Policy framework · 2025–2026

Toward Associational
Data Rights

A Digital Economy for Families & the Common Good

Data is co-produced. What one person hands over reveals their household, their community, and everyone who resembles them. This framework argues that a right held one person at a time can never answer that, and sets out the one that could.

6 parts · 15,223 words · 69 min read

  1. IntroductionWhy a different future for the digital economy is still available, and what it would take to choose it.5 min
  2. Part IWhose Data? Whose Future?Data is co-produced. The law treats it as though it belongs to whoever captured it first.23 min
  3. Part IIA Paradigm Shift in Tech GovernanceWhy individual data rights and top-down regulation both fall short, and what a Right of Digital Association would do instead.23 min
  4. Part IIIOperationalizing Associational Data RightsThe statute: how Data Rights Associations form, who governs them, what they may bargain for, and how they are funded.14 min
  5. Part IVDRA FeasibilityThe technical groundwork already exists. Six working precedents, running at scale today.4 min
  6. ConclusionA new social contract for American families and communities.1 min