It is time for our data to be covered under property rights

At its core, the idea of owning your data is a question of property rights. In the physical world, ownership establishes control, consent, and value. If you own your home, you decide who enters. If you own your labor, you decide how it is sold. Data has become just as central to modern life, yet it remains one of the few assets created by individuals that they do not legally or practically own.

For most of the digital age, data has been treated as an unavoidable byproduct of participation in modern life. Every search, post, purchase, appointment, and transaction leaves a record behind. Almost none of those records belong to the individual who created them.

A social post is owned by a platform. A medical update belongs to a provider. Financial history sits with banks. Academic records live inside institutional systems. The person at the center of all this activity is the only party without real control over the information that defines them.

That assumption is beginning to be questioned. Not because of ideology, but because the model is starting to strain under its own weight.

In his recent memoir This Is for Everyone, Tim Berners-Lee describes a different way to think about data. In this view, individuals own their data by default. Personal information such as medical, financial, professional, and social records would be held in a secure digital container controlled by the individual. Access would be granted intentionally rather than assumed automatically.

This philosophy led to the creation of The Solid Project, which aims to separate data from the applications that use it. Solid is not the only effort exploring this idea, but it represents a meaningful shift in thinking. It suggests that the problem is not technology, but structure.

The real question is not whether owning our data is appealing. The question is whether it is feasible.

At first glance, the idea seems unrealistic. Most people do not want to manage data. They do not want to think about storage, encryption, or permissions. They want digital services to work simply and reliably. That concern is valid, but it assumes that ownership requires constant attention.

If user owned data becomes widespread, the complexity would not live with the individual. It would live in the infrastructure. People do not manage internet protocols in order to use the web, and they do not understand financial clearing systems in order to use a credit card. Data ownership would follow the same pattern. The user experience would be simple and familiar. Consent would be clear. Access would be revocable. Control would exist without being burdensome.

In practice, this could actually reduce friction. Instead of repeatedly entering the same information across systems or trusting unknown intermediaries, individuals would authorize access once and revoke it when a relationship ends. The center of gravity would shift from institutions to people.

The more difficult challenge is economic rather than technical. Many of the most profitable companies in the world are built on exclusive access to user data. Advertising, personalization, and artificial intelligence all benefit from large scale aggregation. It is reasonable to ask why those companies would support a model that appears to weaken their advantage.

The answer is that most companies do not need to own data in order to profit from it. They need permission to use it. The current system combines ownership and access in a way that favors platforms. A user owned model separates those two concepts.

Under such a system, companies could still analyze data, build products, and generate revenue. The difference is that access would be granted through consent rather than assumed through control. From a business perspective, this may be less disruptive than it sounds. The cost of permissioned access could be small compared to the value created, especially if it reduces regulatory risk, compliance overhead, and public mistrust.

As privacy laws tighten and data breaches continue to erode confidence, the old model becomes more expensive to defend. Clean, permissioned data is easier to justify, easier to govern, and often more valuable over time.

This transition would not happen all at once. Resistance would be significant. Established interests would push back. But history shows that when economic incentives, technology, and social expectations begin to align, change tends to follow.

The earliest adoption is likely to occur where fragmentation already causes harm. Healthcare records. Financial identity. Professional credentials. Educational history. In these areas, both individuals and institutions suffer from the lack of coherence and control.

User owned data does not require the end of platforms or the digital economy as we know it. Aggregation would still exist. Advertising would still exist. Artificial intelligence would still rely on large datasets. What changes is who has the first say.

The shift is not about rejecting the digital economy. It is about modernizing it. When individuals move from being passive sources of data to active participants in how it is shared, the system becomes more resilient.

The question is not whether we can own our data. The tools already exist. The question is when the business case becomes strong enough that ownership is no longer an ideal, but an expectation.

That moment may be closer than it seems.