ABSTRACT
This text proposes the allocation of user centric economic rights in data to counterbalance the adverse human rights impact of transnational artificial persons on humanity; specifically as relates to the use of user data in the development and proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) products. Internet technology companies are effectively gatekeepers of web use and access because AI enabled technology underlies most internet platforms, browsers, applications, and the online service provider industry generally.
Because Internet users comprise 74% of the world’s population, or around six billion people, the situation I describe above is one with global implications for humanity.
This work explores the foundational concepts behind an economy based on data ownership by users and user directed commercialization of the use of data in processing code, namely virtualism. Virtualism is defined here as a data driven economic system that recognizes data generation as human labor activity and proposes a system of related human rights involving the ownership of content data, as well as personality information or profile name, image, and likeness data, as rooted in the virtual property rights of users.
The EU Data Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) address the overreaching of transnational technology corporations, or artificial persons, into the area of personal data.
However, both pieces of legislation are flawed in three major ways. First, as acts of the European Union Parliament, they do not apply to anyone who is not an EU citizen. Second, they do not regulate or address the property rights of anyone in their data; and third, neither of these regulations addresses the economic right of anyone to be compensated in exchange for their agreement to commercialize their data.
The fact is that regulatory authorities, the judiciary, and legislatures, lack vision, direction, and resolve in relation to property rights and economic liberty of the human race in the virtual age; if left unchecked, this lack of leadership will have an insurmountable impact on the future of human rights particularly, property rights and related economic rights, for future generations.
Franklin, Tamiko Rochelle, Virtualism: Virtual Property as Economic Rights in Data and its Use by Artificial Intelligence Products and Systems (June 12, 2026).
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