Viewpoint... The digital age is the end of property ownership?!

Published:

2022-12-05

Thirty years ago, Vice President Al Gore and Secretary of Commerce Brown formally announced the implementation of the "National Information Infrastructure" plan in the United States, which is known as the "Information Highway" plan. At that time, the U.S. Department of Commerce released the emerging digital economy. This report put forward a point of view: the core resources that play a decisive role in the economy will change from "currency" to "data". This is the beginning of the digital era. The United States has successively laid out cloud computing, big data, advanced manufacturing, 5g, quantum communication and other frontier fields, And put forward the "digital government" strategy. At that time, personal PC was still an expensive luxury in China, and university computers were also taken care of in special computer rooms. 286, 386, win95 and win98 represented that era, and even DOS games of "Legend of Sword and Fairy" could dominate the market. Thirty years later, China has also stood on the runway of the digital economy. At the Global Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, Germany, the "Shenwei · Light of Taihu Lake" from China topped the list of the "Top 500 Global Supercomputers. This is the first computer in China that does not use American chip technology and runs at the world's first speed. It has three "world first" indicators: peak system performance 1.25 billion billion times per second, continuous performance 0.93 billion billion times per second, and performance per watt 6.05 billion times per watt. Its 1-minute computing power is equivalent to 7.2 billion people around the world using a calculator to calculate continuously for 32 years. What can this computing power do? It can achieve a million-core-scale global 10-kilometer high-resolution numerical simulation of the Earth system, which will comprehensively improve China's ability to mitigate and prevent extreme weather and natural disasters; the National Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory's return path for Tiangong-1 will provide accurate predictions for its smooth return home; and the digital age is already before us. The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology believes that the core of the digital age is the two successive processes of industrial digitization and digital industrialization, turning the existing industry, life, culture, and management into a digital drive to realize industrial digitization, and the huge value of the data itself can Stimulate industrial upgrading and the birth of new industries, and realize digital industrialization. Thus forming a spiral upward cycle, increasing the internal drive for economic development, the digital age has unfolded a magnificent picture. Big data, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, 5G industry and block chain "digital industry" are surging like waves and evolving into various industrial forms-unmanned driving, intelligent logistics, black light factory....... However, when the property is digitized, where is our property? How to protect the property ownership? Has the property ownership come to an end?! The Dilemma of 1. Digital Property Property ownership is a concept given by law, and law has a lag. But in the digital age, this lag is even more pronounced, even putting our property ownership in a bind. Ownership is the right of the right holder to possess, use, gain and dispose of his property (movable or immovable) according to law, also known as "right to the world", which is a classic right of free control rooted in civil law. The Civil Code also recognizes the value of virtual property, but how to deal with the creation, use, management and protection of digital property? In the digital age, all this will be broken. When we register users of the network platform, we habitually skip the user agreement, usually ignore the various management tips and privacy policies of the platform operators, and click the "agree" button to confirm. And behind this, the ownership we think we should get is being severed by a strong platform agreement. On November 17, 2022, the game company Blizzard suddenly announced that it would end its license agreement with Netease until January 23, 2023: from 0:00 on January 24, all national service games such as World of Warcraft and StarCraft series will cease operation. Netease "is very sorry that Activision Blizzard announced the suspension of cooperation first, we will have to accept this decision", the property formed by countless players is unknown. But according to the platform agreement you ignored, although the property has value, you are not allowed to make any transactions. The ownership you believe may be limited to your own use and only for the duration of the platform operator's license. The rights of possession, use, income and disposition at our disposal are limited to "a time-limited right to use". You can't actually control him, you can't transfer him, you can't generate any income, and you'll be arbitrarily revoked all rights at any time. Is this the tragic end of digital property ownership? Some people say that this is virtual property, not enough. So, let's look at the books again. We can buy and own a book in the real world, we can choose to read or decorate our room, we can lend, donate, transfer old books online, this book is our property. And what about books in electronic form? E-books and physical books not only change in form, but directly deny the current ownership system. In the case of a physical book, you can transfer or mail the book to the next user for a fee or free of charge. But if it is an e-book, where is the data? If your e-book is stored on the platform and you only read it in real time, for example, if your book is read through Amazon e-reader, you can hand over your e-book reader to the other party, which means handing over your entire library and valuable electronic equipment, just as it is absurd that you must hand over the physical book to the other party together with the bookshelf or even the study. Another way to consider is to keep your equipment, only send the file to your friends, but the problem is that this process actually creates one or more new copies, which is precisely the "copying" behavior prohibited by copyright law, and enters the category of infringement consideration. So where are your rights to possess, use, gain and dispose of digital products? How do you exercise your ownership? The dilemma arises...... 