Data ownership is still effectively zero for most people because of a few structural problems that reinforce each other: **The terms-of-service trap** Every platform you use grants itself a perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable license to your content. You "agreed" to this to get access. There is no meaningful negotiation -- it is take-it-or-leave-it, and the network effects make leaving it impractical. **Data is not legally property** In most jurisdictions, raw data has no clear property status. Copyright protects creative expression, not facts or behavioral signals. There is no law that says your location history, click patterns, or biometric data is *yours* the way a car or a house is yours. Without property rights, there is no theft, no trespass, no remedy. **GDPR gave access rights, not ownership** Europe's GDPR is the strongest regime in the world and it gives you the right to *access*, *correct*, and *delete* your data. That is closer to a tenant's rights than to ownership. You cannot sell it, license it, or sue if someone profits from it without your consent. **The commercial model depends on the asymmetry** Surveillance-based advertising -- which funds most of the free internet -- only works if users do not extract economic value from their own data. Any genuine data ownership regime would collapse the current business model of Google, Meta, and most data brokers. **What would actually change things** - A statutory property right in personal data (proposed in various US bills, never passed) - Data intermediaries or cooperatives that negotiate collectively on your behalf - Personal data stores (Solid, MyData) -- technically viable, commercially marginal - MiCA-style sectoral regulation extending beyond financial data The honest answer: it has not changed because the entities that profit from the status quo have lobbying power far exceeding that of individual users, and the problem is diffuse enough that collective action is hard.