 People need more power over their data. If you think so, vote for my SXSW panel called “Let My Data Go! Open data portability standards.” I need your vote before Friday, September 2nd. This will let us bring this issue to an important audience.
“Another year and corporate silos still hold your data hostage? Our panel will review technical standards that restore personal control of personal data. Privacy is a happy side effect of personal data control and of new business practices, communication protocols, and IT technologies. We’ll highlight progress on all fronts and list the top reasons companies give for keeping their control over your data.”
I’m drafting a stealthy startup’s data portability policy; disclosure is a practical way to live up to these values. And even though I’m a director of the not-for-profit DataPortability Project, the exercise is still difficult. Tracking down the answers, having the abstract and detailed conversations across the company, making time for a policy document are distractions from readying for launch. The policy will get short shrift for a month or so.
Meanwhile, these engineers have been architecting some elements of user-centric data portability into their products from the ground up. I love that portability values will be part of this company’s DNA. What’s better is these founders and engineers are not the exception; personal control is now a central tenet in tech startup culture.
Our panel will recap exactly how organizations are delivering portability today. So vote for my panel right now! And spread the word: Let My Data Go!
When titans of industry and state meet, worlds can change. The World Economic Forum launched a three year “Rethinking Personal Data” project, including data portability. Their first report, Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class, shows their direction.
A new asset class? That’s a telling use of language. Investopedia refers to securities with “similar characteristics, behave similarly in the marketplace, and are subject to the same laws and regulations.” Stocks, bonds, cash, real estate, and intellectual property are common asset classes. Some managerial accountants defined human capital as a new asset class.
Securities and IP go back hundreds of years. As a new asset class, personal data will have its own characteristics and market behavior, its own laws and regulations. We’ve barely mapped this new landscape. U.S. law doesn’t even recognize a theory of rights associated with personal data. So there is a great deal of work ahead. Some of that is ours, at the DataPortability Project. It falls to the DPP to crisply define data portability’s purpose, why it matters, how it fits into lives lived digitally. That’s some of our work at next week’s Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View. [Skype me if you’d like an IIW discount code.]
Speed matters. A look at the chart below, from Bain, shows a rush to capitalize on billion dollar markets in data.
If we don’t embed data portability values and vision into the new identity and personal data infrastructure, it could take decades to achieve our goals.
So read WEF’s first report, below the fold. See where their thinking is now. And ask: where can we amplify their commitment to personal data portability?
Full Story »
I’m heading into a meeting this afternoon to talk about the DataPortability Project with a web site policy expert. Data portability policy as disclosure is a nice and needed start. Looking ahead, what might the data portability movement produce over the next year or two? Not in any order…
A Portability Gallery. Examples of data portability in action. Less about cautionary tales and more showing what can happen for people, groups and businesses when it works.
A Doctrine. The portability policy model is descriptive. This would be prescriptive. A positive statement using the language of “must” and “should” and “rights” and “good.”
An Issue for the 2012 federal and state election cycle. “Dear Candidate, where do you stand on…”
An academic conference on defining the rights of people over their own data, perhaps defining new rights not extant in current law.
A Portability Policy Bootstrap Consulting Methodology. A project plan that brings the right stakeholders together to learn about the portability issues, to assign research into existing portability practices, to organize and present the results internally, to activate the procedures needed to keep the results fresh, to create processes for engaging with external stakeholders on data portability matters, and to publish the results inside and outside the organization.
A Portability Policy Consulting Association. Members share their best practices for helping companies adopt, improve, and troubleshoot portability policies and practices.
A Portability Policy Audit Methodology. Checklists, procedures, and measures of completeness/quality when assessing whether a portability policy is complete, in plain language, and true.
A Portability Auditor Association. Members share their own best practices for data portability policy audits, define standards for certification, discuss best ways to market portability policy audits as parts of their larger financial/legal/IT compliance service portfolio.
Data Portability Audit Software. To help auditors validate compliance with company policy.
DataPortability.gov. The US government’s guide to data portability for citizens, agencies and contractors. I could see pointers to citizen tools, education, and feedback. Links to agency data portability policies and action pages.
Data Portability Ombudsman Services. Like the Better Business Bureau meets GetSatisfaction. Company-sponsored customer dispute resolution.
Model Language for API Terms of Service. Similar to the customer-facing policy, these boilerplate choices would spell out the data portability obligations of service partners who use your customers’ data.
Watchdog Network. Volunteers holding sites accountable, naming names, talking to the press, in the spirit of privacy and environmental activists. Let My Data Go!
Crisis network. Rapid intervention when something bad happens. A site closes, threatening to lose a million users’ data. A site ejects a user and the user needs an ombudsman. A sites data portability policy no longer reflects what they really do.
A Data Portability Media Group. A listserv of bloggers, analysts and reporters who’ve written about data portability and who cover portability issues.
A Speakers Bureau. From neighborhood meetups and chamber meetings to industry conferences and college lectures, a place to find speakers.
Hmmm. Catchy but very ambitious.
What about reality? What about resources?
Let’s pick that up in part 2 next month.
If you can help me get my hands on my data, call me at +1-510-343-5664, Skype me, follow @SkypeJournal and @evanwolf. Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
Mathew Ingram shared two ways companies should respond to privacy issues. 
-
Make settings visible and easy to use. Facebook has made a series of changes to its privacy settings over the past year, but one of the risks is that the more complex and difficult to find the settings become, the less likely people are to go in and change them.
