisation. The database included a curated set of forty-three thousand doctors and nurses. Bespoke was contractually allowed to use the records once then delete them. However, Bespoke copied the records to its own database. Then two other companies, Guardian Products and Precision Direct Marketing, licensed Bespoke’s database and loaded it into their own systems. At this point, over eight thousand of the records were identical or updates to those the Beechwood had originally licensed to Bespoke.

A year later, these second two companies sent mailings to some of the customers in this database. Unbeknownst to them, Beechwood had included “seeds” in its original database. Seeds are contacts in the list with dummy or misspelled names, or other indicators such as fictitious suite numbers. These people, usually employees or employees’ spouses of the list-owner’s business, keep an eye out for mailings they receive from unauthorized list users. Some of these seeds had received such mailings and reported them to Beechwood.

The court agreed on the unauthorized database use, but then had to rule on the question of whether there was an infringement of rights based on the extraction or reuse of a “substantial part” of that database, per the U.K.’s Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997 SI 1997/3032.12 Moreover, a judgment against the defendant in such cases also requires that the database in question involved significant human investment to create. In the court’s estimation, an unauthorized use of 6,000 intact records and 4,783 modified records comprising 14 percent and 11 percent, respectively, of the total database size did in fact constitute a substantial unauthorized use. And the court further calculated that the database required over £100,000 per year to create.1314

This case illustrates the peculiar limitations on information rights with respect to the amount of information misused and the cost of the information in question. Even if someone uses part of your data without authorization, it may not warrant legal repercussions.

A Habeas Corpus of Rulings on Information Ownership

To date, there have been several judicial opinions both for and against property rights of information. Juxtaposed, they paint a bleak picture of information-related property law, and serve as a warning to any organization that thinks or behaves as if its information is really an asset on legal par with any of their other true assets.

Some courts have ruled that the loss of computer data was “physical damage” or “capable of sustaining a physical loss” due to “the change in the alignment of the magnetic particles on the hard disk,” while other courts have ruled that the loss of a database was a “direct physical loss,” that the loss of information was a “commercial loss [of] inadequate value,” and that loss of data alone was not “physical damage to tangible property.” In one case, a court dismissed a case likening electronic data to other forms of recognized intangible property, and was overruled by an appellate court that merely acknowledged “a document stored on a computer drive has the same value as a paper document kept in a file cabinet.”

See appendix B for a list of landmark legal rulings related to the question of information property rights.

The lesson, at least until sufficient and consistent laws are formulated, is to assume that information is not legal property and you cannot confidently own it. Therefore, your focus should be squarely on the rights of those to whom you entrust and avail information within your control.

How Accountants Account for Information

Since laws are lacking and courts around the world are confounded by the concept of information as property, perhaps we should attempt to determine whether information is, could be, or should be considered a formal asset. The accounting definition seems to provide more guidance around the potentiality of information as something which could be considered owned, because it is more precise than an array of random rulings by men and women in robes.

Dictionary definitions range from an asset being a positive characteristic or benefit or advantage, to something of value or piece of property. And “asset” is a synonym for a variety of other words. But as discussed earlier, the accounting definition of an asset is more precise, comprising three conditions or characteristics to designate an asset:

  1. Something owned and controlled by an entity,
  2. Something exchangeable for cash, and
  3. Something that generates probable future economic benefits which flow to that entity.

The Control of Information

Previously we covered questions about information ownership, which according to courts around the world may yet be resolved. However, the asset definition specifies that an asset must be controlled by some entity. Accountants assert that control is easier to establish than is ownership, particularly for intangible assets—so when control alone can be ascertained for something, it is most often afforded asset status.

Control must be asserted or demonstrable via past events such as the asset’s purchase or self-creation. Again, there’s no arguing that all information is either collected via past events or generated by entities themselves. I would further argue that since information can be copied and shared easily, rendering it indistinguishable from the original, control must be asserted also by maintaining its proprietary nature within and among the entity, its agents, or its licensees. Conversely, if you are publicly and freely sharing your data outside your organization with no contractual protection or means of enforcement, then you have lost control of it. You may retain rights to it, but its external use is beyond your control. Therefore, you cannot legitimately claim ownership of it any longer. As well, information that only you retain may not be within your control if others have rights to it—as is the case with some PII.

