From Data Rights to Data Reality

Abstract + Keywords

Quick overview for readers scanning the paper.

This paper proposes a Personal Data Asset Origination System (PDAOS) as the missing operational layer between personal data rights and practical personal data control.

Rather than requiring individuals to centralize data in a Personal Data Store, a PDAOS starts from real-world fragmentation and uses evidence-backed attribution, conservative confidence thresholds, and scoped asset instantiation to create a portable, auditable ownership record.

MyDataKey is presented as the first PDAOS: a system that turns data presence into originated claim-objects that can support documentation, statutory rights requests (e.g., access/deletion), and collective governance mechanisms — while remaining non-confrontational by default and privacy-minimizing by design.

Executive Summary: The Settlement Layer for Human Data

Turning rights into machine-readable reality: origination first, settlement second.

Today’s data rights operate like analogue rules in a high-frequency digital environment. Frameworks such as portability, consent, privacy-by-design, and shared governance have advanced the conversation — yet most individuals still cannot:

• Prove where their data appears
• Document attribution
• Carry an auditable record across platforms, brokers, and AI pipelines

The Three Claims

• Ownership requires origination: “Ownership” remains theoretical until there is a defensible origination moment that produces a portable record (scope + provenance + confidence).
• Storage is not control: Centralizing data in a vault (PDS) can help in some exchanges, but it does not solve attribution, standing, or cross-context enforceability — and it can create honeypots.
• Operationalizing “teeth” is optional, but essential: Once origination exists, the record can be used to trigger statutory rights workflows (e.g., access/deletion) and support settlement pathways such as Notice of Origination and machine-readable posture checks.

The Personal Data Problem

Data creates value. Ownership is rarely transferred. Individuals lack standing.

Individuals generate, reveal, and co-create personal data across platforms, services, devices, and intermediaries. Value is created continuously — often through inference and aggregation — while individuals are left with limited visibility and weak practical control.

The core problem is not only privacy. It is also the absence of an operational way for an individual to establish standing across contexts:

• Where does data attributable to me appear?
• What evidence links it to me (and at what confidence)?
• When does it become a discrete asset that can be referenced, documented, and carried?
• How can collective models rely on verified participation rather than assumptions?

Many existing approaches respond by (a) building new storage models, or (b) framing shared governance and rights. Both are useful — but neither reliably provides the missing operational substrate: origination.

Engaging MyData: Beyond Ownership & Shared Interests

Respecting MyData’s vision while identifying the practical gap MyDataKey resolves.

The MyData Global community has shaped the modern personal data landscape through human-centric principles, trust frameworks, and thought leadership.

In “MyData in Motion: Evolving Empowerment for 2025 and beyond”, MyData emphasizes that empowerment should extend beyond narrow data ownership toward shared rights and collective interests.^[1][2]

This is valid — and essential. But it also reveals a structural challenge: shared rights frameworks require an operational way to establish standing.

MyDataKey does not compete with the MyData vision. It provides a missing infrastructure layer that makes shared governance feasible: verifiable ownership origination where theory becomes reality.

Defining PDAOS

Personal Data Asset Origination System: the missing layer in data sovereignty.

Why Origination Matters

In mature value systems, origination exists: property titles are recorded; securities are issued; IP is fixed or registered. Personal data has lacked an equivalent origination mechanism. “Ownership” cannot scale without that moment of asset formation.

Why Personal Data Stores Are Not Required

Storage can help, but storage is not origination.

Key distinction: You can use both together — but PDAOS does not require PDS to function.

MyDataKey as the First Operational PDAOS

Where the sky meets the ocean: evidence → assets → ownership record.

The Four-Phase Architecture

PDAOS lives in Phase 3: after attribution confidence exceeds threshold, the system instantiates scoped assets with provenance and a portable record — the origination moment.

One-Page Visual: PDAOS Architecture

From distributed reality to optional futures — without centralization.

Architecture & Methodology

Conservative verification, confidence bands, and evidence capture.

8.1 Conservative, User-Anchored Attribution

• Anchors: user handles, domains, user-supplied URLs
• Evidence snapshots: URLs, timestamps, redactions, and snapshot hashes
• Confidence scoring: thresholds that gate actions to prevent over-claiming

8.2 The Clearinghouse Protocol

The “Check-in” Workflow:

1. Platform hashes a candidate datum locally
2. Platform queries Clearinghouse: “Any originated claim for Hash_X?”
3. Clearinghouse returns posture: Allow / Restrict / Deny / License
4. Platform stores a compliance receipt and proceeds accordingly

From Individual Ownership to Shared Governance

Origination enables collective models by providing standing and auditability.

Shared interest models — data cooperatives, trusts, commons — require participants with standing. A PDAOS supports that standing by originating verifiable assets and records that are auditable and portable.

Risks, Safeguards, and Non-Goals

Safeguards

• Minimal collection
• Redaction-first evidence capture
• Clear thresholds
• User-initiated actions

Non-Goals (MVP)

• No automatic enforcement
• No harassment
• No resale of personal data
• No guaranteed legal outcomes

Roadmap

• Phase 1 — Data Identity: root identity, anchors, user onboarding
• Phase 2 — Owner Binding: continuity-of-control proofs
• Phase 3 — Asset Instantiation (PDAOS): taxonomy, evidence mapping, thresholds
• Phase 4 — Control & Defense: Rights orchestration, collective capability, Clearinghouse

Glossary

References