Can Market Mechanisms Protect Consumer Privacy?
Two Manhattan academics have re-launched this old defence on the American way. The contention is that providing individuals with something like property rights to data about themselves will enable an orderly market to come into existence, with paranoid people able to deny data, and everyone else selling for the going rate. That way data would no longer be available gratis, and the externality problem would have been overcome. There may be some prospects of the notion leading somewhere in the private sector (although even there, there are some serious weaknesses, such as market power in the finance industry). In the government sector, it’s an unworkable proposal, because almost all data is gathered compulsorily, and agencies aren’t about to relinquish their powers. 3. Lunch Speaker I skipped this, in order to visit the Chicago Board of Trade. 4. Creating an Ethical Community in Cyberspace I skipped this, in order to visit the Chicago Board of Trade. 5. Standards for Certifying Computer