-
Allow users to opt in. Facebook takes a substantial amount of criticism because it chooses to automatically opt users in to new settings and features. The giant social network can get away with this thanks to its sheer size, but smaller companies and services run the risk of alienating their users.
That is so 2005. “Opt in” and “easy to use” are condescending now that users demand more control, transparency, flexibility, and portability.
I know Ingram could go a lot deeper. For starters:
Resolve that customers own their data.
Say it publicly. Repeat often. Reinforce your commitment through policy, procedure, design, operations, and governance. This includes user ability to bring their data from other services to yours, to move and remove their data from your service, to keep the authoritative form of key data elements outside of your service.
Add “List the privacy implications” to your checklists.
Check in new code? Change a web page? Adjust pricing? Whatever your business practice, ask about the privacy and data portability implications. Embed that question in your routines at every stage of your product life cycle.
Federate your customer data policies.
You are not the only custodian of your customers’ data. You put customer data in the hands of other companies all the time. And they, in turn, put it in the hands of yet other companies that you’ll never meet. Your privacy and portability policies may fit your market, but are your suppliers aligned? Can they make the same commitments on your behalf? Are they committing to protect customer data as much as you are? Are they keeping your customers’ data in jurisdictions that protect your rights and your customers’ rights? You need to hold summits, or at least conference calls, to make sure your ecosystem share core values and practices.
Trust but verify.
Set up surveillance so your teams are the first to discover privacy breaches. Audit your own systems regularly. Set up Red Teams to test your ability to protect customer data. Test your partners.
Plan for leaks.
It’s going to happen. Practice your response and put your checklist together now. You and your team won’t have time to think deeply or well under fire.
Back laws and public efforts to give customers equity in their data.
The law protects your ownership of a paper clip more than they do your Facebook profile. Support the invention and evolution of property, identity, privacy, and creative rights and laws that make sense for the rest of the 21st century.
Call me at +1-510-343-5664, Skype me, follow @SkypeJournal and @evanwolf. Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
I hope to see you at the Portability Policy Meetup in San Francisco, Thursday, November 11, 2010, 6:00 PM Pacific.
 Thanks to Mary Trigiani and Rai for the great working session last week. We brainstormed and prioritized a good deal of the workplan for the rest of this quarter.
There’s a lot for us to do at this month’s meetup.
- We’ll test our improvements to the PortabilityPolicy.org site by drafting a lite policy for a working web site in 10 minutes or less.
- We’ll also test by drafting a full policy in 60 minutes or less. We’ll play CTO, CEO, CMO, corporate Counsel and see what we learn.
- Candidates for DataPortability Project offices (chair, vice chair, treasurer, secretary, director) will have 30 seconds to share their 2011 vision. We’ll share their remarks with the list. (as if we won’t be thoroughly tired of US politicking by November 2nd).
- We’ll report data portability news from the November 4th Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View.
- We’ll status our other projects and team action items
As always, we take time for newbies and are eager to hear about your data portability hopes and concerns.
- Come to the PariSoMa Loft from 6-8pm. 1436 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, 1-415-626-6406. See the sign on the front door and you’ll climb stairs to the third floor. Please ping me if you have accessibility concerns. Thanks to the good folks there for hosting us. Feel free to kick in a few euros to their snack fund.
- Hold 9 December 2010 for our next meetup.
- Should I add a Ustream or Justin.tv video stream so you can watch the exercises? Or a Skype multiparty video conference, you’ll need Windows for that?
- RSVP and be sure to answer the question of the month: Why would your employer’s site NOT show a data portability policy?
Bring a friend. See you there and Second Thursdays after.
Phil Wolff, skype:evanwolf?chat, pwolff@dijest.com, +1-510-316-9773
http://www.linkedin.com/in/philwolff
http://www.facebook.com/philwolff
http://twitter.com/evanwolf
http://dataportability.org
 Internet access, privacy, media diversity (@MediaDiversity), and net neutrality are on the California Democratic Party‘s 2010 platform. Why not data portability?
Internet, Free Speech and Communications
California Democrats, in order to promote vigorous free speech, a vibrant business community, and unfettered access to all information on the Internet, support policies to preserve an open, neutral and interconnected Internet.
…
To promote and support the Internet, Free Speech and Communications California Democrats will:
- Support protections against any degradation or blocking of access to any websites or content on the Internet to which access is legal and constitutionally guaranteed;
- Ensure that consumers have the right to free email and that any and all communications will be protected from warrantless search and seizure as constitutionally guaranteed;
- Encourage build-out of high speed networks to all homes and businesses so that everyone, especially rural and underserved areas, can access content of their choice and upload or download what they want on the Internet as a public utility maintained by union workers;
- Establish and secure ownership limits on private sector mass media to encourage and provide more cultural diversity, while protecting the openness, accessibility and integrity of the Internet as a public media resource for all Americans, regardless of income; and
- Protect free expression by insulating those who engage in it from criminal or civil liability, if the content of that expression is constitutionally protected. To this end we must also prohibit the enforcement in California of any judgment or other determination by any court or tribunal of any other jurisdiction, if the expressive conduct of the defendant, that is the basis for the judgment in question, would have been protected as a right of free expression, if the lawsuit had been brought in this state.
