Who owns your BIM data—and who controls it?

Who Owns Your Data—and Who Controls It?

Imagine owning a car that you can’t service yourself. Worse, you can’t even choose the garage. Your dealer is the only one allowed to update your car’s software. It’s your car, you paid for it, but control? That lies elsewhere.

Now take your iPhone. Replace the battery yourself or through a third party, and you’re met with ominous warnings: “Unknown part detected.” Your phone works, but not like it should. Again: it’s yours, but someone else is deciding how it behaves.

We accept these compromises with our devices. Maybe reluctantly. But they raise a deeper question, especially when we move beyond consumer tech: what happens when this same loss of control applies to your critical business data, like BIM data?