Données personnelles et droit de propriété : quatre chantiers et un enterrement

Digital networks and services development grows as an always more acute issue, when we raise questions revolving around the management of personal data. The latter are subject to many processes of collection or creation, treatment and exploitation by commercial companies. Behavior and web navigation, choices and hesitations, histories and preferences, almost each and every piece of information may be gathered and valorized, with or without users being informed. These data may actually affect individuals, taken separately as well as in a community. In this paper, we focus on various propositions that question management, regulation and economic valorization of personal data, while analyzing in which context they emerged, which are their logics and potential consequences. Here, the idea of an individual patrimonial solution, by the mean of property right, is quickly put aside according to the risks that it entails. Instead, we put forward four field of work to carry out: strengthening the control by concerned individuals, sharing the economic valorization of data, regulating the digital platforms (through administrative power and market mechanisms), and fostering new institutional arrangements around privacy, collective governance et social compromises. Far from being sufficient alone or exclusive of each other, these tracks are designed to raise together the imperative of bringing individuals out of an imbalanced power relationship, and think of privacy in its profound collective nature.