I could easily see The DataPortability Project offering boilerplate resolutions that should work for local and national platforms, any party. Something like:
To promote and support the Internet, Free Speech and Communications we will:
- Protect people’s ability to see, change, share, backup, and remove their data;
- Encourage Internet services to disclose their data portability practices for more consumer choice and freedom;
- Require every government agency to disclose their data portability practices in the spirit of transparent government;
- Support the establishment of personal information property rights in law.
New legal ideas are easier to float at the local and state level.
What else would you add?
Notes: I check the California GOP and National GOP sites and they don’t have an Internet platform.
We try to be nice. We try for upbeat and to catch everyone doing things well.
But sometimes we’re grumpy and kvetch.
The DataPortability Project launched PortabilityPolicy.org in June 2010 to encourage every site to explain their data portability practices in a data portability policy.  Project director Elias Bizannes said every site should publish a data portability policy. Balderdash! Don’t you hate generalizations?
You know a portability policy isn’t for you when:
- You’re happily a very very very late adopter. You’ll be getting a mobile phone next year.
- Your company has been nominated for an episode of Hoarders.
- Your mind boggles when customers bring you lots of fresh information about themselves.
- You haven’t updated your first privacy policy since Boyz II Men were fresh.
- You insist that your login is better than everyone else‘s login.
- Your bumper sticker says “Sharing is for Suckers.”
- None of your customers know where you store data, and that’s a good thing.
- Nobody on your own team knows where you store data.
- None of your partners can tell you where they store your customers’ data.
- You’ve never checked to see if your partners really delete your customers’ data when you tell them to.
- Your site’s visitors don’t care about their information on your site. At all.
- You don’t play well with others.
- Your business customers don’t care about the data portability you do or don’t offer them.
- Privacy shmivacy.
Full Story »
Slides to walk you through why the DataPortability Project formalized the portability policy and created PortabilityPolicy.org, launching today. It also steps you through the scope of a portability policy and gives pointers on where to start with your own. This is a 1.0 release, but it’s still a beta. You can ask more detailed questions, like these on deleting your account. The conversation continues on the PortabilityProject’s Google group or on a new list for portability policy support and work.
 Cameron Chapman explains How To Permanently Delete Your Account on Popular Websites. Perhaps your site’s Portability Policy should answer these questions:
How?
- If you don’t allow account deletion, why?
- What steps do you take to prevent someone else from deleting my account?
- What steps do you take to prevent me from deleting my account when I might regret it? (a moment of anger, intoxicated confusion, suffering from dreadful lack of coordination
- Do you distinguish between account deletion and deactivation?
- How long will it take for my account to be invisible to others?
- How long before my account is gone forever?
- If I delete my account, can others claim my username?
- If I delete my account, will I be able to use my email address to create a new account?
- What happens if I don’t have access to the email address I used to start the account?
- What can delay account closure? (For example, pending financial transactions?)
- Where is the procedure for deleting my account? What happens after I make the request?
Completeness
- Where is the list of authorized software/services that might log into my account? (So I can turn them off.)
- If you let me log into other sites with your credentials ("Sign in with your X account"), what happens to my accounts on the other sites? Where is the list of sites where I use your credentials to login?
- When you delete my profile and account, what happens to shared/community content, like my contributions to a wiki page or to a threaded conversation or gifts to another person?
- When I delete my account, do you also cancel subscriptions to any related premium services?
- Do you make downloading and saving my assets (photos, contacts, history, etc.) part of the account deletion process?
- When I delete my account, do you also delete my contributions (like videos on YouTube) or should I delete those before requesting account deletion?
- If I have money or credit balances in my account, what happens to that money when I delete my account?
- What do you do to help reduce search engine caching of and links to my deleted profile and resources?
- What do you do with my answer to "Why do you want to delete your account?"
Full Story »
The Startup Bus to SXSW Interactive 2010 is now rolling south by southeast. "12 strangers will board a bus in San Francisco. At 60 miles an hour and over 48 hours, they will conceive, build and launch 3 tech startups in time for a SXSW party in Austin." Can you bootstrap a company and squeeze in a decent portability policy? The Bus startups will try. The DataPortability Project wants to make your site’s portability policy an impulse buy but your company lawyers and designers will want more time.
My proposal:
Four steps:
- Take the Portability Policy Pledge
- Draft your portability policy
- Set up a customer conversation channel
- Post your Portability Policy Pledge on your site
1. Write Your Portability Policy Pledge
This is your promise to have a signed-off portability policy posted by a deadline. Model language:
- On behalf of THIS ORGANIZATION operating THIS SITE we promise to post a complete Portability Policy on this page by 1 July 2010. We will be terribly embarrassed if we don’t.
- Like a Privacy Policy, our Portability Policy will explain your rights, in this case your rights to access, share, synchronize, delete and backup your data with our services.
- We’ll also explain our responsibilities and how to work with us to improve your portability experience.
- We’re working with DataPortability.org to create a useful policy. Learn more HERE.
- We believe we can do more for you by responsibly sharing your data with services you trust.
- We support these Portability Principles:
- It should be easy to bring your identity, friends, files and history with you to our site.
- It should be just as easy to share them from our site with other sites.
- We should make it easy to keep your information fresh with updates.
- We will be considerate with your data when our relationship ends.
- We will be explicit and transparent about our portability practices.
- If you’d like to discuss your portability rights with us, join us in this forum HERE.
