| Data is the core element of digital economy development and innovation.The definition of data property rights is a fundamental prerequisite for the orderly circulation of data elements and an important basis for safeguarding consumer rights and competitive order.With the rapid development of the digital economy,platforms constantly improve algorithms and provide differentiated and innovative products or services by collecting massive data from netizens.However,platforms,especially large platforms such as Google,Amazon,Meta(Facebook),Alibaba and Tencent,have been engaged in excessive collection of consumers’ personal data,abusing their dominant position in data to implement "self-preferential treatment" and"platform blocking",and other behaviors that have drawn the attention of antitrust enforcement authorities in various countries.The "dilemma" of data collection and use has posed new challenges to the development of platforms and antitrust enforcement.On the one hand,the development of the digital economy requires a large amount of data,and on the other hand,the collection and use of data may bring new impacts on "privacy protection" and"platform competition".Broken through the dilemma,the key is to define the data property right scientifically and carefully and establish the circulation system of data elements.This paper analyzes the economic nature behind the data property rights and responds to the controversy and doubt for "Coase theorem".Meanwhile,this paper presented a scheme,based on the characteristics of data(such as "non-rival" and "zero marginal cost")and the data circulation process.The scheme divided into two levels:(1)divided data into personal data,enterprise data and public data;(2)divided personal data into privacy and non-privacy,classified enterprise data into derived data and secondary utilization data.Personal data focuses on delineating the scope of personal privacy through data rights,while commercial data,which consists of non-private and enterprise data,focuses on defining clear data property rights and fully realizing the value of the data.On the premise of dividing and defining data property rights,this paper further analyzed the anti-competitive behaviors of platforms in the case of personal data collection and use,business data transaction and implementation of data portability.At the same time,the research focused on two core issues:"The impact of platform privacy policy choices on platform competition during the data use phase" and "The impact of platform privacy policy choices on platform competition during the data flow phase".By using Game Theory analysis,text analysis method and numerical simulation to analyze the effect of privacy protection strategies on platform competition,the main research conclusions are as follows:(1)At the stage of personal data collection,text analysis and game theory are used to analyze "whether platform enterprises over-collect consumers’ personal data" and"whether the choice of privacy protection strategy affects platform competition".The results of the study show that most of the platforms choose to over-collect personal data in order to increase the amount of data owned by the platforms;after distinguishing between private and non-private data,an appropriate privacy protection strategy can improve the pricing of the platforms’ profits and consumer demand.Under the premise of profit maximization,considering the cost of privacy protection,platforms cannot increase the level of privacy protection indefinitely.In addition,excessive privacy protection can increase consumer surplus,but the same results in data elements not being able to release their potential through circulation and transform into higher economic value,and total social welfare cannot be optimized.Therefore,the government should encourage platforms to rationally utilize non-private data and strengthen the protection of personal privacy data.(2)When there is a data trading system,two platforms sell and buy data separately.The data selling enterprise determines the data-trading price,and as the data trading price increases,the data selling firm increases the level of privacy protection,consumer demand increases,and the increase is sufficient to compensate for the loss of consumer demand from increased pricing of the product or service,and the platform firm’s profits increase.The data buying enterprise ues the data to improve its products and services and raise the price of its products,from passing on the cost of data acquisition to consumers,while it will adopt a relatively low privacy protection strategy to increase the strength and scope of data collection.(3)When there is data portability,the two platform enterprises conduct data migration out and migration in separately.The optimal data portability exists between the data migration-in and data migration-out firms,and both of them choose the equilibrium level of privacy protection under the premise of profit maximization.When the competition intensity between the two firms is relatively high,the platform will reduce the privacy protection level to access to more data and the optimal data portability will decrease either.In addition,the data portability right is for personal data,and the platform operators cannot implement data portability,so the data portability right has some limitations to deal with the problem of "self-preferencing".Platforms tend to allow "data portability" rather than trading data actively,especially selling data to competing platforms.Based on the above conclusions,this paper believes that it is necessary and crucial to establish a market-oriented circulation mechanism for data elements,and to formulate a feasible data property rights definition scheme and an incentive-compatible competition policy.Establish data trading market and data pricing rules as soon as possible.In order to avoid monopolistic high prices set by platforms,independent thirdparty data intermediary companies or data service providers can be considered,to set open and reasonable data transaction prices.The implementation of the right to data portability cannot copy the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.Although data portability can arise deterrence effect some "data monopoly" behaviors on platforms,such as over-collection of personal data and platform ban,in terms of implementation effect,maybe not in line with the current development status and main problems of platform economy in China.In response to anti-competitive behavior of platforms,the platform autonomy and legal supervision system should be improved,the behavior of platforms should be regulated,and the role of competition policy should be actively brought into play.The innovation of this paper is three:(1)Expanded and enriched the theoretical connotation and application value of "property rights theory" in digital economy,by divided data types according to the characteristics and properties of data.When initial property rights are clear,the "Coase Theorem" still applies to the definition of property rights in data.(2)Various methods,such as game analysis,numerical simulation,textual analysis and case study,are used to analyze the effects of the level of privacy protection,the data trading system and the right to data portability on the competition of platform enterprises.It was found that an appropriate increase in the level of privacy protection by platforms contributes to an increase in total social welfare,but that an overemphasis on privacy protection leads to a decrease in total social welfare,a conclusion that holds true in the presence of a data trading system and the right to data portability.(3)Proposed a scheme for defining data property rights,under comprehensively considering the maximization of data value to balance the interests of consumers,platforms,and the government.Explore the feasibility of introducing a data trading system and a right to data portability to address over-collect consumers’ personal data and "platform ban",but a data trading system would be more effective in addressing the problem of "self-preferencing". |
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