Some thoughts churn the pot. Is Your Attention Property? Is it a crime to steal your attention. I think it is !!!
I was at the Jodhpur University International Conference on illegal cross border infiltration. The central axis that emerged were the challenges posed by new technologies – ai, drones, blockchain. I got to meet legal luminaires including some of the brightest in the land. And young ones – among the most promising. 122 deliberations. Two startups I have covered in my posts won the best paper and the second best. Events in Jodhpur have more investors than startups. It is now a contender in the startup race.
But back to attention and eyeballs.
If someone takes your money without consent, it’s theft. If someone takes your land, it’s trespass. If someone takes your data, it may violate the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
But if someone systematically captures, optimizes, and monetizes your attention using behavioral psychology…
What is it?
We live in a world where platforms engineer infinite scroll, variable rewards, and emotional amplification — not by accident, but by design.
They don’t just host speech.
They architect behavior.
Indian law today does not recognize time or attention as “property.” Under the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, property must be transferable and legally ownable. If I don’t own my attention then who does. Of course it can be transferred. What else is social media buying and selling. Don’t they take adverse possession of my attention by deceipt.
But here’s the other question:
After the Supreme Court’s judgment in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, privacy includes informational and decisional autonomy.
If autonomy is constitutionally protected,
can large-scale algorithmic manipulation of cognitive focus remain legally neutral?
Maybe the real issue is not just “property.”
Maybe it is cognitive liberty.
Because if your mind can be predictively nudged, behaviorally shaped, and statistically optimized without meaningful awareness…
Are you fully exercising autonomy?
Or participating in a marketplace where your attention is extracted — without it ever being legally defined? Is it slavery of another organ.
The law regulates content.
It regulates fraud.
It regulates data.
But it does not yet regulate behavioral architecture.
That gap will define digital constitutionalism in the next decade.
The question is not whether social media should be banned. Foreign ones have to be banned. The sooner the safer. It is a security issue. WhatsApp may claim to encrypt your messages. But they sell your location.
The real question for regulators is:
Should the engineering of human attention remain unregulated?
Is attention the next frontier of constitutional law? It better be.
This and much more is to be covered in the book “Legality Revisited” being released under the IIT Alumni Council book series shortly. It raises vexatious questions which ai doesn’t answer.