To further establish the control aspect of an asset, accounting standards require the condition that it is identifiable. This applies specifically to intangible assets wherein there is some question of separability—meaning that they are not inexorably bound to another asset or unable to be quantified.

International Accounting Standard 38 (IAS 38) details the requirements for identifying and capitalizing intangible assets. It defines intangible assets as “non-monetary assets which are without physical substance.” The standard further specifies that recognizable intangibles must be “identifiable (either being separable or arising from contractual or other legal rights).” This opens up another can of questions. Is information separable? And does (or can) information have contractual or legal rights?

As for separability, many IT people feel or behave as if information is bound to technology (e.g., “the DB2 point-of-sale data”). And similarly, business people often speak about information being bound to an application or system (e.g., “the Salesforce.com customer data”). This only is due to years and decades of information being tightly and unfortunately coupled with technical or process components as a result of: 1) a lack of architectural foresight, 2) the need for expediency, and 3) a propensity for developing systems on the cheap.

Today, information generated by one function is leveraged regularly in a multitude of ways. In effect it is becoming unbound. It may take another generation of IT and business people to see and talk more comfortably about information as its own separate entity.

From a data management standpoint, most types of information are easily separable, even if they are co-located in the same database or content store. For instance, you can separate customer data from transaction data and your vendor contract documents from your employee performance assessments.

Cashing In on Information

The second key condition of an asset is that it is exchangeable for cash. There’s no doubt that information is exchangeable for cash (or other goods and services). The hundreds or thousands of data brokers like Bloomberg, Dun & Bradstreet, Acxiom, Equifax, J.D. Power, and others are testament to this obvious fact. And more than 20 percent of organizations claim they’re bartering with, trading, or licensing information with partners.

Although information is rarely sold outright, including an actual transfer of ownership, there are few restrictions against doing so. Most often the transfer of information asset ownership happens as part of corporate transactions such as divestitures, mergers, or acquisitions.

Probable Economic Value

The asset criterion of generating probable future economic value is an interesting one. For those who studied accounting before the late 1980s, the word “probable” wasn’t a consideration. Accounting practices changed to allow for capitalizing dormant assets for which one has an intention of and capability for generating economic value. Again, there’s no arguing against the fact that information can and does generate actual (and probable) economic value for the entity that controls it. Just as an automobile sitting on the lot of a dealership, or a can of soup on a store shelf, or a patent for which a new product is under planning or development has probable future economic value for the organization that currently owns and/or controls it. So can dormant information assets.

Owning the Usage of Information

This question of information “ownership” proves to be a bit unsettled. There’s a catch-22: If information isn’t considered property according to a lack of legal consensus, how can it be owned? And if you can’t own information according to accounting standards, how can it be considered an asset? Chicken, meet egg.

As we have seen, for the most part information cannot be protected like other forms of intellectual property, but how information is created or used can be considered property in the eyes of the law.15 Specific use contracts among two parties, such as social media site user agreements, can offer some protection, but a particular collection of data rarely can receive the kind of blanket protection copyrights or patents afford. While most information assets cannot be protected as intellectual property, the way you use information can be legally protected.

The business method patent offers a vehicle for defining and securing the ownership rights to almost any unique and useful process you develop. This includes algorithms. Algorithms are used to create information and make use of information. But are organizations actually taking advantage of this kind of legal safeguard? Absolutely!

Patent applications for algorithms have grown 30x over the past fifteen years. Nearly 17,000 patents applied for in 2015 mention “algorithm” in the title or description, versus 570 in 2000. They jumped from 2,400 applications in 2011 to 8,000 in 2012, and to 12,000 in 2013. Including those mentioning “algorithm” anywhere in the document, there were over 100,000 applications in 2015 versus 28,000 five years ago.1617 At this post-recession pace, plus considering the increasing interest in protecting algorithmic intellectual property (IP), by 2020 there could be nearly half a billion patent applications mentioning “algorithm” and over 25,000 patent applications specifically for algorithms.18

Perhaps consternation over being able to legally protect and formally account for information should be redirected into efforts to obtain patents for the algorithms you develop that rely on your proprietary information assets.

