Data is a lot like electricity — once it is discovered, the gold miners dig in and reap their profits for as long as they can. But these gold miners don’t own the electricity. Electricity is one of the elements of nature harnessed.
So now that we are in the Age of Data, telephone companies, especially, have become the gold diggers, claiming possession of this discovery. But it doesn’t belong to them. They didn’t produce it. They simply found it.