2. who deconstructed our ownership In the face of cheap data-based products, such as e-books, the price is often only the 1/2 of physical books, or even lower. For readers who pay attention to the content, it has a natural price attraction. Even you can exchange for free reading by watching advertisements for a certain period of time. This is the premise and basis for us to accept him, so more people choose to "subscribe" every day. Digital products instead of buying. However, this kind of subscription is obviously not the subscription to physical books and periodicals that we understand every day. No matter whether we continue to subscribe or not, these physical newspapers and periodicals are controlled by you and no one can take them away. However, if you stop subscribing to the platform, your account may be emptied and nothing will remain. Even if the platform compromises, you need to rely on the platform to exist forever, otherwise it will still be gone. The platform uses cheap data replication, or even just network "access", without having to spend huge amounts of replication, transportation, and warehousing costs. Of course, it is happy to see it. Moreover, it has directly cut off the resale of the second-hand market. All those who want to obtain services must pay directly to the platform. All people will become the same customers again. For the platform, the blowout demand has brought the market to life. Will creators receive more as a result? This is just a good assumption. If digital books have only one export platform. When the creator asks for a license fee to be added to the huge sales revenue, the platform may directly take the work off the shelf on the grounds that it involves an infringement dispute, breaking its transmission chain. The corresponding consumers must also accept the result that the books they subscribe to disappear without their consent and cannot get the corresponding compensation. If this situation continues to be deduced and developed, you will find that our knowledge, thoughts, hobbies and trends will be mastered by the platform. He only provides what he thinks he wants to provide, and then by guessing what you like, you will continuously weaken your ability to obtain information and think. Finally, everyone's thoughts and insights will be "cloud" to the platform, not only losing ownership, but even people as the main body of thinking will slowly lose. Technology really is a revolution, it deconstructs everything, doesn't it? 3. what else can we do in the face of the impending loss of digital ownership? All this is happening quietly, whether conscious or indifferent. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an association of engineers, scientists, and other technologists, is one of the most influential organizations in the world that has developed a large number of standards and specifications for our society, as well as the establishment of a working group to develop a "consumer-owned personal digital property" (DPP) standard as early as ten years ago, but it has not yet been released. The law must face change: (I) platforms should be denied misleading ownership and false promises. Let the consumer know clearly whether his payment is "all" or "license", not just "buy immediately". If the consumer really only wants to temporarily own, such as leasing, but the platform cannot provide only temporary license in the name of ownership. This kind of non-committal misleading or intentional false promise makes consumers lose the right to free choice. In this regard, of course, supervision should be strengthened. We are not only concerned about network security, but also whether our property is safe after paying the consideration. Abuse of (II) Restriction (EULA) End User License Agreement (EULA) The end-user license agreement is drawn up unilaterally by the platform, often at length. There are some standardized platforms, license agreements and even hundreds of pages. Reading this obscure agreement takes longer than reading the book I want to buy. Moreover, you simply don't know where to hide the trap in the manuscripts drawn up by these professionals. So we often choose to tick the OK after consent, but this (EULA) end user license agreement. The Civil Code makes a transformative provision for format clauses, "If the party providing the format clause fails to perform its obligation to prompt or explain, resulting in the other party failing to pay attention to or understand the clause in which it has a material interest, the other party may claim that the clause does not become the content of the contract." But the rejection of some of the standard terms of the contract means that we must have acquired ownership? This is not a black or white question. It is still within the scope of the contract between the two parties, and it still needs to be confirmed by both parties. It is still necessary to regulate the legal relationship that is constantly breaking the balance and being destroyed. (III) digital protections will remain the armour of platforms to resist ownership Even if we break through the (EULA) end-user license agreement, the machine code limitations of digital protection measures (e. g., self-destruction, remote deletion) remain an obstacle for owners to control their property. Digital protection measures themselves are major measures that are transferred to the platform in the development of the digital industry, which can independently determine how you access, use and recover your digital assets. For example, the original Microsoft software genuine verification lock hardware or interfere with the normal use of users, how to balance digital protection measures and user ownership, will face great challenges. These let a person feel the power of technology, the pressure of these protective measures, let a person like a throat. Of course, there are still a number of issues that need to be considered and resolved. Besides, there are e-commerce, digital currencies, digital collections, financial data, software, personal information data, and all kinds of digital assets of enterprises, how do we face the surging digital economy, digital society, digital government and digital ecology......

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