Big Data and Competition Policy


Book Description

The first text to provide understanding of the important new issue of Big Data and how it relates to competition laws and policy, both in the EU and US.




Competition Law and Big Data


Book Description

In this timely book, Beata Mäihäniemi analyses and evaluates how the characteristics of information as a good, as well as the characteristics of digital platforms, affect the application of competition law in both theory and practice.




Personal Data in Competition, Consumer Protection and Intellectual Property Law


Book Description

This book analyses the legal approach to personal data taken by different fields of law. An increasing number of business models in the digital economy rely on personal data as a key input. In exchange for sharing their data, online users benefit from personalized and innovative services. But companies’ collection and use of personal data raise questions about privacy and fundamental rights. Moreover, given the substantial commercial and strategic value of personal data, their accumulation, control and use may raise competition concerns and negatively affect consumers. To establish a legal framework that ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data while at the same time providing an open and level playing field for businesses to develop innovative data-based services is a challenging task.With this objective in mind and against the background of the uniform rules set by the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the contributions to this book examine the significance and legal treatment of personal data in competition law, consumer protection law, general civil law and intellectual property law. Instead of providing an isolated analysis of the different areas of law, the book focuses on both synergies and tensions between the different legal fields, exploring potential ways to develop an integrated legal approach to personal data.




New Developments in Competition Law and Economics


Book Description

This book further develops both the traditional and the behavioural approach to competition law, and applies these approaches to a variety of timely issues. It discusses several fundamental questions regarding competition law and economics, and explores the applications of competition law and economics. In turn, the book analyses the interplay of intellectual property rights and patents in various aspects of competition law, and investigates the impacts that developments in information technology, such as big data analytics, have on competition law. The book also discusses the impact of energy law reforms on energy markets from a competition law perspective. Competition law is a classic field of economic analysis. This is largely due to the fact that competition law uses terms such as market, price, and competition and must therefore rely on economic know-how and analyses. In the United States, economic analysis has greatly influenced not just the scholarship on antitrust law, but also judicial decisions and agency enforcement. Antitrust law and economics are based on the traditional paradigm of neoclassical economics, which relies on the assumption that the market players, i.e. consumers and producers, are rational. This approach to competition law was later received in Europe under the banner of a “more economic approach”. For the past two decades, behavioural law and economics, which seeks to generate better insights into legal phenomena by providing more realistic psychological foundations for economic models, and to offer a multitude of applications in legislation and legal adjudication, has challenged the traditional economic approach to law in general and, more recently, to competition law specifically.




Big Data and Competition Law


Book Description

Recent studies on competition law and digital markets reveal that accumulating personal information through data collection and acquisition methods benefits consumers considerably. Free of charge, fast and personalised services and products are offered to consumers online. Collected data is now an indispensable part of online businesses to the point that a new economy, a data-driven sector, has emerged. Many markets such as the social network, search engine, online advertising and e-commerce are regarded as data-driven markets in which the utilisation of Big Data is a requisite for the success of operations. However, the accumulation and use of data brings competition law concerns as they contribute to market power in the online world, resulting in a few technology giants gaining unprecedented market power due to the Big Data accumulation, indirect network effects and the creation of online ecosystems. As technology giants have billions of consumers worldwide, data-driven markets are truly global. In these data-driven markets, technology giants abuse their dominant positions, but existing competition law tools seem ineffective in addressing market power and assessing abusive behaviour related to Big Data. This book argues that a novel approach to the data-driven sector must be developed through the application of competition law rules to address this. It argues that current and potential conflicts can be mitigated by extending the competition law assessment beyond the current competition law tools to offer a modernised and unified approach to the Big Data–related competition issues. Promoting new legal tests for addressing the market power of technology giants and assessing abusive behaviour in data-driven markets, this book advocates for cooperation between competition and data protection authorities. It will be of interest to students, academics and practitioners with an interest in competition law and data protection.




Legal Challenges of Big Data


Book Description

This groundbreaking book explores the new legal and economic challenges triggered by big data, and analyses the interactions among and between intellectual property, competition law, free speech, privacy and other fundamental rights vis-à-vis big data analysis and algorithms.




