There is a popular idea that people should get paid for their personal data. I think the version most people imagine, selling your data to whoever buys it, is the weakest one.

**Raw data is cheap and getting cheaper.** Publisher licensing deals price text at pennies per word at best, and personal notes are worth far less than a curated book. Synthetic data keeps pushing the price down. And most of what is in a notes app is about *other people*, which you have no right to sell.

**Expertise is expensive.** The AI labs pay human experts $50 to $125 an hour, because what they are short of is judgment, not text. A well-tended garden is better as proof of what you know than as a pile of words to sell.

So the shape I believe in:

- **Prove it is yours.** Sign what you write, so authorship and date can be checked.
- **Choose a license per note.** All rights reserved by default; Creative Commons if you want it shared; licensable for AI only if you say so.
- **Get paid for the intelligence, not the file.** Paid work that matches what your garden shows you know, or paid access to an assistant that answers only from your public notes.
- **Bargain together.** One garden is worth little to a buyer. Thousands of consenting, cleaned, signed gardens are worth a lot, and the gardeners should keep most of the money.

Never sell anything about anyone else. Everything off by default.

Related: [[The AI gardener]], [[Gardens and streams]].