2. Draft your portability policy.
Your policy will/should go through lawyers. It’s part of you site’s Terms of Service, End User License Agreement, or whatever contract connects you with your site’s users.
This draft is what you’ll give your lawyer.
The parts:
- 2.A. Welcome to our portability policy.
- 2.B. Our disclosures
- 2.C. How to talk with us about this
- 2.D. Cautions and other limits
2.A. Welcome to our portability policy.
This document is…
You’ll explain what this document is, what it is called.
We’re writing it so…
Say the purpose, what’s inside, what’s not inside.
We hope you get out of it…
Takeaways and benefits for users who read this and when to come back and read it in more depth.
2.B. Our disclosures
This is the body of your portability policy. You’ll answer questions, grouped into five categories (Start, Sync, Access, Share, End). While the questions can be answered briefly with yes/no and multiple choice answers, it may take more time to provide the optional descriptions that explain your answers.
See the the full questionnaire and guide below.
2.C. How to talk with us about this
Learn more about data portability here…
Contact our ombudsman here…
Contact our portability alliance manager here…
Discuss with our other customers here…
2.D. Cautions and other limits
Subject to change…
Not my fault…
We only control ourselves…
We’re not perfect…
3. Start Your Customer Conversation
You’ll want a place to let customers ask data portability policy questions, for you to make announcements, conduct surveys, etc. Something like GetSatisfaction or UserVoice. You’ll link here from your portability policy page.
4. Post Your Pledge
- The default file name: portabilitypolicy.html
- Popular locations: Root. Acme.com/portabilitypolicy.html
- Link to your portability policy on every page where you link to your privacy policy. "Portability" or "Portability Policy".
- We’ll have a form for you to list your policy on the dataportability.org site.
There you go: four simple steps to a Portability Pledge.
You’ll deliver on your promise when you answer and post your the Portability Policy Questionnaire.
Start.
How well do you welcome me, my history, my friends?
1. Are your import and export APIs and formats documented?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes,where are they documented?
2. Do people need to create a new identity for this site, or can they use an existing one?
- New Identity – The person is expected to create a fresh identity that is used on this site. This site does not trust a third party to authenticate identity.
- Existing Identity – The person can register an account that is accessed using an identity authenticated by some third party. This product assumes that, by selecting a third party to authenticate their identity, the person accepts that third party as trustworthy.
- Suggested: If Existing Identity, what identity services will you support?
Sync.
How do you keep my data fresh?
3. Must people import things into this product, or can the product refer to things stored someplace else? Can this product work with objects and information whose "authoritative home" is another product, or can this product only work with things that it hosts directly?
- Must Host – In order for this product to work with a thing, it must be hosted directly.
- Can Refer – This product has the ability to access and work with things that are hosted by third parties, assuming that the third party allows this.
- Suggested: If Can Refer, what items can be stored elsewhere and under what conditions?
4. Can this site accept updates that users make on other sites? In cases where the product tracks or manages things that the person has stored on some third party product, can this product watch the third party for updates?
- One Time Import – This product only sees the remote thing at import time, and does not watch for changes.
- Watch For Updates – This product watches the third party for changes, and updates its own view of the remote thing to match.
- Suggested: If Yes, what types of items and under what conditions?
Access.
How well do you help me use and manage my information?
5. Can the person allow other sites to use the things they’ve created or updated here? Does this product provide a way for third parties to authenticate a person and read or write?
- No Access – The person must use this product to read or access whatever it manages.
- Third Parties Can Read – The person can provide the third party with authentication credentials, and can read data managed by this product.
- Third Parties Can Write – The person can provide the third party with authentication credentials, and can write data managed by this product.
- Suggested: If Yes, what technical protocols are supported and how can users manage the authority they give other sites?
6. Can the person download or remotely access a copy of everything they’ve provided to this service? As part of their standard use of most products, people import or create things. Does this product provide an open, DRM-free way for people to retrieve or access via third party all of the things they’ve created or provided?
- No Access – This product does not offer the person the ability to download the things they’ve provided.
- Remote Access – The product provides an open, DRM-free way for people to download all of the things they’ve provided to the product, or remotely access it using a third party product.
- Suggested: If Yes, how and in what forms?
7. Do you disclose where my data is being kept in the real world?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes, where can I learn where my data is kept?
8. Can I control where my data is kept in the real world?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes, how can I exercise those controls?
Share.
How well do you help me share well with others?
9. If a person updates something here, is that change stored only by this product or can the person ask this product to store it elsewhere? Can this product accept some other site as being the authoritative home of a thing it knows about?
- Must Be Authoritative – This product assumes that it is the authoritative home of all things it manages, and does not update third parties.
- Can Update Remote – This product can work with a third party that is assumed to be authoritative. All updates made by the person using this product are also forwarded to the third party.
- Suggested: If Yes, how does it work in practice?
10. Can the person download or remotely access information that others have provided to the product? In cases where the product allows download or remote access, can the person export or access all of the data to which they have access, or only data which they have directly created?
- Provider Only – This person may only export or access data which they have directly provided.
- Full Access – The person may export or download any data to which they have access on this product, subject to reasonable usage and abuse rules.
- Suggested: If Yes, how and in what forms and with what other services or protocols?
End.
How well do you support a graceful exit from our relationship?
11. Will this site delete an account and all associated data upon a user’s request? If the user creates a password or account for use with this product, does the product provide a way to cancel the account and erase all data associated with it?
