Genuine question on your perspective , I found and serve a picture of you and your wife having a meal that you once posted on myspace.

Does that make it my data? If not why? What makes these 1s and 0s uniquely yours?

When you posted the picture to myspace under the terms of their user agreement you granted them unlimited rights to redistribute that image to anyone in the world.

If you care about privacy don't post private stuff online.

Where did you find that picture? If the person printed it out and plastered it on a nearby signpost for everyone to see, I'd say it is no longer personal data.

I'd say that it'd be your data but you might not be the copyright holder. But if the data is on a storage media that you own, I would consider it your data.

That's a very weird definition of "your data" that goes against e.g. the GDPR definition, etc.

If the GDPR is wrong, it's not the first time. See Lysenko.

Lysenko as in the Soviet scientist? I don't really see what, if anything, a mistaken belief about evolution has to do with legal or moral definitions about ownership of data.

Saying "Lysenkoism is true" is factually wrong, but saying "physical possession is equivalent to ownership" is just a very fringe political opinion.

So I don't see how "the GDPR" can be wrong, unless you mean it in the sense of "the death penalty is (morally) wrong", which is just your opinion in that case.

My point is this: If your insurance provider, for example, obtains access to your medical records, and store them on their servers, does that make it "their data" to use as they please? This would imply that:

> But if the data is on a storage media that you own, I would consider it your data

Ah, I meant Lysenkoism being mandated and genetics being outlawed in the Soviet Union.

> but saying "physical possession is equivalent to ownership" is just a very fringe political opinion.

It is a fringe opinion in today's West, but only relatively recently: since the 1970s, one might argue. The fringe opinion, to be clear, is the older one implied to some degree by "possession is nine tenths of the law", and which views copyright and patent as an artificial grant from the State, useful, but not property in the same sense as a table or a knife is someone's property.

(edited for typo)

Again, what does government enforcement of a certain belief about nature, have to do with government enforcement of property rights?

Ownership of physical property is also an artificial grant from the state. (Or if you will, a recognition by the state of what people in general believe) Perhaps not a table or a knife, but a farm or a factory, have in many countries been suddenly disqualified as legitimate property of their (former) owner, as a result of e.g. a communist revolution. There's nothing more "natural" to owning a piece of land, than to owning a song.

I'm pretty sure physical possession was not generally considered equivalent to ownership before the 1970s, that's an absurd statement. Shareholders of the East India Company in the 1600s weren't in physical possession of the ships, yet they were considered owners. Even purely intellectual property, such as patents, have existed in laws since at least 1474. Albert Einstein famously worked in a patent office.

Yup. That's your data now. And also mine (if I have a backup) and also myspace's.

The fact that makes it your data is that you physically can share it with someone else.

At least that's the value system I live by and I believe should be in place for all because it perfectly reflects the reality of what happens with ones and zeroes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...

Tangential but, if a nonhuman takes the photo, that makes it public domain, right? (In this case a monkey, or maybe in the case of a robot?)

Or is it different if there's a human in the photo?