Regulating Access to Big Data? – Between Ex-Ante and Ex-Post Economic Regulation

Abstract

Big Data can be a monopolistic bottleneck that restricts access to downstream markets of companies that do not control the appropriate set of Big Data. This article examines both the drawbacks of competition law when applied to Big Data-driven markets as well as different possible forms of ex-ante economic regulation of access to Big Data, all with the aim of answering the research question: Is ex-post economic regulation alone insufficient to ensure access to competitively relevant Big Data, and if so, what type of ex-ante economic regulation would be most effective? In doing so it concludes that competition law is not a suitable primary tool for requesting access to Big Data for several reasons, in particular because competition law procedures are lengthy, market definition is difficult in the absence of a monetary price for the product, and markets driven by Big Data tend to be structurally inefficiently competitive. Asymmetrical ex-ante regulation is identified as the most appropriate form of regulating access to Big Data.