Participate!

We’re holding a number of ‘trading game’ experiment sessions at Brunel to find out just how much money citizens trade their personal data for. If you’re interested in finding out just how much you could get for trading your perosnal data, come and participate in one of the 1-2hr sessions on the Uxbridge campus.

You’ll need to register with the DP Platform and collect as many personal datasets as you can following the data collection guides prior to attending the session. During the session you will be given the opportunity to join other participants and offer your data for sale to a data buyer. Prizes in the form of vouchers will be given to the participants who make the most money during the sessions.

If you are interested, please visit https://digitalprosumer.co.uk/participate.html and email digital.prosumer@brunel.ac.uk to sign up.

Current Sessions:

• Thursday 1st December 2016, 15:00-17:00 STJN 008
• Friday 10th February 2017, 15:00-17:00 STJN 008
• Tuesday 28th March 2017, 15:30-17:30 STJN 008

 

 

 

Household Study

Help us find out how much your personal data is worth.

We’re about to launch our household study and we’re looking for both buyer and seller volunteers to test out our platform in a real-world trading game.

So if you’re over 18, a resident of the UK and interested in making the most out of your data, we’d love to hear from you!

For more information, please visit our website: https://digitalprosumer.co.uk/participate.html.

Personal Data Survey: Would You Trade Yours?

What do you think of the way your personal data is used in exchange for free services (i.e. such as Google or Facebook)?
Would you prefer to trade your personal data in return for real money?

Tell us your views:
https://brunel.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/digitalprosumer_data

Trading in Big Data: If data is the new oil, how should its extraction be regulated?

Trading in Big Data: If data is the new oil, how should its extraction be regulated?
Workshop on the regulation of big data and data trading in conjunction with the Micro-Persona eXchange

Date: 30 April 2015 (afternoon) – 01 May 2015 (morning)
Location: Brunel University (Uxbridge, London)
Structure: The workshop is divided into introduction, three sessions and one round table discussion
Organised by Dr Audrey Guinchard & Florian Gamper (University of Essex) as part of the EPSRC Digital Prosumer research project
Registration: If you are interested to attend, please Audrey Guinchard (abguin@essex.ac.uk) or Florian Gamper (gamper@essex.ac.uk)
Documents: Workshop Details (PDF), Worshop Themes (PDF)

~-~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~-~-~-~~-~-~-~

Introduction
The World Economic Forum has described data as the new oil, “a valuable resource for the 21^st century. It will emerge as a new asset class touching all aspects of society.” (WEF, Personal Data. The Emergence of a New Asset Class, 2011, p. 4). A crucial question is how this valuable resource should be extracted and who should get the profits from it.

As networked digital technologies become more pervasive and diverse, it is possible to collect personal data generated across the Internet and to gather information on the different facets or personas of a person’s patterns of consumption and lifestyle behaviours. This digital footprint constitutes their digital identity, i.e. their Digital Personhood. Currently, personhood data is fragmented, residing in various repositories across the Internet. It has been considered to be part of the data commons that the ‘Big 3’ Internet Companies — Google, Facebook, Twitter– and other similar organisations have been freely data mining, analysing and, crucially, monetizing. Google, for example, captures data about its search engine users and monetizes it to generate most of its revenue from advertisers who are interested in reaching out to Google’s online users. A shortcoming of this advertisement-centric business model is that the individual whose personal data is being monetized by third-parties has little control over the collection process and the subsequent exploitation of his/her digital-personhood-data and that has direct consequence on his privacy. Furthermore, technology intermediaries capture only a small subset of the individual’s digital-personas, which are not necessarily accurate.

An alternative to the advertising-centric model is for consumers to sell their anonymized data directly to companies that want to buy it. This alternative has the potential to empower citizen ‘prosumers’ — citizens who both produce and consume data — by exploiting the economic value of their digital self in a new tradeable market in personhoods. We are working on this alternative, currently developing a ‘micro-Persona eXchange’ (“MPX”), i.e. an online exchange that allows prosumers to monetize their anonymized personhood-data by selling it directly to the end-user.

The aim of the MPX is to be a real alternative to the advertising-centric model by giving prosumers both actual control (as opposed to nominal control) over their data and real economic benefit of the data they generate. We believe that the MPX is a superior model to other alternatives (e.g. property rights in data, which give some degree of the control to consumers but not real economic control), while at the same time ensuring an adequate flow of data and safeguarding individual privacy. The fundamental idea behind the MPX is the notion that law, business and technology separately cannot solve the challenges and possibilities posed by big data but that they have to work together to create a workable framework.

