Willingness to share : on commercial privacy rights and the future of data exploitation

Individuals trade their personal data every day. By typing in Google search, or using Facebook they get the service for free in return for letting marketers trace their behaviors. When disclosing personal data individuals perform a simple risk-benefit calculation (privacy calculus) before deciding whether or not to disclose their personal information and against what costs. Despite the variety of attitudes toward these trade-offs, in which the more privacy and personal data individuals give up the more benefits they get in return, our information age has influenced open access and knowledge-sharing in a way that has individuals distracted from demanding certain benefits, for example that SNS users can personally take charge of extracting value from their own data. Ethically, it makes sense that everybody knows what is happening to their data, how an entity is using it, how the provider can benefit from the data disclosure and what the possible consequences are. This study aims to investigate the commercial rights of personal data sharing and the exploitation of data disclosure.