Placemeter.com
Monetizing the data base is a business model. Data creation opportunities for those with location advantage is open to anyone. All it takes is someone to create the input structure and a scale of payment to the information originators. Originators that probably already have the equipment and wifi connection necessary. It is easy money and nothing, no privacy rules or regs stand in the way.
Once Placemeter has the aggregated data it can be analyzed with various programs to produce metrics that can be sold as a product.
Privacy: From the website, plain and simple: "We’ll never record or store any of the video our Meters capture".
Yes, but.........Big Data is a Big Market. A data network market. What is not used by one player is available to "Associates", "Business Partners". They are given access to the fire hose feed to do what ever they want with the data. Record, store, analyze. Maybe just record and store and not analyze only make available under court order or warrant to law enforcement. Law enforcement paying for the service.
Big Data wants to make Big Bucks. The motivation to make Big Bucks will somehow find a way to work around any privacy considerations.
In a prior blog I looked at the obvious opportunity for everyone to get in on the money of data origination. In the case of License Plate Reading, anyone with a camera on their car or semi truck could make a few extra bucks while they are driving capturing license plate numbers and feeding them to a consolidator for a penny per X number read.
I currently have a BLE app that detects iBeacons and reports them to the company that made the App. I wonder what they are doing with what is being reported by me for free. Perhaps I should get a few pennies out of the deal for being an information minor.
In a way it is similar to the original Bitcoin mining model. Anyone with a computer could be a miner. Until it became worthwhile to use more than just any computer anyone has.
I expect that Placemeter would develop a scale of payments depending on how good the info was and if the camera was high def and if the equipment at the Placemeter site was remotely controlled to select location of view and zoom able. Placemeter may even provide the equipment or lease it to those with a special location.
Placemeter has a potential gold mine as well as willing miners line up to get the opportunity to mine the gold for a few bucks. The gold they mine will be worth much more.
This is the App at Google Play.
It says to install only on an old smart phone. What? Pay for service on an old smart phone just to send Placemeter a video stream? Must be by wifi not cell. Yes, wifi from the FAQ. Note that Placemeter will provide a device if the originator does not have one. Placemeter will obviously cherry pick the best locations, low hanging fruit.
Internet service providers have caps on usage, usually high since they are looking to the future for increased use and charges as people stream more video into their homes. Streaming data out exceeding allowances may be an unexpected surprise to the data providers!
While Placemaker emphasizes that it does not track individual identified people exactly what laws prohibit them from doing that by private citizens from their own home window views or selling the view to someone that does? What laws prohibit Placemaker from recording and retaining streamed video. Could the entity recording their street view record and retain and them sell the recorded information to anyone that would pay them for it. What it a private investigator wanted access to a participating entity's video because they saw there was a camera in a window recording something that would be of interest them them. This is a standard feature to record and date time stamp home security video.
Big Data starts with the smallest granular data points. We are all data points as well as data point collectors and and originators that feed to Big Data. To the extent we are harvesters of granular data about others and our environment the data we give about ourselves and what we can collect from the environment we are in has value for us to give/harvest and sell. Is anything that we can publicly and
legally see hear or otherwise sense or claim as personal information to do with as we please restricted from harvesting and selling in data market?
Privacy is headed for an exception base definition as it progresses from a general rule of expectation.
Update on this blog entry on 8 August this link:
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