Join our four part seminar series exploring alternative strategies for governing data and the digital economy.

This four part seminar series explores alternative strategies for governing data and the digital economy. The goal is to re-invigorate questions of data governance by thinking through:

• What data is and how it works in the digital economy
• How the law of organisations interacts with and conditions the digital economy
• How platforms are not merely market actors but markets in and of themselves, and
• How data might be repurposed as a tool for collective and democratic forms of governance and control?

Speakers: Prof Katharina Pistor (Columbia Law School) and Salomé Viljone (Cornell Tech and NYU Law School)

Discussants: Dr Jake Goldenfein (University of Melbourne) and Prof Christine Parker (University of Melbourne)

Data protection laws treat personal data as a representation or reflection of an individual – an element of their identity. Limiting the collection and processing of data protects the capacity of the individual to define themselves as the data they generate is captured and interpreted. In the digital economy, however, personal data is used to control or steer consumer and business activity through its relationship to human attention. Rather than being stored in filing cabinets or static databases, data is collected from users and processed in real time, at massive scale, while being channelled into complex networks of back- end businesses.

• How might data governance take into account these dynamics of how data works in the digital economy?
• How can data governance comprehend data as something co-created by individuals, platforms and businesses, conditioned by both the front-end platform interfaces and back-end networks?
• How do our ideas of what data is, be it property, labour, identity, or even pollution, inform our regulatory thinking in this environment, and how should they?
• How can we better understand data and data practices as artefacts of certain social, legal, and political arrangements?

Speakers: Prof Bronwen Morgan (UNSW) and Assistant Prof Nathan Schneider (University of Colorado, Boulder)

Discussants: Prof Jeannie Paterson (University of Melbourne) and Dr Jake Goldenfein (University of Melbourne)

The data economy is legally structured, on the front end at least, through contractual relationships between platforms and individuals as ‘users’. There is growing recognition that individuals may no longer be able to adequately protect or pursue their own interests under these arrangements. On one level, this has encouraged platforms to seek user trust through other means such as ethics boards and officers. It has also spurred research into the development of new intermediaries, like trusts and coops for data and platforms, that might stand between platforms and users.

• Are there ways to separate the economic utility of data from corporate organisational forms incentivised for maximum financial gain?
• What types of technical and legal tools are necessary for the development of data and platform intermediaries?
• What roles can intermediaries play in their economic position between platforms and individuals?