Data is becoming a commodity as storage become cheaper and cheaper. Many information are now digitised and uploaded to Cloud. Many social media are encouraging content creation with various monetisation incentives. If you own the data, how do you sell it?
Ownership of Data
The ownership of data is something of a dispute as there is no clear legal stand as it differs from country to country. If data is really yours and transferable, you shall be able move it from place to place like physical thing. Unfortunately, data is intangible and the true owner often belongs to the platform you created. Common platforms are social media who harvest your data for their commercial usage. This is with the fact that most platforms provided free services for “acquiring” your data with very fine print of consent.
Data Broker and Data Banking
Since it is established that data mainly do not belong to you, how do you secure your data privacy and rights? Data Broker and Data Banking will emerge in future. Like currency, data is a value of trade and can be transferred and stored. These entities will act as intermediary to help you secure data. Imagine a futuristic version of your Cloud Drive that can seamlessly extract and secured your social media data and transfer anywhere.
Data Marketplace
A current version of Data Marketplace is the stock market. When there are Data Broker and Data Banking, suppliers and consumers will come together in a Data Marketplace. This is place where Data can be bought and sold. This is not new as many informal channels existed for such transactions. We will be looking forward to such future where data owners are can sell and be compensated with their data.
Danny Kwok 