By that reasoning, if a file containing bank passwords leaks, its value is "zero" despite the fact that somebody can now go in and steal from all those accounts with ease.

Experian has created a massive liability for all the individuals in the leaked data pool. The amount of damage this leak does to innocent people is staggering.

Then Facebook should have no problem deleting their worthless databases. I'll wait while you explain it to them.

There is a lot of case law regarding digital media, such as movies, tv, books, etc, stating that the digital version doesn't lose value despite the ease of copying it.

It's an interesting conundrum that "big business" claims that personal data being copied doesn't necessarily have value, but entertaining data does.

It all makes sense if you accept that the purpose of modern intellectual property law is to protect the wealth of the rich from the people they exploited to get rich in the first place.

I didn’t consent to have my passwords or SSN leaked though, so your argument is naive at best, idiotic at worst.

I never consented to a credit scoring company to ever have my data. The first time I found out this was a thing as a teenager really made me think about the world and how it works. I couldn't believe something like this existed.

I believe it's part of the fine print when opening a credit account like a credit card, so I imagine you consented whether you were aware or not.

You couldn’t believe that lenders have a system that helps them classify borrowers into different risk pools? Why is that hard to believe.

You consented to have your data reported to the credit reporting agencies when you applied for credit. You may not have been aware of it, but you did.

Coerced consent is not consent.

It is not possible to function fully in most western societies without access to banking services and payment cards. "Consent" to share financial data with credit rating services is consent extracted under duress. Most people have no other choice but to apply for bank accounts and credit accounts unless they are able to live off-grid.

If a robber points a gun at someone and tells them to hand over their wallet, the fact that they had a choice between cooperating and being shot does not mean that cooperation is a consensual act. The existence of an even worse alternative to an unwanted compelled act does not make the compelled act consensual.

It also should not be overlooked that the US financial credit reporting system functions as a Chinese-style Sesame Credit social credit reporting system in practice. Credit reporting agencies harvest non-financial data to evaluate individual behaviors and credit scores are widely used to control access to employment and housing. This amounts to a human rights violation to which no one can meaningfully consent regardless of its formal legality.

> Coerced consent is not consent.

It's not coercion or duress simply because the alternative is less desirable. That's hyperbole. And, actually, plenty of people make do without banking services; it's why Payday lenders do so well.

The system might suck and be inequitable--more so than many other systems (no system can be perfectly equitable). And by all means promote legislation to change things. But tossing around words like coercion and duress contributes to the radicalization of politics in a very unhelpful manner. And those words aren't typically the words those stuck with payday lending services would choose, FWIW, even though they're often in objectively much dire financial straits and often couldn't opt-in (literally or at least without worse expense) to the system even if they wanted to.

I beg to differ. I know for a fact that this is an unspoken truth of that industry. As a contractor I've been unfortunate enough to be in the room when words that only get spoken behind closed doors were uttered. The people involved are parasites with a lack of empathy.

Banks do not report checking account history to the credit bureaus. You can function fully with a checking account and debit card. You can get by using money orders and cash, millions of people in the US do.

If you borrow money, you agree to certain terms, one of which is reporting to the credit bureaus. Nobody is forced at gunpoint to borrow money. There is no coercion and no duress.

The system is not fair, I’ll concede to that.

It's essentially impossible to rent a car, book a hotel room, or do most online shopping, without a credit card. Debit and pre-paid visa/mc cards don't work for this.

If you want to live a normal life, you have to be able to borrow money in the form of having a credit card.

I never even applied for credit. I had to get the report to rent an apartment.

You consented by doing the credit check to apply for the apartment. Did you sign anything? Did you read what you signed?

Every place I’ve ever rented has been without a credit check, so it’s possible to get around that.

It was in the UK so maybe it's different in the US. There is no consent when the other option is homelessness. This is such an absurd conversation. Full on Stockholm syndrome. None of this is ok even though it is the de facto standard.

That’s a strange definition of consent.

I think it could be more precisely defined as: the value of any copiable and spreadable asset is inverse proportional to the amount of available copies

>Data is a copyable asset. Most other assets are not.

The consent to have that data is not copyable though.