  From the early days of the information economy, personal data has been its
most valuable asset. Despite data protection laws and an acknowledged right to
privacy, trading personal information has become a business equated with
"trading oil". Most of this business is done without the knowledge and active
informed consent of the people. But as data breaches and abuses are made public
through the media, consumers react. They become irritated about companies' data
handling practices, lose trust, exercise political pressure and start to
protect their privacy with the help of technical tools. As a result, companies'
Internet business models that are based on personal data are unsettled. An open
conflict is arising between business demands for data and a desire for privacy.
As of 2015 no true answer is in sight of how to resolve this conflict.
Technologists, economists and regulators are struggling to develop technical
solutions and policies that meet businesses' demand for more data while still
maintaining privacy. Yet, most of the proposed solutions fail to account for
market complexity and provide no pathway to technological and legal
implementation. They lack a bigger vision for data use and privacy. To break
this vicious cycle, we propose and test such a vision of a personal information
market with privacy. We accumulate technical and legal measures that have been
proposed by technical and legal scholars over the past two decades. And out of
this existing knowledge, we compose something new: a four-space market model
for personal data.