Virtual Competition


Book Description

“A fascinating book about how platform internet companies (Amazon, Facebook, and so on) are changing the norms of economic competition.” —Fast Company Shoppers with a bargain-hunting impulse and internet access can find a universe of products at their fingertips. But is there a dark side to internet commerce? This thought-provoking exposé invites us to explore how sophisticated algorithms and data-crunching are changing the nature of market competition, and not always for the better. Introducing into the policy lexicon terms such as algorithmic collusion, behavioral discrimination, and super-platforms, Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke explore the resulting impact on competition, our democratic ideals, our wallets, and our well-being. “We owe the authors our deep gratitude for anticipating and explaining the consequences of living in a world in which black boxes collude and leave no trails behind. They make it clear that in a world of big data and algorithmic pricing, consumers are outgunned and antitrust laws are outdated, especially in the United States.” —Science “A convincing argument that there can be a darker side to the growth of digital commerce. The replacement of the invisible hand of competition by the digitized hand of internet commerce can give rise to anticompetitive behavior that the competition authorities are ill equipped to deal with.” —Burton G. Malkiel, Wall Street Journal “A convincing case for the need to rethink competition law to cope with algorithmic capitalism’s potential for malfeasance.” —John Naughton, The Observer




Data Privacy and Competition Law in the Age of Big Data


Book Description

The monetization of personal data has become an increasingly common business practice, igniting global debate on the interface between data privacy law and competition law. Data Privacy and Competition Law in the Age of Big Data provides a comprehensive, novel, and interdisciplinary analysis of this nexus. Drawing insights from emergent properties and complexity science, the book exposes the commonalities and conflicts between how data privacy law and competition law address challenges resulting from the commercialization of personal data. Samson Y. Esayas begins by identifying key shifts in big data: the growing trend of processing personal data for diverse purposes, the aggregation of data across various operations, and the shift from offering stand-alone products and services to ecosystems of several, with personal data central in connecting the different markets. These shifts engender a complex economic landscape, marked by multiple actors, a web of interactions, and non-linear, emergent outcomes. Despite this complexity, the prevailing approach to data privacy law and competition law emphasises isolated units of analysis-whether a relevant market or a distinct processing operation. This approach overlooks system-wide (emergent) risks borne of cumulative processing operations and cross-market practices. Additionally, a mindset focused on either data privacy law or competition law overlooks the increasing intersection between the two regimes, missing opportunities for synergy. In light of these challenges, Esayas's volume calls for recalibrating data privacy law and competition law for a complex economy, emphasizing a holistic, systems-level perspective that addresses emergent harms and a polycentric strategy that leverages the strengths of each legal regime.




Competition Law for the Digital Economy


Book Description

The digital economy is gradually gaining traction through a variety of recent technological developments, including the introduction of the Internet of things, artificial intelligence and markets for data. This innovative book contains contributions from leading competition law scholars who map out and investigate the anti-competitive effects that are developing in the digital economy.




New Technology, Big Data and the Law


Book Description

This edited collection brings together a series of interdisciplinary contributions in the field of Information Technology Law. The topics addressed in this book cover a wide range of theoretical and practical legal issues that have been created by cutting-edge Internet technologies, primarily Big Data, the Internet of Things, and Cloud computing. Consideration is also given to more recent technological breakthroughs that are now used to assist, and — at times — substitute for, human work, such as automation, robots, sensors, and algorithms. The chapters presented in this edition address these issues from the perspective of different legal backgrounds. The first part of the book discusses some of the shortcomings that have prompted legislators to carry out reforms with regard to privacy, data protection, and data security. Notably, some of the complexities and salient points with regard to the new European General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) and the new amendments to the Japan’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) have been scrutinized. The second part looks at the vital role of Internet intermediaries (or brokers) for the proper functioning of the globalized electronic market and innovation technologies in general. The third part examines an electronic approach to evidence with an evaluation of how these technologies affect civil and criminal investigations. The authors also explore issues that have emerged in e-commerce, such as Bitcoin and its blockchain network effects. The book aims to explain, systemize and solve some of the lingering legal questions created by the disruptive technological change that characterizes the early twenty-first century.