- Immortal Accounts – Accounts or passwords, once created, are assumed to live for as long as the product is available. Desktop applications and other stand-alone products that do not have host services may have no way to remotely revoke accounts or passwords.
- Data Expires – If this product acts as a hub, the data it copies from other sites will expire in a set amount of time. This product must be linked to a place where it can refresh or synchronize data in order to stay current.
- Accounts Deleted Upon Request – This product has the ability to remove a person’s account and all relevant data, and will do so when requested by the person or third party with appropriate legal standing.
- Suggested: If Yes, where can I find the procedure to request deletion.
12. Do you give notice before terminating the account?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes, how much notice do you give and in what forms?
13. Can you recover a terminated account?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes, how thoroughly, under what conditions, how quickly, and how is recovery triggered?
14. Do you have a posted appeals process or dispute resolution procedure?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes, where are the procedures posted?
###
As you fill this out:
- Would you have designed your service differently if you read the Portability Pledge beforehand?
- Do you really need the pledge or are you ready to write a full portability policy before Austin?
tags: dataportabilityproject, dpp, portabilitypolicy, portabilitypledge, pledge, policy, sxsw, sxswi, roadtrip, promise
Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
I sat down with the DataPortability Project‘s Elias Bizannes a few months ago to organize the elements of a model portability policy. Your site’s portability policy will be part of your Terms of Service or End User License Agreement. Your portability policy should help your sites and services communicate the data portability parts of your relationship with the people who use them and your business partners.
I’m heading down to an all day privacy forum co-hosted by Lauren Gelman and Mozilla this morning to discuss what browsers might do with a "privacy" icon.
The Clusters
We clustered portability policy questions into five stacks: Start, Sync, Access, Share, and End. I sketched five icons:
I cleaned them up a bit, but they are still rough:
Between the five, you’ll see questions about the lifecycle of your relationship with a site, from its start to its finish. You’ll also see questions about the power to manage your portability through interoperability.
The questions
We mapped these questions for your portability policy to the icons.
The questions can be answered by choosing Yes/No or from a short multiple choice list. Policy explanations, links, and actionable information are optional.
These questions are the work of the DataPortability Projects ToS/EULA Working Group over 2008 and 2009.
Start.
How well do you welcome me, my history, my friends?
Are your import and export APIs and formats documented?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes,where are they documented?
Do people need to create a new identity for this site, or can they use an existing one?
- New Identity – The person is expected to create a fresh identity that is used on this site. This site does not trust a third party to authenticate identity.
- Existing Identity – The person can register an account that is accessed using an identity authenticated by some third party. This product assumes that, by selecting a third party to authenticate their identity, the person accepts that third party as trustworthy.
- Suggested: If Existing Identity, what identity services will you support?
Sync.
How do you keep my data fresh?
Must people import things into this product, or can the product refer to things stored someplace else? Can this product work with objects and information whose "authoritative home" is another product, or can this product only work with things that it hosts directly?
- Must Host – In order for this product to work with a thing, it must be hosted directly.
- Can Refer – This product has the ability to access and work with things that are hosted by third parties, assuming that the third party allows this.
- Suggested: If Can Refer, what items can be stored elsewhere and under what conditions?
Can this site accept updates that users make on other sites? In cases where the product tracks or manages things that the person has stored on some third party product, can this product watch the third party for updates?
- One Time Import – This product only sees the remote thing at import time, and does not watch for changes.
- Watch For Updates – This product watches the third party for changes, and updates its own view of the remote thing to match.
- Suggested: If Yes, what types of items and under what conditions?
Access.
How well do you help me use and manage my information?
Can the person allow other sites to use the things they’ve created or updated here? Does this product provide a way for third parties to authenticate a person and read or write?
- No Access – The person must use this product to read or access whatever it manages.
- Third Parties Can Read – The person can provide the third party with authentication credentials, and can read data managed by this product.
- Third Parties Can Write – The person can provide the third party with authentication credentials, and can write data managed by this product.
- Suggested: If Yes, what technical protocols are supported and how can users manage the authority they give other sites?
Can the person download or remotely access a copy of everything they’ve provided to this service? As part of their standard use of most products, people import or create things. Does this product provide an open, DRM-free way for people to retrieve or access via third party all of the things they’ve created or provided?
- No Access – This product does not offer the person the ability to download the things they’ve provided.
- Remote Access – The product provides an open, DRM-free way for people to download all of the things they’ve provided to the product, or remotely access it using a third party product.
- Suggested: If Yes, how and in what forms?
Do you disclose where my data is being kept in the real world?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes, where can I learn where my data is kept?
Can I control where my data is kept in the real world?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes, how can I exercise those controls?
Share.
How well do you help me share well with others?
If person updates something here, is that change stored only by this product or can the person ask this product to store it elsewhere? Can this product accept some other site as being the authoritative home of a thing it knows about?
- Must Be Authoritative – This product assumes that it is the authoritative home of all things it manages, and does not update third parties.
- Can Update Remote – This product can work with a third party that is assumed to be authoritative. All updates made by the person using this product are also forwarded to the third party.
- Suggested: If Yes, how does it work in practice?
Can the person download or remotely access information that others have provided to the product? In cases where the product allows download or remote access, can the person export or access all of the data to which they have access, or only data which they have directly created?
- Provider Only – This person may only export or access data which they have directly provided.
