Containing Multitudes: Aggregating Personal Data Access Contracts to Create a Bottom-Up Data Trust
Abstract
Data-driven technologies and digital business models have proved transformative to the economy, creating great wealth and reshaping entire industries. However, while data has been a fundamental resource of this digital transformation, data cannot be considered property.
This presents a problem regarding personal data – the data generated by or on individuals as they interact with digitally enabled systems. This information can be both valuable and highly sensitive. Despite this, individuals are unable to directly control the flow of this data, or receive value for its use. Subject to the commercial decision-making of data collecting institutions, individuals are ill-equipped either to protect their data privacy, or participate on equal terms in the data marketplace.
According to Ng, the inability of individuals to express rights over this data prevents economic optimality. Should clear property rights exist in personal data, negative externalities around privacy and data exploitation can be solved more efficiently. However, given the right technical framework, the necessary individual legal entitlements over information can be expressed and optimality achieved.
This paper examines how digital property rights for individuals can be used in the context of the ‘data trust’ to generate collectivist solutions to asymmetries in the personal data market.
