On data ownership, again

When I went through the identity verification process for a Cyworld account, I didn’t think much of it. But the recent news about Google and S. Korean laws (WSJ and RRW coverage — oddly, NYT coverage seems to have disappeared) got me thinking about that and also about what I wrote on data ownership. The problem seems to be one of dual standards: revealing some information (true identity) is potential leverage for suppressing other information or opinion. I still think that what I argued for before, which is essentially a single standard (everything open, including what governments do) is right in principle, but I’m less sure about how it can be practically implemented to avoid misuse.