- Full Access – The person may export or download any data to which they have access on this product, subject to reasonable usage and abuse rules.
- Suggested: If Yes, how and in what forms and with what other services or protocols?
End.
How well do you support a graceful exit from our relationship?
Will this site delete an account and all associated data upon a user’s request? If the user creates a password or account for use with this product, does the product provide a way to cancel the account and erase all data associated with it?
- Immortal Accounts – Accounts or passwords, once created, are assumed to live for as long as the product is available. Desktop applications and other stand-alone products that do not have host services may have no way to remotely revoke accounts or passwords.
- Data Expires – If this product acts as a hub, the data it copies from other sites will expire in a set amount of time. This product must be linked to a place where it can refresh or synchronize data in order to stay current.
- Accounts Deleted Upon Request – This product has the ability to remove a person’s account and all relevant data, and will do so when requested by the person or third party with appropriate legal standing.
- Suggested: If Yes, where can I find the procedure to request deletion.
Do you give notice before terminating the account?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes, how much notice do you give and in what forms?
Can you recover a terminated account?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes, how thoroughly, under what conditions, how quickly, and how is recovery triggered?
Do you have a posted appeals process or dispute resolution procedure?
- Yes
- No
- Suggested: If Yes, where are the procedures posted?
Going Forward.
The questions and the clusters are works in progress. We’re open to better questions, clusters, and definitely better labels and designs. These are just placeholders for better, official art.
I hope they serve a few common goals.
- Make it easier to learn and understand the overall scope of a portability policy.
- Make it easier to find the parts of a policy you care about.
- Provide the visual part of semantic encoding that browsers and search engines can use to discover and understand where and what a site’s policies are stored.
Things to do with the icons:
- Confirm the policy asks the right questions
- Prioritize and boil down for the Goldilocks Test: Not too much, not too little, just right
- Design an icon for the whole portability policy
- Design UI/UX behavior for what happens when you click on the portability policy icon
- Make the icons work better everywhere (cultures, visual impairments, sizes) and vet for semiotic conflict and mark infringement
- Semantic encoding (microformats, anyone?) that works across access methods
- Write the legal layer, creating plain language boilerplate that works for the business, for their lawyers, for site partners, and for users. Vary for world legal systems. Translate.
Join DataPortability.org’s general mailing list to help or the low-volume announcements only mailing list for updates.
tags: dataportability, dataportabilityproject, dpp, icons, icon, portability, policy, portabilitypolicy
Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
 We try to be good to one another. Sometimes it’s just about power.
The Associated Press newswire told search engines to pay for showing stories, or to stop showing them. [Ironic link above: AP story hosted on Google.] How quickly would AP enter bankruptcy if none of their stories showed up in Google News or search results?
Google’s playing nice. They can, because they have the power in this relationship.
Yahoo! will kill Geocities later this month (26 October 2009). Millions of web sites, stores, online communities, blogs will vanish, along with their google juice. Geocities is a chunk of history for some, an online home for others. Yahoo! gave six months warning in its eviction notice. Yahoo! will move you to their paid hosting service.
Yahoo! holds the power over Geocitizens in this landlord-tenant relationship. [Kudos to The Archive Team and the Internet Archive for trying to back up Geocities.]
AT&T blocked wireless access to VoIP on the iPhone for two years. Just to see what Skype and Google would do. They had power over Apple before the first iPhone launched. Less so now that Apple is a worldwide success.
Renters get power over landlords from their contract and from their government’s landlord-tenant laws. Those laws rebalance power, create some process for notice and appeal, and define penalties for abusing process or power.
Skype is in the middle of a network of alliances, partnerships, antagonists, and dependencies. While some relationships are defined by market forces, many are driven by the struggle for industry and government power. Skype steps lightly. For every Skype government affairs person, the telecom industry has thousands. For every euro Skype spends on publicity and advertising to influence the public and regulators, the telecoms spend thousands. Skype is deft and agile, a guerilla going up against vested interests, avoiding brute force confrontations they could lose.
Meanwhile Skype earned its own power. Skype spent six years defining a global brand people love and trust. Skype quietly framed regulatory issues in Brussels and Washington placing Skype on the side of democracy and freedom. Skype proved its legitimacy as a profitable business (although still a rounding error in AT&T’s 2009q2 Net Operating Cash Flow of $15.8 billion) and a competitor (8% of international minutes).
Skype is investing in its power. Geek cred will come if its Skype as a Platform service is successful. Skype is spreading its political attention to smaller governments. Skype has new PR, advertising, marketing partners to reinvigorate Skype’s brand for what the company will become. Skype is building products to diversify its business model and create new sources of income.
Skype is approaching a half-billion users. Skype will no doubt be a US$2 billion a year company by 2013. Skype will sit at the table with Internet and telecom giants.
So I’m left with an incomplete thought.
Will Skype be as tender with its power as Google? Will Skype be as courteous as Yahoo! with trusting customers? Will Skype abuse market power through partnerships as AT&T?
Winston Churchill said the price of greatness is responsibility. What in Skype’s cultural DNA says do no evil?
 The SXSW 2010 PanelPicker is up. You can vote for seven data portability talks (including mine) to be in the Interactive conference’s program before 11:59 pm Central Standard Time on Friday, September 4. Vote for Me!
