To share or not to share: Regulating Data Brokers

Data brokers benefit from this development because they collect data from a wide variety of sources and offer access to this data, as well as products and services based on it. However, there is a trade-off between realizing the benefits of data by sharing as much data as possible and protecting consumers' personal data and the intellectual property (“IP”)-related data of companies. In this article, two extreme solutions have been discussed for regulating data brokers. On the one hand, there is mandatory data sharing, which is supposed to reduce the incentives for data brokers and consumers to share data. On the other hand, banning data brokers’ business model decreases data sharing and represents an extreme intervention. Both options are discussed as well as the recent regulations at the EU level that affect the data economy.