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- [00:01]
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- [00:32]
Daniel Solove
Foreign.
- [00:43]
Alan Chappelle
Welcome to the Monopoly Report the Monopoly Report is dedicated to chronicling and analyzing the impact of antitrust and other regulations on the global advertising economy. I'm Alan Chappelle. This week my guest is Professor Daniel Solove, professor of Intellectual Property and Technology Law at George Washington University Law School, and the CEO of Teach Privacy, a company that provides privacy and security training. I'm looking forward to having a bit of a debate on how privacy regulations should work. While Professor Solove is certainly not what I would call a privacy advocate, having read his book, I think he has a different view than many in the industry on what should and should not be considered appropriate uses of data. And I think it's important for those of us in the ad space to hear this perspective. So let's get to it. Hi Daniel, thanks so much for coming on the pod. How are you?
- [01:35]
Daniel Solove
Great. Thanks so much for having me.
- [01:37]
Alan Chappelle
I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is that you've been fairly critical of some of the positions taken by the business community when it comes to privacy. And in my view, at least a lot of those critiques can certainly apply to the ad space. So your recent book, which is great by the way, on privacy and technology, does a really good job of pointing out some of the flaws and the arguments being made by the larger business community. So with your permission, I'd like to focus today on some of those flaws, with the larger goal of seeing if we can find some alignment on solutions that are specific to the ad space. So before we get into that, just an observation. We both entered into the privacy space just over 20 years ago or so, and while I've known of you, reading your book was a great opportunity to learn more about you. And I've learned that we have at least one thing in common and that we both majored in history and liberal arts in college. And so before we get into the nitty gritty of policy, I'd love to know more how that background had influenced your thinking more broadly in the privacy field?
- [02:42]
Daniel Solove
Yeah, well, I came to it from a humanities background, and at the time I thought that that could be very helpful to look at technology with that background, because a lot weren't looking at technology with much of a. A humanities background. And so I thought that bringing literature and philosophy and history to the debate would be very fruitful because I think a lot of the problems that we're seeing with technology today are because not enough of this thinking has been applied to the technology by those developing it and those regulating it.
- [03:20]
Alan Chappelle
I agree completely. I will not take credit for being as forward thinking as I think you were. I happen to just take a lot of history because I thought it was really important to be able to write well. And then when I was in law school, there wasn't privacy curriculum to speak of, so I ended up taking a bunch of human rights courses and some European Union courses. And it turned out in retrospect, that those were both rather fortuitous to somebody who years later would. Would find themselves in the privacy world. So good fun and a credit to you for planning. So I want to jump into your book. Your book talks a bunch about nuance. And one of the things that I find challeng challenging in having these types of discussions is that they all too often go to the extremes and devolve into some flavor of, you know, tastes great, less filling type of an argument. So, philosophically, how does an appreciation for nuance underpin your approach to privacy?
- [04:14]
Daniel Solove
I think one of the real challenges with privacy is that it's such a vast, sprawling concept, and the law often treats it into simplistic binary a way. And that leads to a lot of problems, a lot of shortcomings. It leads to the law failing to protect privacy in a lot of instances, or having very simple approaches that just don't address the problem very well. Law, of course, is a simplification of life, and it can't be as complex as life is. But law still has to be responsive to the world as it exists and can't be so simplistic that it's such a crude tool that it really doesn't work. And I think in privacy, that's what we see with the law. A lot of times courts will say, okay, if any information is exposed in any which way to anybody or available in any which way to the public, no matter how obscure, it's not private. And the problem is today that data is everywhere and it's shared with a multitude of different people and entities. And I think that doesn't mean it's not private. Privacy is a lot more than just keeping things secret. But if the law takes this tact, it doesn't really work in the times we live in, the way that data flows today. So we really need to rethink that, and we need to think about how things actually work. And what we really see is a spectrum of, of exposure of information and expectations on how that information is used. And if we don't protect that, we really can't protect privacy today. And that's just one example, Many, many examples of how the law is just not up to the task, how it's simplifying things and failing to protect privacy as it exists today.
- [06:14]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah, I tend to think that we've approached privacy in way too much of a binary way. And maybe there's a third option, but the third option isn't really that much better. It's sort of like. It's sort of like on, off, or outright prohibited. And that I think is just way too simple to meet. I'm not sure it ever worked, but it sure as heck doesn't work, given some of the technological sophistication that we're now we're living in. So one of the problems that you identify in your book is that the current privacy paradigm puts way too much responsibility on the individual data subject. And I agree with that point. But where I think it starts to get a little bit more challenging is when one starts looking at the alternatives. And so where does personal responsibility end and paternalism by the government begin? And then how do you find the soft middle in there?