It’s not that simple, cautions Nolan Miller, professor of finance at the University of Illinois. He suggested that patenting algorithms may not provide the level of real-world protection one assumes they might:

The more you use them, the harder it may be for them to be a source of competitive advantage. If your information helps you target customers in a better way, you can bet your competitors will be watching who you are targeting. They don’t necessarily need your data or your algorithms. Although the algorithm takes raw data and turns into something valuable for business, once people see you acting on information, maybe they don’t need the algorithm, they just need to imitate you.19

Miller also suggests there is a set of interesting questions around the option value of using an algorithm, not using it, or using it sparingly when you know or suspect competitors are watching. Similarly, Andrew Ng, a Stanford professor, co-founder of Coursera and now chief scientist at Baidu, reportedly has said: “No one can replicate your data. It’s the defensible barrier, [but] not algorithms.”20

Personal Ownership of Your Personal Information

Personally, most of us are concerned about owning or at least controlling information about ourselves—particularly our financial information, and also our emails, telephone records, and anything that could be used to steal our identity. It’s important to note that like information, one’s identity cannot be “stolen,” per se. Rather it can be electronically copied and used to steal other things. The distinction is subtle but important no less. It manifests in a fixation and improper focus in stymying access to our information, instead of us being mindful and disciplined about establishing rights and responsibilities for others who we want or need to have access to our personal information. Either way—clamping down on our personal information or taking the time and effort to define in all the apps we use who gets which of our data, how much and when—tends to lead to security and privacy fatigue.

In most cases the fine print in software, website, and online business user agreements obtusely specifies that you retain “ownership” of whatever you post, but the company behind the agreement (or notice) retains unlimited, perpetual, and transferable rights to it. And in some cases, as with Uber, its U.S. user agreement indicates it can even modify your information before doing whatever they want with it.21 This is the main reason behind Face-book’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp: unfettered access and ability to monetize the content of thirty billion messages and seven hundred million images each day. Not necessarily to gain customers. Customers don’t meet the criteria of a monetizable asset; information does. Remember, customers, like employees, cannot be owned or completely controlled.

Information ownership can be a legally moot concept. As part of these agreements, such language is merely an attempt at pacifying prose. Given the aforementioned lack of consensus and maturity in information property law, I’d rather have unlimited, perpetual, survivable, and transferable rights to some information than to “own” it. Still, we’re usually happy to agree to these terms in return for being able to use the app, participate in some community, or shop online. It’s the price we pay. We’re exchanging information about ourselves in return for some free or discounted online service.

This confounding matter of ownership applies to genetic matter as well. We like to think that it’s “our” health care record, but it actually belongs to those who collect and maintain the data. For example, in the U.K., a court ruled in favor of the National Health Service, allowing it to use data it collects from individuals during medical exams for alternative purposes. Similarly a U.S. district court ruled that individuals did not own the biological samples (and therefore the genetic information within them) that they had willingly provided to a researcher.22

Then there’s the matter of one’s metadata. Recently, an Australian federal court refused to hear a case in which Telstra claimed account usage data was not data about a customer, and therefore believed it was not required to relinquish it to the customer. Telstra claimed such information was “not information about an individual whose identity can reasonably be ascertained from the information in isolation,” even if the owner is inextricably linked to the account. Therefore, the Australian Privacy Commissioner’s ruling requiring Telstra to release the information stands, for now.23

In short, organizations seem cavalier about claiming legal ownership (or at least control) of information they collect from others, whereas the rights of individuals to control information about themselves is still in limbo where industry regulations fail to plug legal lapses.24

