公開數(shù)據(jù)屬于誰？

One thing that’s becoming very clear to me as I report on the digital economy is that a rethink of the legal framework in which business has been conducted for many decades is going to be required. Many of the key laws that govern digital commerce (which, increasingly, is most commerce) were crafted in the 1980s or 1990s, when the internet was an entirely different place.

在我報道數(shù)字經(jīng)濟的時候，一件變得非常明顯的事情是，人們將需要重新思考幾十年來商業(yè)適用的法律框架。其中許多治理數(shù)字商務(wù)(如今的商務(wù)日益成為數(shù)字商務(wù))的關(guān)鍵法律是在上世紀(jì)80年代或者90年代起草的，當(dāng)時的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)完全不是現(xiàn)在這個樣子。

Consider, for example, the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This 1986 law made it a federal crime to engage in “unauthorised access” to a computer connected to the internet. It was designed to prevent hackers from breaking into government or corporate systems. The mythology is that the law was inspired by War Games, the 1983 movie starring Matthew Broderick.

例如，想想《計算機欺詐和濫用法案》(Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ,簡稱CFAA)。這部于1986年生效的法律規(guī)定聯(lián)邦內(nèi)“未被授權(quán)地訪問”一臺連接互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的電腦是犯罪行為。它的目的是阻止黑客侵入政府或者企業(yè)系統(tǒng)。但吊詭的是，這部法律的靈感源于1983年由馬修•布羅德里克(Matthew Broderick)主演的電影《戰(zhàn)爭游戲》(War Games)。

While few hackers seem to have been deterred by it, the law is being used in turf battles between companies looking to monetise the most valuable commodity on the planet — your personal data. Case in point: LinkedIn vs HiQ, which may well become a groundbreaker in Silicon Valley. LinkedIn is the dominant professional networking platform, a Facebook for corporate types. HiQ is a “data-scraping” company, one that accesses publicly available data from LinkedIn profiles and then mixes it up in its own quantitative black box to create two products — Keeper, which tells employers which of their employees are at greatest risk of being recruited away, and Skill Mapper, which provides a summary of the skills possessed by individual workers.

似乎很少有黑客因此收手，如今該法被用于尋求貨幣化這個星球上最有價值商品(即你們的個人數(shù)據(jù))的公司間的地盤爭奪。領(lǐng)英(LinkedIn)與HiQ的糾紛就是很好的例子，它很可能開創(chuàng)硅谷的先例。領(lǐng)英是占據(jù)主導(dǎo)地位的專業(yè)人脈平臺，是企業(yè)版的Facebook。HiQ是一個“數(shù)據(jù)檢索”公司，它抓取領(lǐng)英公開的個人簡介數(shù)據(jù)，隨后放進自己的量化黑匣子創(chuàng)造出兩個產(chǎn)品，一個是Keeper，告訴雇主哪些員工最有可能跳槽，另一個是Skill Mapper，總結(jié)個體員工擁有的技能。

LinkedIn allowed HiQ to do this for five years, before developing a very similar product to Skill Mapper, at which point LinkedIn sent the company a “cease and desist” letter, and threatened to invoke the CFAA if HiQ did not stop tapping its user data. LinkedIn’s lawyers argued not only that this was a violation of users’ trust, but that its client was a “private entity with a right to control access to its private property” — meaning not only its servers, but the consumer data on them, too.

領(lǐng)英允許HiQ這么干了5年，隨后開發(fā)了一個與Skill Mapper非常類似的產(chǎn)品，并向HiQ發(fā)出了“勒令停止侵權(quán)函”，威脅如果HiQ不停止收集其用戶數(shù)據(jù)的話，就會起訴其違反了CFAA。領(lǐng)英的律師不僅辯稱這辜負(fù)了用戶信任，而且還說其客戶是“有權(quán)控制訪問其私有財產(chǎn)的私人實體”——這不僅指的是它的服務(wù)器，而且還有服務(wù)器上的消費者數(shù)據(jù)。

None of this is uncommon in the Valley. Data scraping companies, which can seem a bit creepy, are rife — as are big companies that watch little firms experiment with new ideas, and then try to steal and/or crush them once they reach critical mass (either with a cease and desist letter, or by acquisition).

這種情況在硅谷并不罕見。行事似乎有點隱秘的數(shù)據(jù)收集公司到處都是，那些大公司都是這樣，它們先是關(guān)注小公司試行新想法，一旦后者達到臨界規(guī)模，就試圖竊取并且/或者摧毀它們——要么發(fā)出“勒令停止侵權(quán)函”，要么收購它們。

I have been inundated recently with calls from small tech firms complaining about anti-competitive practices on the part of the larger platform companies. Most will not go public for fear of never getting another round of funding or a job (Silicon Valley has quite the omerta code, as I’m discovering). But HiQ figured it had nothing to lose, because if it could not get LinkedIn data it would be out of business. The US District Court in Northern California, which is hearing the case, agreed, and gave it an injunction to continue scraping while the legal battle moves forward (LinkedIn filed its opening brief last week).