- [07:04]
Daniel Solove
Yeah, it's a great question. And the first big premise, and one that I've been really emphasizing a lot, is that individuals are unable to really do the task that the laws are trying to dump in their lap, which is manage your privacy. There are too many companies that have personal data. There are thousands. So it doesn't scale. The amount of detail that people need to know and understand to actually be able to do this task is way beyond people. Even as a privacy expert myself, I don't know enough detail about how my data is being used to really make these decisions. And ultimately, the decision that people are trying to make is, it's a simple one, actually, but it's actually very complex. But basically it's this. It's what are the benefits to me by using a technology, going to a website, you know, what am I going to get out of this? And then what are the risks to me? How could this harm me now? Or in the future. That's really what people are trying to decide. Are the benefits better than the risks? And that's a really tricky thing to do in today's age, where we're dealing with very complex algorithms and all sorts of data uses in the future that are changing, evolving. I decide, okay, I'm going to let a company see my purchases at a supermarket. Big deal, right? So what they know, like, you know, that I like to buy Diet Coke rather than Diet Pepsi. So I think, okay, it's not a big deal. I don't see any harm to me. I don't see any risks. The problem is that they can take this data, put it into a AI algorithm, and the AI is going to spit out all sorts of details about me, inferences about me, about my health, my political beliefs, religion, other things that you can infer from the data. Now, I don't know how, what it's going to do. I'm not an expert computer SC scientists. Even if I were, I'd need to know all the data that it's trained on. It becomes almost impossible for me to figure that out and make that risk calculation. And so ultimately, what should be done, I mean, you know, I don't want the government deciding for me, okay, you can't use, you know, this app or, you know, you, you can't use these technologies. You can't use Google. You can't use a smartphone. What I think that the law should do, though, is basically have our back and hold companies accountable. And if you think about how does the law deal with cars and other products, I can't go into the store and buy like an electric blanket that's going to burst into flames, right? I can't go and buy a car that's going to blow up on me or that the brakes are just suddenly going to just stop working randomly at any point in time. They're bas safety standards. And I don't have to become an expert in car safety. I can go to the supermarket and buy milk, and I don't have to go research the farms and I have to become an expert on pasteurization. I can just buy my milk, I can buy my car. I know that someone has kind of looked in and made sure there's minimal safety standards. Now there are different cars at different levels of safety, and I can choose that. But ultimately, I don't have to become a car expert. I don't have to become a milk expert. I don't have to become an expert on blankets and electronics. But the problem with technology and Digital technologies today is the law kind of forces us to become these experts. I shouldn't have to become an AI expert. I shouldn't have to understand how these algorithms are working. I should know that basically when I do something, I'm pretty safe now. Can't guarantee it all the time. Cars have defects, products have defects, things go wrong. And typically the way the law works is, you know, if something does go wrong and my car does blow up, I can sue and the company's held accountable. That creates an incentive for the company to say, okay, we're going to make sure the car safe. First have to get through the car safety standard. Then we put out in the market. Then we have to make sure if it, if it doesn't work, if it is still unsafe, we're responsible. That creates the incentives to create products that are safe. The consumer doesn't have to worry and become the expert there. They can just buy a car and know that, okay, the right incentives are there, they're going to make it safe. And if they don't, there's going to really be a real remedy. Unfortunately, with technology, it doesn't work that way. And that's the thing I'm critiquing. It should, it should be the same. I shouldn't have to be an expert. It shouldn't be all on me as a consumer. The company should be held accountable. And what the law is doing is it's not holding them accountable, basically saying, put it out on the market and, you know, the consumers are somehow going to figure it all out. Buyer beware. And if something goes wrong, to say, oh, yeah, we don't want to stifle innovation. You know, we just want to let these companies make their products. And if you think about how would that work with cars, basically work like, car blows up on you and the court says, ah, there's really no harm. Oh, it's not that bad. Oh, we don't want to stifle car innovation. You know, if they actually have to spend money to prevent cars that explode, that's going to stop them from creating, you know, cars as fast and making as big of a profit. And we don't want that. Oh my gosh, we wouldn't want to slow down car manufacturers there. And you know, it's interesting actually, that debate was had 60, 70 years ago and it was had with food. And we have, we've had these debates with other products. And generally the view was, you know, we can regulate cars, it doesn't stop innovation. And it worked. Unfortunately, we're kind of back to square one when it comes to digital technologies. We're having this debate again, and the law tries to treat technologies differently than everything else. And I'm basically arguing maybe we shouldn't, maybe why not treat technology just like other technology in the past?