Internal Ownership of Information by Departments or Individuals

We have already explored the notion of information ownership across organizational borders, but now let’s look inwardly. In almost any book or paper on information management or data governance, you will read about defining “data owners” as a key component of any information strategy. Generally these are business people who are responsible and accountable for the definition and policies for one or more types of information, e.g., customer records, transaction data, manufacturing process documentation, maintenance data, etc. However, as indicated throughout part II, the idea of internal data ownership manifests in a variety problems, including:

  • Information politics—Information ownership creates a culture of contentiousness and propriety with regard to creating, defining, and using information. It puts some on the inside and others on the outside.
  • Lack of shared responsibility—Information ownership implies that one individual or group is solely in charge of, accountable, or liable for the information.
  • Reduced data quality and governance—Information ownership discourages others from participating in governing information or helping to enhance its quality and value.
  • Lack of information sharing—Information ownership tends to reduce how readily information is shared with others throughout the organization.
  • Lack of information availability—Information ownership results in architectures that restrict the flow of information throughout the organization.
  • Increased expense—Information ownership often forces departments to source the same information another department does, duplicating the time, effort, and costs to do so.
  • Limited information value generation—All of the above consequences of information ownership limit how readily information is put to work for the organization.

Barb Latulippe, the chief data officer at Dell EMC, agrees. When I spoke with her recently, she said:

Ownership? I don’t like the term. We’re trying to not use it anymore. It just encourages politics and information silos. Our policy states that data is a shared asset and the property of the company, not individual business units or people. It’s a policy signed by C-level executives.

Latulippe said she prefers the term “data trustee.” It may not have the authoritative connotation “data owner” does, but in the context of a fiduciary, as discussed in chapter 8, it carries both legal and ethical weight.25

Similarly, in his book, Data Driven Leaders Always Win, Jay Zaidi asserts that “The question of data ownership is critical to governing data since it deals directly with accountability.”26 But Zaidi follows up this point by acknowledging reality. He writes that asking the question “Who owns data?” throughout your firm elicits many interesting answers, including: data producers, data consumers, business units, the owner of the system on which the data resides, the first system that receives the data and processes, the owner of the data warehouse, and so forth. Zaidi makes the poignant observation that, “None of these answers is correct on an individual basis. Data is neither owned by a single business area nor an individual system owner, but is an enterprise asset that is owned by the corporation.”27

Ultimately, the idea of an “information owner” is difficult or impossible to ascribe, and more important, sets the wrong tone about information as something other than an enterprise asset. Even renowned data quality consultant and author Tom Redman, avoids the term “data owner” throughout his several instructive books on data quality. He exclaimed to me recently, “It’s one of the scourges of the Earth. It implies I have something that I don’t have to give you. And if I do decide to give it to you, you have to pay for it. Inside any organization, that is unconscionable.”28

That said, the idea of a “data trustee,” as Latulippe, Zaidi, and others suggest, establishes information as a shared resource with shared responsibility. Moreover, it acknowledges that the same information can exist in multiple places at the same time (or is non-rivalrous in economic-speak). Along the lines of our earlier foray into supply chains and physical asset management procedures, Redman prefers guiding his clients to think more about information consumers and information producers within the organization, and how they can better communicate and collaborate with one another.

Sometimes, it’s not that simple. Take McDonald’s, for instance. Gokula Mishra, McDonald’s senior director of global data & analytics and supply chain, shared with me how McDonald’s pan-geographic franchise model can make it difficult to get access to some data. He referred to this as a data sovereignty challenge in which getting corporate access to customer, supplier and employee information in various parts of the world requires an approval process and adherence to various data protection regulations. For example, he said: “From some of our markets in Europe, data regulations dictate how a subject’s personal information can be collected, used, shared, and transferred across borders. As such, certain steps need to be taken for a European market’s data to be transferred to McDonald’s Corporation in the U.S.”29

Information sovereignty conundrums exist within tighter organizations, as well. Many U.S. states have legislated open data mandates, requiring agencies and departments to make data available among one another, and externally for citizens and businesses.

