Anglo-Saxon Economic Ownership and Global Database Control

 

Should the sacred Anglo-Saxon ‘economic ownership’ take global control over databases? 

 

The concept of ‘economic ownership’ remained for a long time outside of the attention of French law and classical continental law in general. ‘Economic ownership’ is an Anglo-Saxon term. The following idea is at the basis of the Anglo-Saxon legal system: public life must be examined exclusively as a system of commercial relations. 

 

 

If we return to the question of the essence of ‘politics’, we will be able to conclude that politics should above all organise the life of the City, a life that is not reducible to commerce alone. Commerce is part of the life of the City; however, its life does not limit itself exclusively to trade. 

 

If we are to return to the question of ‘economic property’, we will find that its definition is the following: some ‘person’ (in a physical or nominal sense) has a property right to a thing; the owner either financially invests in some good, or he or she uses the object. According to this conception, the nominal owner of the good cedes his material prerogatives on this good if he does not finance it by himself or is not personally using it. To put it generally, we can draw the conclusion that he who implements the ‘usus’  and ‘fructus’ towards the good de facto owns the ‘abusus’ as well [1].

 

On the other hand, in classical continental law usus, fructus, and abusus are prerogatives that belong to the nominal owner of the good; it is not important whether he financed the good via a loan, neither if he uses the good personally or no. The gap between the classical conception of property law (in continental law) and the Anglo-Saxon conception of that right is extraordinarily large. 

 

According to the principle of ‘economic property’, the rights to a good will belong exclusively to those persons or organisations who finance the goods, i.e. mainly banks and other financial organisations; when persons or organisations use the goods, the former dematerialise. 

Organisations who can use ‘economic property’ own the data they put out, but are not necessarily responsible for this data. 

 

Among the organisations who control and/or transmit data are Google, Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest. Consequently, it is precisely they who are mainly interested in the ‘economic property’ of the data they transmit. In return, these organisations are not judicially responsible (with the rare exception) for the contents of this data. 

 

Therefore, organisations like Swift that do not want to take legal responsibility for bank details about orders, the transmission and security of which they guarantee [2], are nonetheless the ‘economic owners’ of the data that are transmitted through their channels. 

 

In precisely the same way, recipient banks of personal data [3], and, in general, all organisations that collect or through whom personal data passes [4] are the ‘economic owners’ of those data (both metadata and classical personal data).  

 

All of these collectors and users of data are, in accordance with the principle of ‘economic ownership’, the owners of the data, but do not necessarily take responsibility for them. Here, we find the appearance of a legal discrepancy between power and responsibility when the power over an object or good does not presuppose necessary judicial responsibility for that object or good. The slogan goes like this: “everybody is an owner, but nobody is responsible for the contents!”.

 

From a methodological point of view, we can only conclude that the asymmetry between power and responsibility is only encountered in the same way in banks, especially in systematically important banks in relation to their customers. As a result, this asymmetry (whether it pertains to information or responsibility) is the key to a large fortune. Without informational asymmetry, competition is impossible, and, consequently, there would be no capitalist mechanisms. We remember the story when it was precisely information asymmetry that secured the Rothschild fortune during the Battle of Waterloo: he scraped his wealth together on the back of disinformation at the time when it was only the banker who knew who he was secretly betting on. It is also precisely on informational asymmetry, alongside purely technical capabilities of speed, that the algorithms used in High Frequency Trading are based on. Information asymmetry and a bad dishonesty go hand in hand, all with the final goal of grabbing wealth and remaining free of any suspicion. 

 

The result of economic ownership is a concentration of powerful prerogatives and the development of artificial intelligence programmes. 

The first and fundamental effect of the use of ‘economic property’ is the transfer of the ‘rights’ of average private persons or ventures to, on the one hand, stronger capitalists and purveyors of massive credit and, on the other hand, transnational organisations, ventures, and other institutions (foundations, associations, non-governmental organisations) capable of managing and using enormous masses of private data. 

It is self-evident, that all these dematerialised data that contain an enormous amount of information on the way of life of people from every country and every region of the world will later be transferred to organisations with an interest in their application, i.e. organisations that work on artificial intelligence. 

 

 

Here we, clearly, are fighting for a return to traditional continental law which puts the principle of common sense first, according to which trade is subjugated to the rule of law, which itself represents and defends common interests (with the exception of individual interests of transnational corporations). 

 

Is it reasonable that governments systematically try to (under the false cover of standardisation) apply the principles of Anglo-Saxon law on issues of judicial organisation? 

 

The necessity to demand an end to the principle of ‘economic ownership’ and to fight for the return of the judicial independence of states in relation to Anglo-Saxon doctrines that claim to be universal is long overdue. 

 

It is unacceptable that sovereign states cannot strike against enterprises (even if they are transnational) in their local jurisdictions, all the more when we consider that these states have the authority to manage and organise. It is also unacceptable that the principle of ‘ownership’ in general has lost its meaning, has come to mean the disappearance of ownership, and has transformed into asset seizure with a legal basis. It is clear, that this is an attempt against the sovereignty of states as political structures. 

 

Infringement on sovereignty is manifesting in the area of finance, seeing as transnational corporations (especially in the states on whose territory they operate) demand rules that are dictated by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to be followed, even when this is supported by private entrepreneurs and even when income that is protected by this kind of regulation cannot be seen as a guarantee of the common order or common good, but is rather built on private interest that generates it. The IASB, whose headquarters are (unsurprisingly) located in London, is protected by the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation (IFRS), an organisation that was founded in 2011 in Delaware. It is the chief financial heaven on earth: a non-commercial organisation that works for the “common good” of its members, who are the biggest holders of world capital. The IRFS consists of administrators, protectors , who control the IASB and its affiliate branches. 

 

The reform of January 2009 , which consisted of the integration of the integration of a supervisory board of state organs should not be an illusion: taking into account that a large part of current governments is directly dependent on “economic phenomena” and is not representing social interests at all, which are also called the “common good”. The concept of the “state” itself is without value today, it has been destroyed by the enormous power of the biggest capital owners that they have unnoticeably and effectively applied to all government structures.

 

This political coup d’etat was executed under the cover of several principles: the anonimisation of capital, the hierarchic structure of society, control over money and centralised rule, the global organisation of the free flow of capital, and the principle of ‘economic ownership’.

 

 

[1]Usus: the capacity to determine the right to use, fructus: the capacity to receive fruit, and abusus: the capacity to materially and judicially dispose of an objects  (Lat. usus: use, Lat. fructus: income)

[2] cf. Jean-Loup Izambert Pourquoi la crise, 2009, page 149 ↩

[3]  For a Russian example, see: http://soborjane.ru/2017/12/21/20-dekabrja-prinjat-antikonstitucionnyj-zakonoproekt-№-157752-7-o-biometricheskoj-identifikacii ↩

[4]  For example, the Echelon programmes : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon ; or Prism http://www.clubic.com/pro/it-business/securite-et-donnees/actualite-568700-prism-revelations-guardian-keith-alexander.html ; https://www.silicon.fr/collecte-de-donnees-renseignement-francais-nsa-91106.html?inf_by=5a6205be681db82e488b45c7 ↩