Article
Internet, New Technologies, and Value: Taking Share of Economic Surveillance (2017 U. Ill. J.L. Tech. & Pol'y 469-485 (Issue 2, Fall 2017))
U. ILL. J.L. TECH. & POL’Y
(2017)
Abstract
This review of (and discussion around) Valérie-Laure Benabou and Judith Rochfeld’s as yet untranslated book, A qui profite le clic? Le partage de la valeur à l’ère du numérique, begins by briefly tracing the development of the Internet from disintermediation to today’s situation where new Internet intermediaries capture the value of personal data and user-generated content created on or through the web. Once recent developments involving disclosure of mass surveillance and European adoption of new data protection legislation are discussed, the authors’ book is introduced, and the discussion shifts to economic surveillance. Cookies—which are the tools that allow the giant, mainly American Internet companies to capture data about web-users’ behavior—and reactions to their use are debated. The necessity for transparency and the failure of contractual provisions to mirror true consent are detailed.
During the reading of Benabou and Rochfeld’s book, we note that an important actor in the creation of value—the consumer—does not necessarily receive his or her share of the resulting value. The law, which has a role in defending certain values, whether it be copyright law, competition law, or contract law, has difficulties dealing with new paradigms created by new technologies and information. In Europe, fundamental rights and consumer law are supposed to help the web user, but do they go far enough? The book’s authors propose beginnings of solutions to the law’s difficulties in this context—based on transparency, technical mastery of content by the consumers who created it, control of consent, and collective action. Although the book leaves us hungry for more, it also leaves us thought-provoked as the reviewer comments.
Keywords
- economic surveillance,
- behavioral surveillance,
- internet intermediaries,
- data protection,
- data privacy,
- consumer protection
Disciplines
Publication Date
Fall 2017
Citation Information
Voss, W. Gregory, Internet, New Technologies, and Value: Taking Share of Economic Surveillance, 2017 U. Ill. J.L. Tech. & Pol'y 469-485 (Issue 2, Fall 2017)