Navigating the Data Trading Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews challenges and solutions in data trading markets, highlighting issues like privacy and rights ambiguity, and introduces the innovative concept of 'data usufruct' to improve economic and legal frameworks.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive categorization of data trading challenges and proposes 'data usufruct' as a novel approach to address rights ambiguity and facilitate market development.

Findings

Identification of key challenges: compliance, collateral, and costs.

Shift from isolated solutions to integrated approaches in literature.

Introduction of 'data usufruct' to reframe data rights and usage.

Abstract

Data has been increasingly recognized as a critical factor in the future economy. However, constructing an efficient data trading market faces challenges such as privacy breaches, data monopolies, and misuse. Despite numerous studies proposing algorithms to protect privacy and methods for pricing data, a comprehensive understanding of these issues and systemic solutions remain elusive. This paper provides an extensive review and evaluation of data trading research, aiming to identify existing problems, research gaps, and propose potential solutions. We categorize the challenges into three main areas: Compliance Challenges, Collateral Consequences, and Costly Transactions (the "3C problems"), all stemming from ambiguity in data rights. Through a quantitative analysis of the literature, we observe a paradigm shift from isolated solutions to integrated approaches. Addressing the unresolved issue of right ambiguity, we introduce the novel concept of "data usufruct," which allows individuals to use and benefit from data they do not own. This concept helps reframe data as a more conventional factor of production and aligns it with established economic theories, paving the way for a comprehensive framework of research theories, technical tools, and platforms. We hope this survey provides valuable insights and guidance for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, thereby contributing to digital economy advancements.