DATA OWNERSHIP: A MISTAKEN PERSPECTIVE TO PROTECTION OF DATA PRIVACY

Abstract

With technology growing exponentially in the digital age, a person’s personal information has acquired the status of the most valuable possession for both individuals and businesses/ government. In such times when one understands the power of this resource and the kind of economic profits it brings along, the major debate is – whose data is it? Does it belong to the individual whose information is out there for grabs or does the business organizations hold the right to ownership as they put in a lot of skill and effort to create datasets in order to make sense out of the raw unstructured data collected thus? This paper tries to ascertain the ownership rights and further explains why attaching ownership rights to personal data may be disastrous in terms of protecting the individuals’ data privacy from any kind of violations