Comments on: Who Owns Your Address Book?

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:30:25 +0000

Maybe, but to close a deal or get in the door for the company, they realistically expect you to use personal contacts. That's sales. So, what's the difference between a friend you met in college and also do business with, and someone you met through business who turns out to be a friend?

If you said "where the relationship begins", then the company shouldn't mine your personal contacts or those you made in the past working at other companies.

Maybe this sounds obvious, but it's not. Like I said in the post, certain positions are filled based on contacts, with no regard for how they were made.

Very messy.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:26:23 +0000

That's a messy solution, but it's probably fair. I just see this issue going all kinds of bad (like RIAA lawsuits); I've frequently thought that judges need to get in-depth training in order to hear technical cases or that we need to get specialized judges whose only cases are technical in nature.

That's a different post.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:12:57 +0000

I would expect that many companies do not want you keeping your contacts in LinkedIn anyway – company information held outside the company, very much like email. I personally only use LinkedIn for personal contacts.

By: bex

bex — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:29:13 +0000

I think that question harks back to John Locke, and the definition of property itself:

http://bexhuff.com/2007/08/who-owns-relationship

Briefly, it goes like this:

* neither party can claim the "right" to the information about a relationship, but
* anybody who spends time and energy collecting that information has some right to their collection of data.

Therefore, if you maintained your relationships on company time, your company paid to maintain that data. Therefore, your company has legitimate rights to access it... although not to own it.