Stuart Mills continues his series on data policy theory, exploring data as a resource and how it is shared or traded.
Who decides who decides?
Data are limitless, both from a philosophical perspective (we can always make more decisions about what to observed and record, and what to do with those records) and a material perspective (data can be reproduced at almost no cost, be it users giving over their personal details, or a computer duplicating files). Yet data also seem to produce a tremendous amount of economic value, primarily in the form of targeted advertising (though this rationale is increasingly russia rcs data being challenged, with a nice summary given by Jesse Frederik and Maurits Martijn).
Previously, I argued this apparent paradox was solved by the apparent closing off of what we might call ‘common data’ from the public, with data (and the means of collecting data) residing in private hands. Academics Jose van Dijck, Frank Pasquale and Lizzie O’Shea have made similar arguments.
The Laissez Faire model of data ownership is one way of organising what academic Nick Srnicek calls platform capitalism.
Data Flows in a Laissez Faire Data Ownership Model
Figure 1: Data Flows in a Laissez Faire Data Ownership Model
In this simple model, taken from my working paper on data ownership, data collectors perform the same role as platforms do for Srnicek, acting as intermediaries between users and third-parties, controlling the flow of data (which is to say, accumulating data and controlling access), and extracting value from their position in the data flow.
However, we could organise this flow and these actors differently.
For instance, we might accept the transactional theory of data (users receive services in exchange for their data in a form of transaction) but accept – much in the way trade unions do – that there is an imbalance of power between the individual user and the service.