Tbh it came as a bit of shock for me. Purely because of the sentimental value. I haven't had a landline in almost 20 years but I still remember the phone number we grew up with. Once I start a family I also thought "the family" needed a phone number, not just a phone number to each person. I guess that is still possible over mobile phone lines though. I was surprised nevertheless.
I have wondered what the closest thing for a "family" contact number might be. At least in the US.
One idea that came to mind was a family GMRS license. Cheap and FCC-official for the whole family, but until the spec is modified there might be a tiny distance issue. :-)
I noticed people aren't using those anymore, at least not around where I live. Seems like there's a family Gmail address more often unless they are 50+ y.o.
Hi kdtop. I really appreciate your input, and I believe that both “right to access”, “ownership to data” and “copyright” are 3 different concepts that are fairly interesting.
Speaking from a health tech product manager perspective, then it has been interesting to see how must patient data was stored on local servers that the doctor purchased, and had stored at their clinic.
One could argue, that since the doctor owns the server, wrote the data, then the doctor might also be the “owner” of the data.
That does not mean the patients shouldnt have _access_ to the data, but traditionally then it was much harder, to get access to that data.
With more services going online, the data is no longer stored on servers the doctor purchased, and even though the doctors (or the clinic) created the data, ownership might not be as easy to pin point.
If journal notes (aka patient data) is copyrighted by the clinic, then the patient has no “right” to create copies of their medical data, nor do they have any right to share their medical data with others.
In part, i agree with you that “access” is a important consideration, but it is ideally important for patients to understand if their medical data is copyright protected, as that limits the patients ability to legally share information about their medical history.
First, one has to understand what are required in order to get copyright.
Secondly, one would have to decide if patient data is somehow excluded from the traditional copyright rules.
I found some of my old notes from law classes at uni. This is part of the EU Copyright Directive (copied in 2012, but the main motives remain the same) says:
“ If authors or performers are to continue their creative
and artistic work, they have to receive an appropriate
reward for the use of their work, as must producers in
order to be able to finance this work. The investment
required to produce products such as phonograms, films
or multimedia products, and services such as ‘on-
demand’ services, is considerable. Adequate legal protec-
tion of intellectual property rights is necessary in order
to guarantee the availability of such a reward and
provide the opportunity for satisfactory returns on this
investment”.
I could probably copy the entire document here, but as i remember, and as others have pointed out, European law is focused on providing “protection” to those who put in an “effort” in creating something that can be considered “creative” or “artistic”.
This is interesting, because that essentially means that data can be created without being protected by law. I remember hearing examples of cases where photos weren’t protected simply because the photographer didnt “put a effort” into taking the picture (read: anyone with a smartphone is essentially a photographer).
My take on the original question about the medical images, is that the image itself, it not protected by copyright (but i am not a lawyer). I would pose that there isnt any creative or artistic process surrounding taking the picture.
The second part I wonder about is, who “owns” patient data. Living in norway, I havent been able to find any legal documentation stating who owns patient data (journal notes, medical pictures, etc). There are lots of privacy laws protecting the data, and there are laws defining who has the right to access the data. But nothing really states anything about owning the data.
I would argue that the doctor does not know the data he/she enters in a journal, since they are “only” writing down what the patient is saying, and documenting what treatment the doctor has given the patient. Measurement data, lab data etc, are all automatically created, and are tied to the patient, so i wonder if the patient “own” the data.
Having worked in health tech a while, Ive never found any legal that clearly states ownership.
Then there is another aspect to considering, which is what protection copyright actually provides.
EU laws says that copyright owner has the sole right to “(re)produce” and make available to the public. (Paraphrasing).
Considering that the image is medical, then there are in part, a lot of other laws that restrict any potential copyright owner (eg: the dentist) from making the image available to the public, due to the sensitivity.
Which might mean the copyright owner might only have the “right” to create more copies, which one might ask what purpose it would have to create more copies of a piece of work that can’t be viewed by anyone else than the patient, and other medical staff connected to the patient.
Added a picture with a bunch of people. Not all of them got an emoji, so as I continued to add emojis, I wanted to pinch to zoom but that behaviour turned out to be for the emoji. Handling a tiny emoji was really add, so I’d appreciate be able to zoom in and out of the picture when I have to add more emojis :)
This site is direct measurements from a university in Tromsø (northern Norway). The graph indicates level activity of northern light particles in their area and gives a great indication of whether or not there is Currently Northern Lights: http://flux.phys.uit.no/cgi-bin/mkstackplot.cgi?&comp=H&cust...
The national Norwegian weather forecasting company “Yr” is building northern light forecast abilities into their app. This article is a Norwegian but describes how the solution will look
