Tuesday, December 08, 2015

The CMA, the slave trade and the commercial use of consumer data

MyDex, here.

"At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, let us draw an analogy. Imagine an 18th century Competition and Markets Authority calling for information about the slave trade. If this 18th century CMA accepted the status quo – that the ‘market’ in question is people being traded rather than people being able to trade in the market in their own right – it might have asked how slaves may generate benefit for their owners, how slaves are collected, bought and sold, what contractual arrangements apply to the trading of slaves (including pricing), what restrictions firms have in acquiring slaves, and so on. In other words, it might have asked the sorts of questions that the CMA is currently asking about personal data – assuming that individuals have no right or ability to use/trade their own data for their own purposes in their own right."

Watch also MyDex's testimony to the House of Lords' EU Internal Market Sub-Committee (Online Platforms and the EU Digital Single Market Inquiry), Video here (from 17:35:15).