 Ubiquity: The Future of Tech and What We Can Do Now (Elias Bizannes, DataPortability Project). Internet + cloud computing + information + everywhere anytime anyway = ? Welcome to our new world of Ubiquity. Run by one of the founders of the DataPortability Project, this session will look at the longer-term trends in tech and what we can do now to innovate and accelerate this change. Business / Entrepreneurial / Monetization, Cloud Storage / Delivery, Economic Concerns, History of Technology, New Technology / Next Generation
Data Rights 2.0: the World Beyond Privacy (Gil Silberman, peerFluence, Inc.). Web 2.0 is about the interpersonal: friends, actions, expression. Who owns this space? What are the rules and norms? We’ll review multi-party data rights like security, disclosure, portability, and informed consent, then gives some concrete advice on what interactive companies need to do to avoid trouble, and build trust. Business / Entrepreneurial / Monetization, Community / Online Community, Social Networking
Data Portability for Multiple Identities (Andrea Hill, Independent)Sometimes you don’t want them to know your name.. Roller derby skaters adopt alter egos. Those with serious health conditions may wish for discretion in their online activities. Who is responsible for ensuring an individual’s privacy, and what is lost by choosing not to share personal information? Cloud Storage / Delivery, Community / Online Community, Digital Distribution, Government and Technology, Social Issues
Discovery Identity: API’s of the Semantic Web (Glenn Jones, Madgex) Without much conscious thought, most of us have built identities across the web. We fill in profiles, upload photos, videos, reviews and bookmarks. This session will explore the practical use of Social Graph API and YQL to build new types of user experience combining identity discovery and data portability. Back-End Programming / Databases, Front-End Programming, New Technology / Next Generation, Social Networking
The 5W’s of Data Portability (Dave Morin, Facebook) With the advent of Web 2.0 came a new readable, writable Web. This user-driven Internet calls for control of identity, connections and usability. This panel will discuss how to leverage this new direction with identity providers such as Facebook Connect – including the successes, failures and learnings of the technologies. Accessibility / Web Standards, Case Study, Digital Distribution, New Technology / Next Generation, User Experience
Let My Data Go! Portability Freedoms and Revolution (Phil Wolff, Skype Journal) Want the freedom to move from site to site, bringing your online information, experiences, and friends with you? Instead sites lock us up and evict us. We’ve had privacy policies for ten years. Where is our Portability Policy? Where is our portability? What can we do now? Community / Online Community, Government and Technology, Licensing / Fair Use / Copyright, New Technology / Next Generation, Social Issues
Cloud Portability: A Standard for Using Cloud Resources (Alex Polvi, Cloudkick) This talk will discuss the on going effort to standardize the interfaces into the cloud. Currently every cloud provider has a unique, proprietary, API for consuming the services they offer. The cloud computing interoperability movement aims to provide standards that will overcome vendor lock-in, benefit the consumers, and allow the cloud ecosystem to grow transparently. Accessibility / Web Standards, Information Architecture, Open Source
tags: dataportability, portability, dpp, austin, texas, sxsw, southbysouthwest, southby
Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
Caveat Lector: this is a rough draft of my thinking on what a Portability EULA/TOS should say/do/include. Please comment. – Phil
"Hey, hey, hey, hey-now. Don’t be mean; we don’t have to be mean, cuz, remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
Buckaroo Banzai from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
Across the 8th Dimension (1984)
So you start your data portability relationship with Open Arms, end it with a Graceful Exit. What happens in between? What are our portability concerns during our relationship?
Ever Fresh is a combination of policy and technology.
The policy says:
We will consume and share your onlife with other services. So everywhere you go, you have all of yourself, as appropriate. As we change, we’ll let you know.
Breaking it down…
We will consume and share. "Consuming" is a software syndication term. It brings data by/about/for you into a system. Sharing flips the direction, data by/about/for you moving out of the system. Synchronization systems (sync or synch for short) compare the data they have with data others have, find the "best" version of that data, and update each other. Synch services keep your experiences up-to-date using the freshest, most trusted versions of your data.
Your onlife. Shorthand for everything digital created by your behavior. Your IDs, your profiles, your stuff (like photos and messages), and collective works you’ve created with others (like annotated photos or a wiki page).
Your onlife isn’t just what happens at one web site. It’s what happens with your mobile phone. It’s your email, your browsing, the documents you create, the videos you shoot, the IMs and texts you send. It’s you and your stuff and the stuff you make with others.
Other services. Here we come to portability. This site, the one with the portability policy, will consume and share your onlife (data you make explicitly, data you make with others, data others make about you) with other services.
- Enumeration. Which ones? Is this site going to disclose to you a list of those sites before sharing? After the fact? When will they get your permission and when won’t they?
- Transitivity. Will they agree to these same portability and privacy terms of service?
- Jurisdiction. Are they covered by the same laws as you and this site?
- Agency for Enforcement. What steps will this site take with partners to enforce side agreements? Will they always act on your behalf? When won’t they?
- Remedies for Breaches. What steps will this site take on your behalf to fix breaches by partners?
Let’s look at two examples of data passed through a third party.
Case 1: Flickr, part of a US company, shares your photos with Moo, a UK company, so Moo can print your flickr photos on business cards. Moo, in turn, shares your home address with several shipping companies.
- What should your Portability Policy say about this?
- What should Flickr demand of Moo on your behalf?