According to Liz Rowe, the State of New Jersey’s CDO, even following the law can be confounding: “The mindset among agencies is that ‘This is my data and I don’t have to share with you.’” Relating a meeting she was in with two different agencies, she said conflicting regulations don’t help at all:

One agency quotes a federal regulation that ‘I must get this data from you.’ The other agency quotes another federal regulation stating, ‘I cannot share this with you.’ So we have these dueling regulations that are confusing and inconsistent with each other.

Rowe shared that it sometimes takes many months and many lawyers to sort out if and how to share information among agencies, and how this hampers the state’s efficiency and abilities. One of her goals is to help everyone understand and start behaving as if they and their information are all part of the same organization.30

The challenges of sharing information across internal and external borders within an organization also puts an interesting twist on ownership for one automaker whose head of information innovation admitted to me, “Due to regulatory restrictions and the challenges of requesting data from another part of the organization, it’s sometimes easier and cheaper for me to buy from a data broker or elsewhere, even if we already have it.”

Loaded semantics aside, the definition of an information owner as someone who is responsible and accountable for the definition and policies related to a particular information asset makes sense—just as the earlier Generally Accepted Information Principles in chapter 5 state. It is the “owner” moniker itself which causes problems.

You and Your Information Are on Your “Own”

Ultimately, attempts to define and execute on the concept of information ownership, either outside the organization or inside the organization, simply may be fruitless. Even worse, they may be a meaningless impediment to what is really important.

Inside the organization, information should be considered an enterprise asset. Information generates more value and reduces costs for the organization when there’s a culture of sharing and internal information availability is maximized. Therefore, instead of a fixation on ownership, focus on information stewardship, responsibilities, accountability, governance, definitions, and advocacy.

Outside the organization there is little precedent, exist few laws, and there is questionable support from the courts, accounting standards bodies, or insurance companies on recognizing information as legitimate property or a formal asset. So instead of blindly assuming you or someone in your organization owns your information, focus on specifying the contractual rights and responsibilities for anyone from whom you collect information or with whom you expose information: Who has the ability to create, read, modify, copy, share, or delete which data, how, and when? What are the penalties for a breach of contract? Is the contract transferable or assumable? How is it to be enforced?

Perhaps the idea of information ownership should be supplanted with an unusual idea from New Zealand, and in line with the metaphor in chapter 6 of information as an “organism.” The Kiwi government has taken an outlandish approach to land ownership. A statute passed in 2014 transformed the Te Urewera National Park into a unique entity which nobody owns, but with “all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person.” Now, more than 200,000 hectares of remote wilderness on New Zealand’s North Island is able to go to court. With help from any concerned citizen, particularly designated trustees from the land’s traditional settlers, the Tūhoe tribe, Te Urewera can defend itself from misuse by corporations or individuals.31 What if information itself could be imbued with certain rights, and the means to be legally protected? Perhaps someday.

For the time being, let’s turn our attention to ascribing a measurable value to information. All assets are measured. As illustrated in chapter 7, most physical assets are tracked at points along their supply chain. The flow of money is meticulously recorded. And even non-assets like employees are assessed. So why not information? Whether it’s an acknowledged asset or not, it makes perfect sense that information’s quality should be measured to ensure its functional utility, and that its financial value should be measured to ensure its economic benefits. In the next chapter, we will review recently developed methods for generating these metrics, and examples of how they are already being implemented by organizations today.

Notes

1 “Your Response Limited v. Datateam Business Media Ltd,” England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions, 13 February 2014, www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2014/281.html.

2 “Data Taskforce—Working Document—DRAFT v2,” Australian Computer Society Inc. (ACT), Data Taskforce, Working Document, Version 2.1, 06 December 2016.

3 “Foreigners Buying and Leasing Property in Southeast Asia: Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos,” Runckel & Associates, Inc., www.business-in-asia.com/news/land_in_southeast_asia.html.

4 www.trans-africa-invest.com/eng/index.php?fldr=media&link=realestate-7.

5 Robert B. Holtman, The Napoleonic Revolution (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981).

6 Gareth Halfacree, “Microsoft Loses Overseas Data Privacy Case,” Bit-tech, 01 August 2014, www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2014/08/01/microsoft-privacy-lost/1.