- [13:12]
Alan Chappelle
Okay, so there's a lot there, and I think it's a lot of great insights. My first observation is that, or at least recognition that, yes, the car companies fought back on simple things like seat belts for years as cost prohibitive. That may have been more reflective of the fact that there was a triopoly of American car makers that had such a large percentage of the market that they were able to get away with that. I know we're going to talk about privacy as power in a minute, but that's, that's part of that. What I'd really love to know from you is what's the analogous situation? So if a car blows up, somebody probably dies or gets horribly injured, what is the similar situation that happens in a privacy setting?
- [13:55]
Daniel Solove
Well, I would say that privacy is more complicated because people aren't going to die in a lot of cases. But there could be severe harm. And we are seeing instances now where personal data is being used by the government to disappear people and bad things are happening. But it can also be used to deny people loans, to deny people insurance, to ultimately do things that people are not expecting and don't want. And ultimately, I think the way the law should work is the basic thing should be if I'm giving up my data for something and that ensure that the risk calculation is as consumers expect it to be. Like, don't let companies get away with a bad deal that people are taking just because they can't figure out exactly what's happening or what can be expected. So let's go back to the example I gave with, you know, I, I go to the supermarket, they want all my purchases, and now they're going to use it to infer all sorts of information that I didn't expect them to infer. Well, maybe the law should stop them from doing that and say, look, you know, if you want to infer information that I didn't expect to give you as part of this bargain, I expected to give you information about, you know, the sodas I'm buying and products, but not information about my health, Then I think the law should say, look, I consented to giving this information. Don't play gotcha on me and now figure out things that I didn't want to give they shouldn't be allowed to do that. And I think the law can say, look, that, that's beyond. They're taking advantage of my inability to figure out what they can infer. They're, by using technology to kind of get around, they want to know information about my health, then ask me and tell me what you're going to do with it. But you know, to kind of play these games and use it in ways I might not like and find out information I might not want. I think that's a problem and I think the law should, should put a stop to it. That's the kind of equivalent where we can look at, you know, what am I bargaining for when I use a technology and I, and what's expected now, yes, there can be certain times where there are some risks and you know, it's not all benefit and zero risk, but it's gotta be a good deal for me. It's gotta be generally good. And I think that the law can say, look, it's impossible for a consumer to really figure out if this is a good deal. So let's just hold the company to. The company's trying to sell it to me as if it is a good deal. So the way it's being sold to me is this is a good deal for me. Right? You use the technology, here's the price, sometimes it's free, you know, it's supported by ads, whatever it might be. This is good for you. This is going to benefit you more than it's going to hurt you. It's good risk. If I can't assess that, then the law can come in and say, look, if it happens that it's not a good risk for me, it actually turns out to be a crappy deal, well, then the law can say we're going to nullify it, we're not going to allow it, you know, that, that we're going to say, look, you know, make it, that it has to be a good deal for, for me, that's me having my back. Now. I know, like, okay, I make the deal, I consent to something. I think this is what I'm getting. The law will have my back and make sure the companies give me what was promised, what I was expecting. And that's, that's what I'm asking. It doesn't have to be, you know, the companies can choose what the deal is and whatever, but just don't play gotcha. Don't, don't sell me on something that's not really good for me, that's not going to give me the benefits and risks that I'm expecting and then hold me to a deal that I really wasn't equipped to make. So I think the law can just say, no, we're going to not allow that deal. We're going to say that you got to make a deal that's good for the consumer. There's a lot of freedom in that range to give good. There are a lot of instances where, you know, it is a good deal. Now, the technology is good. The benefits of using it are better than the cost. But that means that certain uses are going to be off the table if they, you know, they can't go and like, make these inferences and, oh, cool. Now we really wanted to get people sensitive health data, but we didn't want to ask people, so we kind of tricked them by getting other data and then inferring it from that. That's what I'm going to stop.
- [18:09]
Alan Chappelle
So fair enough. So first, I think you're making a harms argument, which, which I not only agree with, but I think. I think it was a problematic argument until fairly recently, at least, with respect to the ad space. And now the ad space is sort of its own little unique ghetto within the larger privacy environment. But I always thought that was a very difficult argument to make until, you know, we're now in a situation where health information can be collected and inferred. That's probably not the biggest one, at least in my brain. It's the precise location space where a lot of that stuff comes in, because there's just all kinds of things that can happen with the unfettered use of lat long type data. And then the third one, which I think was mostly speculative until our good friends at ARITY decided to start selling driving data to insurance companies. And then, and then suddenly it sort of blew up the, the argument with that. So I'm agreeing with you that I think that there is now a tangible harms argument where I think things get difficult. And this gets back into our nuanced discussion before is like you use the term, you know, it's a bad deal for me. Well, that on its face is a bit subjective. And so how do we, or how does the government determine what the bad deal for Daniel is? And can that rule set be open to the idea that the bad deal for Daniel may be different than the bad deal for Chappelle?
