I love this idea, but the article doesn’t do a good idea of explaining anything. For the uninitiated, a data collective/coop is exactly what it sounds like: a group of people voluntarily pooling their data together Data cooperatives allow contributors to get license their data however they may want (libre/some cc/proprietary/paid), and storage, transport, etc. are managed collectively.

FWIW, there’s a Mozilla Data Collective and their page isn’t bad.