"Fair" is in the eye of the beholder. I agree that there may be incredible inefficiencies in applying millenia-old rules of property to the decades-old internet. Yes, we currently lack a sizable competitor to FB or Twitter and until such a time, they are the market leaders. I personally don't like all the things people give up when they sign the Apple "Privacy" policy.
However, nobody is FORCING ANYONE to use FB or Twitter or Apple. And I suspect over time, just like in your Wal-Mart example where customers would likely flee to competitors, a viable competitor to FB and Twitter WILL emerge. Indeed, remember Netscape and Altavista and the Betamax?
The key to this process is to avoid government meddling. The private sector is best at sorting out these things..it may not be fast enough for many of us, but it's preferable to Leviathan. Throwing away the irreducible primary of "it's mine and I can do what I want with it" because of the Internet is something I'm not willing to embrace, nor do I suspect are you. Where we seemingly disagree is the threat potential while we wait, and the extent to which government can move things along. Perhaps I am naive in my thinking, but it's worked for me (and scores of others) over thousands of years. Thanks for listening.
>>Perhaps I am naive in my thinking, but it’s worked for me (and scores of others) over thousands of years.
I am not disputing thousands of years of physical property rights. I am talking about something that is uniquely 21st century at this point in human history. “Fair” is not just in the eye of the beholder. “Fair use” is a real thing in law. the lines over property blur as I put my intellectual property up on someone else’s intellectual property and both are hosted on someone else’s physical property which operates on someone else’s intellectual property. By the property rights of the past, the owner of the server now owns it all.
But, IP rights have protected the OS owner’s rights. It protects the service owner’s rights. But it has not evolved enough to protect the individual IP rights of the poster. Using the old property rights of physical property, the rights of the individual in cyberspace are nil. Is that freedom to you? Especially now that it is finally possible to have a conversation with literally anyone anywhere and to make your own voice heard! You would nail that capability to the old concepts of rights that determines who owns the strip of ground where a fence sits??
Yes, everyone can opt out of cyberspace.
But, no they can’t. It is a part of our lives now. People in third world countries who can’t figure out how to drill a water well get cell phones and join the global hive mind. You cheapen your argument by simply saying that, “If you don’t like your IP being owned by the guy who has the keys to the server, then you should unplug your life from the world around you.”