Blog 18: Data Ownership - The Blog Finale

So the time has finally come. With chapters 5 and 6 of Neff and Nafus’ Self-Tracking, we finally

bring our blogging entries to a close. Before getting into the final thoughts of these readings, let’s first cover the chapters read.

The two chapters cover both the common uses of tracking when it comes to people’s health data, as well as how complications can come up when it comes to the subject of who actually owns that data. In general, I think that this problem has a combination of sources it draws from; mainly due to the idea that, all things considered, it’s technically medical professionals that have ownership of your health data - they just allow you to (more or less) access it whenever you want because they understand you might want to look back on such things. This mindset on it’s own is fine, but when combined with the idea of a company owned system, I think it runs into issues where such data is considered to be part of the company’s database, which is owned by that business by law. This leads to resistance because these groups have the mentality that if they make exceptions surrounding their copyrighted works, they risk losing their protection over such material. Despite sounding bizarre, it does make some logical sense, as various things today have become public domain because the owner failed to completely secure their ownership. Even though there is no actual law along the lines of “protect it or lose it”, people have found loopholes in the past to take away ownership and most likely find others in the future. After all, it is kind of nonsensical to believe the real reason is simply because they think the user “won’t understand it” or in general the business just wants to make things difficult. If cases like Kim McAuliffe’s case in Chapter 6 shows anything, it shows that owners of such data are willing to work things out assuming there’s no risk on their end.

Any who, it’s crazy to think that these blogs entries are finally ending and this semester is practically over already. It still feels like we just started the semester recently. Making these blogs was definitely a fun experience and a neat way to get my thoughts on the readings out there. I usually have trouble expressing my thoughts in spoken words so having an outlet to say what I think in text has definitely been beneficial.

Questions:

• Have any of these readings changed your opinion on technology, internet, and rhetoric’s effect on people’s lives, or possibly taught you something new about said subjects?
• What do you think is the biggest legal struggle tracking devices are going to have to overcome in order to become more commonly applied?

Image from: https://www.phoenixhealth.com/meaningful-use/will-proposed-mu-stage-3-rule-affect/