We are seeking to engage with the broader academic community to analyse the implications of the MPX for law, economics and society.

Schedule for Individual Workshop Sessions (Download PDF)
Worshop Themes (PDF)

~-~-~-~-~-~-~

Thursday 30 April 2015

13h 30 – Introduction – Welcome

14h – Session 1 – Who really controls data in a big data world?
Dr. Alexander Novotny (Vienna University of Economics and Business)
Prof. Andrew Murray (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Florian Gamper (University of Essex, National University of Singapore)

15h30 – Break

16h – Session 2 – Consent in a big data world
Prof. Maurizio Borghi (University of Bournemouth) – “Copyright misuse in the big data environment”
Dr Orla Linskey  (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Jo Pearman (University of Kent)

~-~-~-~-~-~-~

Friday 1^st May 2015

9h45 – Session 3: trading on the Micro-Persona Exchange
We are inviting the participants to trade data on our MX platform as established by the team.

11h – Break

11h30 – Session 4 – Panel discussion on data trading challenges

13h – Light lunch (end)

~-~-~-~-~-~-~

If you are interested to attend, please register to either:

Audrey Guinchard, abguin@essex.ac.uk or Florian Gamper, gamper@essex.ac.uk

~-~-~-~-~-~-~

What do you think of the way your personal data is used in exchange for free services (i.e. such as Google or Facebook)? Would you prefer to trade your personal data in return for real money?
Tell us your views:  https://brunel.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/digitalprosumer_data

Digital Prosumer – Project Team

Professor Panos Louvieris (PI) is Professor of Information Systems in the Department of Computer Science at Brunel University.

Dr Audrey Guinchard (CI) is a Senior Lecturer in Law in the School of Law at University of Essex.

Dr David Bell (CI) is a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Brunel University.

Professor Nikos Nomikos (CI) is Professor of Shipping Risk Management at Cass Business School, City University.

Dr Natalie Clewley is a Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science at Brunel University.

Florian Gamper is a Research Associate in the School of Law at University of Essex.

Dr Federico Colecchia is a Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science at Brunel University.

Gareth White is a Consultant Software Developer  in the Department of Computer Science at Brunel University.

Digital Prosumer – Establishing a Futures Market for Personal Data

As networked digital technologies become more pervasive and diverse, it is possible to collect personal data generated across the Internet and to gather information on the different facets or personas of a person’s patterns of consumption and lifestyle behaviours. This digital footprint constitutes their digital identity, i.e. their Digital Personhood. Currently, personhood data is fragmented, residing in various repositories across the Internet. It has been considered to be part of the data commons that the ‘Big 3’ Internet Companies — Google, Facebook, Twitter– and other similar organisations have been freely data mining, analysing and, crucially, monetizing. Google, for example, captures data about its search engine users and monetizes it to generate most of its revenue from advertisers who are interested in reaching out to Google’s online users. A shortcoming of this advertisement centric business model is that technology intermediaries capture only a small subset of Digital Personas rather than an individual’s entire personal data record or Digital Personhood. Furthermore, the individual whose personal data is being monetized by third-parties has no control on the collection process and the subsequent exploitation of his/her digital personhood data.

The challenge of this bold and disruptive proposal is to empower citizen prosumers — citizens who both produce and consume data — by utilising and exploiting the economic value of their digital self in a new tradeable ‘futures market’ in personhoods. Specifically the project will develop a ‘micro-Persona eXchange’, building persona futures products and management system applications to enable prosumers to monetize their personhood data. The success of this project will stimulate world leading research activity concerning the design of persona products and trading processes, including the ongoing development of novel intelligent data analysis techniques for mining digital personhood data.

The project will also consider how a ‘futures market’ for digital personhood data will be established in legal terms. Who owns an individual’s digital personhood data is currently a moot point, with questions such as the suitability of property rights vs privacy rights to ensure data protection. Both organisations and the legal infrastructure need to accommodate this shift for the successful development of sustainable prosumer-centric business and economic models. The legal framework will notably ensure that the prosumer will be able to choose a curator (i.e a digital prosumer trading assistant) who will act as an intermediary between them and the micro-Persona eXchange when trading. With this in mind, the research will propose a draft for a Prosumer Protection Act.

The project has the potential to unlock substantial economic value for the UK Digital Economy, generating new revenue streams, and redistributing wealth in favour of the prosumer. The UK will have an opportunity to take the lead in establishing an innovative international futures market and thus be a global player, leader and innovator in what could be a key emerging industry i.e. Digital Prosumer Futures.

EPSRC Grant EP/L005859/1

RCUK Grant Page