Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 11:00:24 -0800 (PST)
From: Scott London <london@rain.org>
Subject: WHO OWNS INFORMATION by Anne Wells Branscomb

Book Review:
~~~~~~~~~~~~

WHO OWNS INFORMATION? 
>From Privacy to Public Access
By Anne Wells Branscomb
New York: BasicBooks, 1994, 241 pages


WHO OWNS INFORMATION? explores of the social and legal ramifications of
new communication and information technologies which, in Branscomb's view,
are rendering old intellectual property laws obsolete and generating new
controversies over public and private domains of information.  She
maintains that we need to develop a new legal "infostructure" to support
the growing information marketplace. 
     In the last two decades information has changed from a tool with
which to acquire and manage assets to a valuable asset in its own right. 
This has occurred thanks in large part to powerful new information
technologies such as fiber-optic cable, microprocessors, satellites,
digital recording, and computer networks.  Information, which was
previously stored mainly on paper, can now be collected in vast computer
databases, read by electronic laser beams, recorded in magnetic patterns
invisible to the human eye, quickly aggregated and correlated, and
perfectly duplicated.  In many cases, the speed and accuracy of collection
and correlation methods have given new value to previously worthless
information, Branscomb explains, setting off unprecedented legal disputes
between private citizens and information-based businesses over who owns
such valuable data as a person's name, photographic image, telephone
number, shopping records and medical records. 
     Branscomb devotes the better part of the book to a series of case
studies which illustrate the inadequacy of current information laws to
meet the demands of a burgeoning information economy.  She devotes a
chapter each to names and addresses, telephone numbers, medical histories,
images, electronic messages, video entertainment, religious information,
computer software, and government information.  She describes, for
instance, how filing a change-of-address form at the post office furnishes
vast databases with personal information.  Since this information has a
high market value, legal questions of privacy and ownership come into
play. 
     The challenge, according to Branscomb, is to find a balance between
the need to foster new technology-based information businesses and to
determine what constitutes responsible social behavior in an information
society.  "The line between the public and the private domains of
information is a moving target," she concludes, "and will remain so for
the foreseeable future, until we begin to see clearly what ethical values
we choose to impose and which guiding principles we are prepared to
follow.  Until then, the legal infostructure will remain an impenetrable
and irrational thicket of sometimes irrelevant and often unenforceable
laws" (p. 176).


                                   Scott London * london@rain.org