Enabling the new economic actor: personal data regulation and the digital economy

This paper offers a sociological perspective on data protection regulation and its relevance to the design of digital technologies that exploit or ‘trade in’ personal data. From this perspective, proposed data protection regulations in Europe and the US seek to create a new economic actor – the consumer as personal data trader – through new legal frameworks that shift the locus of agency and control in data processing towards the individual. The sociological perspective on proposed data regulation recognises the reflexive relationship between law and the social order, and the commensurate need to balance the demand for compliance with the design of tools and resources that enable this new economic actor; tools that provide both data protection to the individual and allow the individual to exploit personal data to become an active player in the emerging data economy

Enabling the new economic actor: personal data regulation and the digital economy

This paper offers a sociological perspective on data protection regulation and its relevance to the design of digital technologies that exploit or ‘trade in’ personal data. From this perspective, proposed data protection regulations in Europe and the US seek to create a new economic actor – the consumer as personal data trader – through new legal frameworks that shift the locus of agency and control in data processing towards the individual. The sociological perspective on proposed data regulation recognises the reflexive relationship between law and the social order, and the commensurate need to balance the demand for compliance with the design of tools and resources that enable this new economic actor; tools that provide both data protection to the individual and allow the individual to exploit personal data to become an active player in the emerging data economy

A day in the life of things in the home

This paper is about human interaction with things in the home. It is of potential relevance to developers of the Internet of Things (IoT), but it is not a technological paper. Rather, it presents a preliminary observational study of a day in a life of things in the home. The study was done out of curiosity - to see, given the emphasis on ‘things’ in the IoT, what mundane interaction with things looks like and is about. The results draw attention to the sheer scale of interaction with things, key areas of domestic activity in which interaction is embedded, and what it is about domestic life that gives data about interaction its sense. Each of these issues raises possibilities and challenges for IoT development in the home

Privacy Engineering for Domestic IoT: Enabling Due Diligence

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has recently come into effect and insofar as IoT applications touch EU citizens or their data, developers are obliged to exercise due diligence and ensure they undertake Data Protection by Design and Default (DPbD). GDPR mandates the use of Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) as a key heuristic enabling DPbD. However, research has shown that developers generally lack the competence needed to deal effectively with legal aspects of privacy management and that the difficulties of complying with regulation are likely to grow considerably. Privacy engineering seeks to shift the focus from interpreting texts and guidelines or consulting legal experts to embedding data protection within the development process itself. There are, however, few examples in practice. We present a privacy-oriented, flow-based integrated development environment (IDE) for building domestic IoT applications. The IDE enables due diligence in a) helping developers reason about personal data during the actual in vivo construction of IoT applications; b) advises developers as to whether or not the design choices they are making occasion the need for a DPIA; and c) attaches and makes available to others (including data processors, data controllers, data protection officers, users and supervisory authorities) specific privacy-related information that has arisen during an application’s development

Making it “pay a bit better”: design challenges for micro rural enterprise

This paper reports on a field study of small market in Wales undertaken as part of broader research project aimed at developing IT solutions to support rural enterprise. The project is predicated on the assumption that the primary challenge facing rural enterprise is that of scale and that IT solutions could and should add value by enabling growth. The study suggests that many rural enterprises are micro in character, that they are not driven by the need to grow, and that value is and can be added in different ways that reflect the social values oriented to and employed by micro businesses and their consumers. The paper elaborates vernacular understandings of supply chains and their coordination, along with business and consumer motivations to consider alternative possibilities for design that place emphasis on making micro rural enterprise ‘pay a bit better’ rather than scaling it up

“We don’t sell blocks” exploring Minecraft’s commissioning market

In recent years, we have experienced the proliferation of videogames that have, as their main mode of play, the creation of in-game content. Even though existing literature has looked into various characteristics of these games, one of their aspects that warrants further exploration is the monetisation practices that can emerge in their context. Through our ongoing ethnographic study, we became aware of a vivid commissioning market in Minecraft’s creative community. Our findings point out the 3 main actors that constitute this market: the clients, who own Minecraft servers; the contractors, who handle the clients’ orders of Minecraft maps; and the builders, who are responsible for the creation of said maps. Furthermore, our work has revealed that the commodity at play is not the in-game content, as one would expect, but the service of creating this content. These findings suggest that commissioning in Minecraft – a well-organised process, initiated and sustained solely by the members of the game’s community – plays a crucial role in the game’s current structure. Moreover, they challenge the belief that content generation in gaming settings is free-labour that is exploited by the developers of those games

Enabling the new economic actor: personal data regulation and the digital economy

This paper offers a sociological perspective on data protection regulation and its relevance to the design of digital technologies that exploit or ‘trade in’ personal data. From this perspective, proposed data protection regulations in Europe and the US seek to create a new economic actor – the consumer as personal data trader – through new legal frameworks that shift the locus of agency and control in data processing towards the individual. The sociological perspective on proposed data regulation recognises the reflexive relationship between law and the social order, and the commensurate need to balance the demand for compliance with the design of tools and resources that enable this new economic actor; tools that provide both data protection to the individual and allow the individual to exploit personal data to become an active player in the emerging data economy

Enabling the New Economic Actor: Personal Data Regulation and the Digital Economy

This paper offers a sociological perspective on data protection regulation and its relevance to the design of digital technologies that exploit or ‘trade in’ personal data. From this perspective, proposed data protection regulations in Europe and the US seek to create a new economic actor – the consumer as personal data trader – through new legal frameworks that shift the locus of agency and control in data processing towards the individual. The sociological perspective on proposed data regulation recognises the reflexive relationship between law and the social order, and the commensurate need to balance the demand for compliance with the design of tools and resources that enable this new economic actor; tools that provide both data protection to the individual and allow the individual to exploit personal data to become an active player in the emerging data economy

Demonstrably doing accountability in the Internet of Things

This paper explores the importance of accountability to data protection, and how it can be built into the Internet of Things (IoT). The need to build accountability into the IoT is motivated by the opaque nature of distributed data flows, inadequate consent mechanisms, and lack of interfaces enabling end-user control over the behaviours of internet-enabled devices. The lack of accountability precludes meaningful engagement by end-users with their personal data and poses a key challenge to creating user trust in the IoT and the reciprocal development of the digital economy. The EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (GDPR) seeks to remedy this particular problem by mandating that a rapidly developing technological ecosystem be made accountable. In doing so it foregrounds new responsibilities for data controllers, including data protection by design and default, and new data subject rights such as the right to data portability. While GDPR is technologically neutral, it is nevertheless anticipated that realising the vision will turn upon effective technological development. Accordingly, this paper examines the notion of accountability, how it has been translated into systems design recommendations for the IoT, and how the IoT Databox puts key data protection principles into practice.Comment: 31 page

The ludic takes work

Games that revolve around user-generated content have been explored mainly from a ludic perspective, leaving the work practices that are entailed in content production underexplored. What we argue in this paper is that there is an underlying economy in Minecraft’s community, which plays a significant role in the game’s current form. Our ethnographic fieldwork revealed the various aspects of the work of producing in-game content, by teasing out the discrete segments of the arc of work of commissioning, creating and delivering a Minecraft map. The infrastructure this work relies on is fragmented though, with the various accountability systems in place being appropriations by the players themselves. This raises a number of design implications related to how members coordinate tasks and articulate their work