Data Portability: A Solution, Too Many Problems
Abstract
Interoperability and data portability are closely related concepts. Data portability – the idea that users (or firms acting on their behalf) should be able to easily obtain a copy of all of that user’s data held by a company in a standardized, electronic format – can be understood as a form of interoperability. But whereas variations on interoperability have been used and debated for generations, data portability as a discrete concept is of relatively recent provenance. Many commentators trace it back no further than the adoption of a data portability mandate in the European Union (EU)’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), though earlier examples can certainly be found.
The great conundrum of data portability is that it serves multiple purposes – purposes that are sometimes in tension. And data portability does not achieve its two most clear purposes, vindicating users’ privacy interests and addressing competition concerns, particularly well on their own. This chapter, forthcoming in The Turn to Ex Ante Regulation of Big Tech: Lessons from Past Regulatory Efforts (Christopher Yoo & Giovanna Massarotto, eds.), provides an intellectual and regulatory history of the data portability concept and surveys its various goals and how well it accomplishes them.