7 “Microsoft Fails to Block U.S. Warrant for Ireland E-Mail,” Bloomberg.com, 31 July 2014, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-31/microsoft-fails-to-block-u-s-warrant-for-ireland-e-mail.

8 If you still think information ownership is a straightforward matter, start by trying to unpack the 20-page U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in this case, In the Matter of a Warrant to Search a Certain E-Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corporation.

9 “Microsoft to Store Data in Germany to Keep It from Third Parties,” CNN Money, 11 November 2015, http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/11/technology/microsoft-germany-data-center-privacy/index.html.

10 “U.S. Govt: Megaupload Users Should Sue Megaupload,” TorrentFreak, 11 June 2012, https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-govt-megaupload-users-should-sue-megaupload-120611/.

11 “Fumbling Feds Lose Control of Seized MegaUpload Domains—to Saucy Vid Slingers,” The Register, 29 May 2015, www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/29/megaupload_malware/.

12 “Beechwood House v. Guardian Products Ltd. and Precision Direct Marketing Ltd,” England and Wales Patents County Court, 20 June 2011, www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWPCC/2011/22.html.

13 “Patents County Court Rules on Infringement in Database Right Case,” Practical Law, 20 June 2011, http://uk.practicallaw.com/1-507-1888?q=&qp=&qo=&qe=.

14 “Landmark Ruling for Database Owners in Relation to ‘Seeding’ and ‘Substantial Part’,” DLA Piper, 16 August 2011, www.remarksblog.com/2011/08/landmark-ruling-for-database-owners-in-relation-to-seeding-and-substantial-part/.

15 As Graham Mullier, head of data science services with Syngenta, pointed out to me at a recent Gartner event: data schemas or models can be legally protected as well.

16 “Data from AULIVE, an Aggregator of Worldwide Patent Application Information,” November 2016, www.aulive.com.

17 Thirty-three of the top 40 organizations patenting algorithms the past five years are Chinese companies and universities. Only one western company even cracks the top 10: IBM, in tenth.

18 For a more complete analysis of this data on patent algorithms, see: “Algorithm Patents Increased 30x The Past Fifteen Years,” Doug Laney, Gartner Blog Network, 24 October 2016, http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/patents-for-algorithms-have-increased-30x-the-past-fifteen-years/.

19 Nolan Miller, interview with author, 09 September 2016.

20 Roberto V. Zicari, “Trends and Information on Big Data, New Data Management Technologies, Data Science and Innovation,” ODBMS Industry Watch, 26 January 2017, www.odbms.org/blog/.

21 “Uber U.S. Terms of Use, Effective: November 21, 2016,” Uber, www.uber.com/legal/terms/us/.

22 Stephen W. Bernstein et al., “Ownership of Biological Samples and Clinical Data II: U.S. Supreme Court Denies Certiorari in the Catalona Decision,” McDermott Will & Emery, 21 February 2008, www.mwe.com/en/thought-leadership/publications/2008/02/ownership-of-biological-samples-and-clinical-dat__.

23 Campbell Simpson, “Your Metadata Isn’t Private Personal Information, Federal Court Decides,” Gizmodo, 19 January 2017, www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/01/your-metadata-isnt-private-personal-information-federal-court-decides/.

24 The General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), implemented 2018, will require organizations doing business in the European Union (EU) to provide individuals access to their data, the ability to rectify issues with it, the right to be “forgotten,” and the rights to notification, data portability, and limitations on its usage. As a result, placing the control of personal data back into the hands of individuals may cause it to fail one of the prerequisites for valuing it as a corporate asset.

25 Barb Latullipe, interview with author, 18 July 2016.

26 Jay Zaidi, Data-Driven Leaders Always Win, p. 131.

27 Ibid., p. 146.

28 Tom Redman, interview with author, 24 October 2016.

29 Gokula Mishna, interview with author, 15 August 2016.

30 Liz Rowe, interview with author, 19 July 2016.

31 https://newmatilda.com/2016/09/08/new-zealand-land-can-person-meanwhile-australia/.

..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
3.21.93.245