Based on his book with the same title, Law Professor Jan Trzaskowski explores the application of EU consumer law—including data protection law and other fundamental rights—to data-driven business models that infringe on human agency, social cohesion and democratic debate. It is suggested how our current legal framework can be informed by psychological, technological and societal perspectives to curb predatory business models of surveillance capitalism.

His book elucidates the potential for cross-fertilisation between data protection law and marketing law, and it demonstrates how the protection of human dignity, privacy and non-discrimination may corroborate these legal disciplines. It is argued that ‘paying with personal data’ is a misleading framing when, in fact, we pay with attention and agency—which are both scarcer and more precious than personal data and are also important in social and societal contexts. A three-tiered model of information asymmetry is introduced to illustrate why information does not ensure transparency, which is a prerequisite for user empowerment.

Jan Trzaskowski, Ph.D., is Law Professor at Copenhagen Business School and Aalborg University. Since the mid-1990s, he has dealt with legal and regulatory aspects of information technology, and his research focuses on the protection of consumers and fundamental rights, including privacy. He was Head of the Danish delegation negotiating the 2000 E-Commerce Directive and is founder of the Business in Democracy Initiative (BiDEM).