Personal data as pseudo-property: Between commodification and assetisation

Abstract

The paper discusses how personal data is a crucial resource in the digital age. It explores the complex nature of the economic valorisation of personal data. Recent discussions have focused on the commodification and profit generation from personal data and its role as an asset and a source of rent. Property rights play a significant but contradictory role in each of these cases. From a technical standpoint, personal data does not fall under traditional ownership rights protected by intellectual property laws. It is neither an artistic work covered by copyright nor an outcome of financial investment that could be protected by patents. Instead, the paper focuses on the role of personal data in the capitalist mode of production and digital monopoly conditions. It aims to analyse the successive transformations of everyday activities into machine-readable objects, de facto property, assets, and elements of monopoly capital.