我最近接到許多小科技公司的電話，抱怨較大型平臺公司旗下機構(gòu)的反壟斷活動。大多數(shù)公司不會公諸于眾，因為它們擔(dān)心因此無法獲得又一輪的融資或者工作(就像我發(fā)現(xiàn)的那樣，硅谷有沉默法則)。但HiQ認(rèn)為自己沒啥損失的，因為如果它無法獲得領(lǐng)英數(shù)據(jù)就會破產(chǎn)。美國加州北部地區(qū)法院對此表示同意，并允許其繼續(xù)收集數(shù)據(jù)，同時法律訴訟仍在進行之中(領(lǐng)英近日提起上訴)。

Meanwhile, a case that might have been significant mainly to digital insiders is being given a huge publicity boost by Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, the country’s pre-eminent constitutional law scholar. He has joined the HiQ defence team because, as he told me, he believes the case is “tremendously important”, not only in terms of setting competitive rules for the digital economy, but in the realm of free speech. According to Prof Tribe, if you accept that the internet is the new town square, and “data is a central type of capital”, then it must be freely available to everyone — and LinkedIn, as a private company, cannot suddenly decide that publicly accessible, Google-searchable data is their private property.

與此同時，哈佛大學(xué)(Harvard)教授、美國杰出的憲法學(xué)者勞倫斯•特賴布(Laurence Tribe)讓該案的知名度大幅上升——該案主要對數(shù)字行業(yè)內(nèi)部人士意義重大。他加入了HiQ的辯護團隊，因為他告訴我，他認(rèn)為該案具有“極其重要的意義”，這不僅體現(xiàn)在它可能為數(shù)字經(jīng)濟設(shè)定競爭規(guī)則，而且還在于言論自由領(lǐng)域。據(jù)特賴布表示，如果你認(rèn)可互聯(lián)網(wǎng)是新的城市廣場，同時“數(shù)據(jù)是中央型資本”，那么就必須讓所有人都可以免費獲得，而領(lǐng)英作為一家私人公司，不能突然決定可以公開獲得的、谷歌(Google)搜索來的數(shù)據(jù)是它們的私有財產(chǎn)。

People may not like what HiQ is doing, but just as sex offenders have a right to use the internet, so data scrapers have a right to make their living in the public space, at least for the moment. The worry is that if private companies are granted the authority to decide who gets to participate in the digital marketplace of ideas, then they could shun whoever they like, however they like.

人們可能不喜歡HiQ做的事情，但正如強奸犯有權(quán)使用互聯(lián)網(wǎng)一樣，數(shù)據(jù)收集者也有權(quán)在公共空間謀生，至少目前可以。擔(dān)憂在于，如果私人公司被授權(quán)決定誰可以參與數(shù)字意見市場，那么它們就可能回避它們喜歡的人，無論它們有多么喜歡。

For its part, LinkedIn argues that its position is the speech-maximising one. It believes that if users knew their data were freely available to unrestricted collection and access by third parties, they would be less likely to put it online. This is a good point, and perhaps one that consumers and users of the internet in general should think more carefully about.

領(lǐng)英這邊辯稱，其立場是為了最大化地保證言論自由。它相信，如果用戶知道他們的數(shù)據(jù)能夠被第三方不受限制地收集和獲取，他們就不太可能發(fā)布在網(wǎng)上。這是一個很好的理由，或許消費者和互聯(lián)網(wǎng)用戶應(yīng)該更認(rèn)真思考這一理由。

Whether your concern is anti-competitive business practices, or the preservation of free speech, one thing that we have to grapple with is that we are both the raw material and the end consumer of what is being sold online. We are the product.

無論你擔(dān)憂的是反壟斷商業(yè)活動，還是維護言論自由，我們不得不應(yīng)對的一件事情是，我們既是網(wǎng)上售賣的原材料，又是終極消費者。我們是產(chǎn)品。

Given that, we might want to think much more carefully about three things. First, the extent of information that we reveal and all the myriad ways in which it can be used. Second, whether the products and services we receive in exchange for our data are worth it, or whether the terms of the exchange should be reconsidered. And third, how governments may shift the rules of the new digital playing field, and what it will mean for capitalism in the 21st century.

鑒于此，我們可能希望更認(rèn)真地考慮三件事。第一，我們披露的信息的程度以及它可能被使用的諸多方式。第二，我們用自己數(shù)據(jù)交換來的產(chǎn)品和服務(wù)是物有所值，還是應(yīng)該重新考慮交換條件。第三，政府如何調(diào)整新的數(shù)字領(lǐng)域的規(guī)則，以及這將對21世紀(jì)的資本主義意味著什么。