Collective Data Rights and Their Possible Abuse

This short symposium piece looks at one controversial set of proposals for reforming data governance: the move towards “collective data rights.” The project for recognizing collective data rights is inspiring, understandable, and laudable. At the same time, however, this piece highlights a set of transnational risks associated with formal recognition of communitarian rights over data, particularly under international human rights law. While not rejecting the prospects of such an endeavors wholesale, the paper merely calls for greater caution, scrutiny, and nuance in the development of such rights. What worries me is that the current discourse is situated around a zero-sum game. Efforts in identifying new collective rights approaches and regulations seem to be in competition with existing individual rights models. Certain scholars and policy makers are falsely pitting them against each other. You must choose; favor one or the other. Not both. This is a dangerous dichotomy in my view. Not only that, though who propose collective data rights tend to focus only on their potential benefits while ignoring any of the myriad ways they might be abused by totalitarian actors.Instead, I would invite anyone who is interested in exploring these arguments of collective data governance to think more about the way such frameworks could supplement and build around our existing individual rights models rather than replacing them.Such complementarity, I think, offers the best prescriptive solution to the current challenges we face in the datasphere.The essay proceeds in two Sections. Section I maps out current proposals for the formulation of “collective data rights” and the motivations behind them. Section II applies the political science concept of “unjust collectivities” in the context of collective data rights to demonstrate some of the potential risks associated with this emerging discourse. Finally, I conclude by proposing a middle ground for advocates writing in this space