Professor Chris MarsdenSt Petersburg International Legal Forum 19 May

OffData: a prosumer law agency to

govern big data in the public interest

Professor of Internet Law since 2012, researched in the field for 20 years.

• Formerly Professor of Law at Essex (2012-13), researcher Essex (2007-12), Oxford (2004-5), Warwick (1997-2000), LSE (1995-1997).

• Visiting Harvard, Melbourne, Cambridge, Oxford, USC, Keio, Tokyo, FGV Rio

• corporate (WorldCom 2001-2, World Economic Forum, MediaWeek)

• government (RAND 2005-7, Independent TV Commission 2001)

4 books: Regulating Code (2013) Internet Co-regulation (2011) Net neutrality(2010)

• published with economists, computer scientists , and social scientists.

Principal Investigator 2011/15 European Internet Science: better Internet design

Cited by the European Parliament, national governments on five continents, BBC, ABC, Economist, Wall St Journal, El Pais, Ars Technica.

My background

75 kilometres from London

University of SussexBrighton, England

Next to Amex Stadium

160 companies have been based at the Centre

Sussex Innovation Centre 80 high-growth companies

cumulative revenue €300m+

First of the new wave of UK universities Royal Charter in 1961• Critical thinking and international approach• 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF)

Big ‘new’ Law School (200% bigger since 2012):• 1000+ undergraduate, 100+ LLM, 50+ PhD students• 60+ professorial faculty/top 15 UK research intensity

University of Sussex founded 1961

120 different countries • 3 Nobel Prize winners• 14 Fellows of the Royal Society• 12 Fellows of the British Academy

Campus in South Downs National Park 10 mins to Brighton

14,000 students 35%postgraduates

Regulation of the economy and the governance of society.

Collection as well as processing of such data can include sensitive personal data,

• 2 matched GPS/geolocation items enable de-anonymisation

Big data has the ability to transform

Time to update anonymity

Liability & Security pitfalls

‘Intranet’ of Things in progress

Hype around Big Data, Cloud, IoT

• Personal data protection• EUR-Lex - L:2016:119: Regulation (EU) 2016/679

• Regulation of big data collection and processing lags severely behind business processes

• Stylianou, Venturini, Zingales: Protecting User Privacy in the Cloud: An Analysis of Terms of Service

• European Journal of Law and Technology • Vol 6, No 3 (2015). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2707852

Bulk automated data collection infringes European law

• Huge trawl of data means they are able to “pick winners” • among sectoral competitors in e.g. retail/transportation, • in what is becoming known as "surveillance capitalism".

• Governments increasingly rely on these big data brokers • to support services, compromising regulatory independence.

Search engines and social media platforms

2014…

Dealing with big data curators:• Ezrachi & Stucke, Artificial Intelligence & Collusion: When Computers

Inhibit Competition, • Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No.18/2015

http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2591874• Stucke & Grunes (2015) Debunking the Myths Over Big Data and

Antitrust, • CPI Antitrust Chronicle, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2612562

Competition law faces existential crises

• Govern big data • in the public interest

• and permit users to take back • individual and collective control of their data:

Needed: a more holistic regulatory framework

@ChrisTMarsden

Prosumer law agency: ‘OffData’