One Transaction Generates Data to Feed Multitudes [telecom]

open original image

By Theodore F. Claypoole

Last week I jumped from the starting point of the newest U.S. anti-trust action against Google into a discussion about the legal and economic status of data. I would like to carry the discussion of data further.

To briefly recap: data is history (it describes someone at a given time or it describes something that happened at a given time); history is not subject to ownership by anyone; and while we have some laws restricting use or financial exploitation of information, generally anyone who can figure out how to use data legally will be allowed to use it productively. Data is considered to be a commodity by many, including the states AGs who just sued Google. Is this more like harnessing the wind, drilling for oil, issuing securities, or cultivating crops? We are still figuring out the appropriate analogies, and the correct analogy may depend on the type of data collected and how it is used.