- What information should Moo require of Flickr before or upon receipt of your data? How would Moo know Flickr had done a complete and thorough job? What risks does Moo
- What should Flickr demand Moo demand the shipping companies do with your data, especially when Flickr may not know anything about Moo’s other partners (printing in Mexico for Canadian customers)?
Case 2: Skype, a Luxembourg subsidiary of a US company, partners with MySpace, a US subsidiary of a company, to integrate MySpaceIM instant messaging and voice calling with Skype’s instant messaging and voice calling. Skype shares personal profiles with another company for directory services, including my birthdate and where I live. Skype is sharing my IP address to help connect calls and status updates.
My email address and birth date are sensitive data, useful in identity theft. So I have a stake in knowing with whom and where Skype shares that data.
Everywhere you go. Dataportability is device, connection, and location agnostic. This service’s portability of your stuff should apply to all the sites, software, and devices you use. You may have web browsers on multiple computers and your phone. You may talk on your mobile, your desk phone, your MySpace IM or your Skype. Your experience should be seamless across systems. When this service is unable or unwilling to port your data, they should say so and say why.
All of yourself. It’s tough being incomplete. So where you produce data, we’ll manage as much as we can.
- Your browser or operating system could make your bookmarks, browsing history, saved passwords and tabs available across devices.
- Your communication tools could share your address book, contacts, conversation history, contact groupings and metadata, things shared.
- Your medical services could assure your records of care, diagnosis, treatment, prescriptions, imaging are available where, when and as you need them.
As appropriate. You are too much for any one site. So, while a site may agree to take and share "all of you," it wont’ know what to do with everything outside its scope. Photo comments on flickr aren’t the same as your restaurant reviews on Yelp. While Monster might build a team-job search for you using some of your LinkedIn friends, Monster doesn’t need your IMDB movie ratings. So sites will take what they can use on your behalf and ignore the rest.
As we change. We change our policies and behavior all the time. We modify our terms of service, our license agreement with you, our privacy policies, agreements with third-party developers who may have access to data by/about/for your, and this portability policy. These contract revisions, these changes in what we promise and what we expect, adapt us to changing situations. We acknowledge your stake in those changes.
We’ll let you know. Since you have a stake, we’ll give you meaningful notice of changes, notify you through the channels you prefer, help you separate changes with small impact from those with large ones, and ask you to opt-in when the changes are substantial.
Ever Fresh: We will consume and share your onlife with other services. So everywhere you go, you have all of yourself, as appropriate. As we change, we’ll let you know.
See also:
Original photo credit: backpackphotography. Photoshopped version.
Caveat Lector: this is a rough draft of my thinking on what a Portability EULA /TOS should say/do/include. Please comment. – Phil
We’ve discussed Graceful Exit, the ability for people to control their departure from a site or service.
Open Arms starts at the beginning of your relationship with a service. Let’s summarize it, break it apart, and explain why this is a powerful way to do business.
Open Arms is a combination of policy and technology.
The policy says:
When you come to our site,
bring all of yourself.
We’ll help you put it to use
in our context.
We’ll make it easy to come.
We’ll keep it safe.
We’ll respect ownership as you see it.
What you add while you are here
will join your collection
and be portable in turn.
The elements.
All of yourself.
Bring your identity, your contacts, your history with your contacts, your photos and videos, your playlists, everything digital.
We’ll ignore what we cannot use.
Put it to use in our context.
Every site has a context.
- Things it does
- Purposes people share
- Community standards of behavior.
For example:
- Monster brings work and workers together.
- Flickr helps people manage what comes out of their cameras.
- YouTube is a community of video.
- QuickBooks helps you manage your business.
- Chemistry helps you find true love.
- Amazon and eBay bring buyers and sellers together.
We need your data. These sites could help you do more and do it smarter with more and fresher and truer information from you. Monster could create team job search features if it knew your social graph. Chemistry could be more accurate if it had your music and video playlists.
Our sites are verbs. We do things. The more data you bring, the richer the data, the fresher and more standardized the data, the more we can do, the more creative we can be.
Most people don’t try new sites because it’s hard to recreate data. Especially for every site you visit.
Easy.
So for Open Arms to work, bringing your onlife to each site you join must be fast, simple, easy, and obvious. And correct.
Safe.
We will protect everything you share. We will protect it from damage, theft, natural disaster, financial ruin, legal physical threats, from legal threats, from Martian invasion. As best we can. And we’ll explain the threats we perceive and how we’re protecting you and your onlife from them.
Ownership as you see it.
"Ownership" is a tricky word: it means one thing to lawyers, something else to most people. Our online and mobile social experiences are a little ahead of the law. So all we can do is try to the right thing for you and for all of our guests.
We’ll respect that your stuff is only "mostly" yours and that you may not have permission to share them with strangers. You may not have permission from the subject of a photo, or their parents. You may have clipped a blog post to share under fair use, but not for general distribution. You may have a confidential email that could endanger lives if leaked.
We will assume everything you bring is private to you and that you will tell us what can be shared, with whom, and under what conditions.
We’ll make it easy for you to re-use your choices, so you don’t have to explain yourself everywhere you go.
Portable in turn
Reciprocity works. So we’re going to share with other sites the part of your onlife you spend with us, as you see fit. So you never feel we’re holding your data hostage.
What’s next?
So, we’ve "Open Arms" at the start of our relationship and "Graceful Exit" at the end. Next up "Ever Fresh" in between.
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