In an article posted by the Privacy Association, Jedidiah Bracy (@jedbracy) recapped Tuesday's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) workshop in Washington, DC where the rise of peer-to-peer networking and the burgeoning “sharing economy” was the topic du jour.
Participants explored whether new regulation is needed. In a wide-ranging conversation covering rapidly changing business models, potential regulatory obligations and consumers’ increasing dependence on reputational feedback, industry representatives hashed out what is clearly a complex but innovative sector of the modern economy.
Mason University’s Adam Thierer (@adamthierer) said, “think about how far we’ve come by combining the power of reputational feedback mechanisms and information technology? It’s worth celebrating that fact—that the general policies of our country can allow companies to go out and innovate and not ask for a blessing first.”
Tilburg University Professor Sofia Ranchordás backed a fiduciary approach in her analysis. “If you have a relationship based on trust and economic dependence,” she explained, “you have a duty to keep data secret, but in some cases, you have a duty to disclose. Why don’t we put a fiduciary duty on platforms? With privacy, data shouldn’t be collected without consent.”
There are plenty of differing thoughts on where the sharing economy needs to go in order to become a stable and widely approved business option. It seems as though the underlying consensus was that government regulation isn’t quite necessary, but there will need to be action taken within marketplaces to ensure their customers and providers are safe and happy.
Whether that is creating a consistent and honest rating system, secure and thorough background checks or concrete privacy laws in sharing personal data, there are steps that can be made without government regulation. We believe that individual states and cities are more than capable of securing the sharing economy in a way that no one loses.
Read the source article at privacyassociation.org
