Who Owns Information? Governments Are Asking the Wrong Question.

Who Owns Information? Governments Are Asking the Wrong Question.

Who should control data? The question is increasingly central to policy debates in Washington, Brussels, and Silicon Valley. It’s being asked in antitrust lawsuits, AI regulation proposals, and sweeping data governance laws. But there’s a problem: The question is built on a faulty understanding of what information is—and what it takes to make it useful. Information isn’t a commodity that exists for the taking and to be passed around, such as oil…