Abstract
Any firm today may, at little or no cost, build its own infrastructure to process personal data for commercial, economic, political, technological or any other purposes. Society has, therefore, turned into a privacy-unfriendly environment. The processing of personal data is essential for multiple economically and socially useful purposes, such as health care, education or terrorism prevention. But firms view personal data as a commodity, as a valuable asset, and heavily invest in processing for private gains. This article studies the potential to subject personal data to trade secret rules, so as to ensure the users’ control over their data without limiting the data’s free movement, and examines some positive scenarios of attributing commercial value to personal data.
Highlights
Scholars speak of theft of humanistic property (Mann, 2000) and argue that natural persons should get paid for such processing (Laudon, 1996: p. 103)
This paper briefly examines the potential to subject personal data to trade secret protection rules and studies the outcome of attributing commercial value to such data
If personal data were treated as trade secrets, it seems that the data subjects would better control their private information without limiting the free movement of this data (Prins, 2004; Malgieri, 2017)
Summary
Despite the European legislator’s latest efforts to protect both natural persons, with regard to the processing of personal data (meaning any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, see Article 4(1) of the GDPR), and free movement of such data, private businesses massively process (collect, organize, alter, disclose, combine, erase or destroy) personal data (Pasquale, 2015: p. 56), and view the latter as an asset (Almunia, 2012; Cohen, 2000: p. 1375; O’Neil, 2016: p. 151; Prins, 2006: p. 228; Hoofnagle, 2003; Michaels, 2008) and, sell it, exchange it or even produce it (Crawford & Schultz, 2014: pp. 94-95, 98; Prins, 2006: pp. 226-230). Despite the European legislator’s latest efforts to protect both natural persons, with regard to the processing of personal data (meaning any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, see Article 4(1) of the GDPR), and free movement of such data, private businesses massively process (collect, organize, alter, disclose, combine, erase or destroy) personal data Scholars speak of theft of humanistic property (Mann, 2000) and argue that natural persons should get paid for such processing Bouchagiar mouse-click” give their valid consent (Recital (32) of the GDPR) to the processing of their sensitive information. Such practices reveal a need to regain the users’ control over their personal data. This paper briefly examines the potential to subject personal data to trade secret protection rules and studies the outcome of attributing commercial value to such data
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