Abstract
With digitalization increasingly pervading every aspect of the economy, data rights cannot be seen solely as about privacy or otherwise just in an individualistic framework. Valuable data is often aggregated, group or anonymized data, and thus we make a case for collective rights over the economic resource of data. The article proposes a framework for community data ownership as being necessary for economic justice. It means that a national community, city, village or neighbourhood community, as well as communities/groups of workers, traders and producers, collectively have primary economic rights over the data that they contribute to different digital platforms. Unless such new alternative frameworks are developed, the proliferation of free trade agreements as well as efforts at a WTO plurilateral on e-commerce—with their ‘global free flow of data’ doctrine—will lock the default of de facto data ownership rights being solely that of the collectors of data.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Accenture considers AI as a new factor of production and the ‘future of growth’ https://www.accenture.com/in-en/insight-artificial-intelligence-future-growth.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Data Governance Network (http://datagovernance.org/) for their support on this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Singh, P.J., Vipra, J. Economic Rights Over Data: A Framework for Community Data Ownership. Development 62, 53–57 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-019-00212-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-019-00212-5