- [19:33]
Daniel Solove
I mean, there always is going to be a subjective component to it and there are always going to be issues that it's debated. And I'm really looking for, you know, instances where there are reasonably determined bad deal. One is where it's very clear that we can determine what consumers are expecting and the deal that they think they're getting. And so I think it's a bad deal. If, if I am expecting something and then something is not as I expected, then I'm, you know, my consent is really false, right? I'm being kind of tricked to consent. You know, the company kind of knows what it's going to do or decides to do something later on, and it knows that, you know, it's different from what I'm expecting and doesn't tell me. I think that's bad. I think that's. That's kind of, you know, selling me something that I'm not. I'm not planning. I think the government can kind of look at that, figure out what people are expecting. And we can test this. We can. You can poll people. You can determine, I think, pretty well, like, what the consumers are expecting when they are giving their data the current system go, just dump it in a privacy notice nobody reads. And then it's gotcha.
- [20:47]
Alan Chappelle
So that might be one of the first points where we're diverging a little bit because I think that we would agree on what the bright line, line examples of harm or unexpected activities on behalf of a consumer might be. But, but I do think that that may understate a bit, the nuance in the middle. And I'm fully conceding that where you draw the line may be different than where I draw the line. I think we can get to the point where we do a better job of that. And I think the government can be helpful trying to get rid of the clearly bad stuff. But there is a little bit of a throwing the baby out with the bathwater component here, which. Which some of us fear.
- [21:24]
Daniel Solove
Well, I definitely think there, I mean, I'm not saying, like, let's ban ads because there are some who think, like, online advertising is just bad and, and we want to get rid of it. I actually think ads can be fine. I don't think ads are inherently bad. I think they are a deal where, you know, I'm okay with, hey, I can get this free site, this free service if there's an ad, and the ad could be tailored to me, and I don't think that's inherently bad. Where I think it's a problem is that we're living now in a world where this data goes on to be used in other ways, and it could be used in ways that are harmful to me. Like, now companies have all this Data. And now we see the federal government wants to tap into this data and use this data and gather this data to do different things to track people's location. So, hey, I'm fine with a company tracking my location, such as an Uber. What I don't want, though, is the government to get a hold of that or for that data to be used for other purposes. And we're seeing this happen a lot where, you know, this data is, in fact being repurposed, where the government is, you know, trying to go after this data and gather this data, buy up location information from companies and apps and get it to track people down. And I think that's the problem. And these are the uses. I would stop. I think there are obviously going to be a bunch of cases that are clearly across the red line there. We probably agree are like, absolutely off the table. There will be some cases that I think we would probably agree are clearly fine and are totally on the table. And then there are going to be instances where there might be some debate, such as how long can you retain the data? I'm in favor of more limited retention. And I think the current government is really illustrating why if the data exists in the hands of a company and it's there and they have a big repository of it, you know, we see a lot of efforts very, very quickly by this administration to try to gather this data. Now, okay, you know, Kennedy at HHS wants to create this massive database of people with autism, you know, and the government to do to who knows what with it. And I kind of think, well, if I give data to a company or anything else about something like that, it shouldn't go into the clutches of the government. And the problem is the law doesn't do a good job protecting that data from falling into the clutches of the government or stopping the government from doing uses of it that are problematic. You know, the law is really struggling to stop things the government's doing. So the best way to keep it out of the hands of the government is for the data not to exist. So that's something that people should have protection against so that there's. And I think, you know, people. There are benefits to giving the data. So I wouldn't like ban anything that collects this type of data. But people should understand the risks, which is very, very hard to do. And then there should be protection so that, you know, it ultimately does not fall into the wrong hands. There are problems with government access where the law does not protect against that very well. There are problems where the law does not regulate consumer privacy very well. And then you put those two things together and you really get a pretty bad situation where those two things in tandem cause a lot of problems. And that's what we're seeing now. But it's not just the government, it's also other uses of it, just like location data. Oh, now what we're going to sell, you know, this to somebody else or do something with it and it starts having another use beyond the use I'm okay with. And so that's the problem. I totally fine with an app tracking my location when that's what I want, that's what it should be used for. But you know, once they're done with it and that use is over, that should be the end of it. But what we often see is that's not the end of it. You know, oh, it's profitable to take this and sell it to this other entity. It's profitable to create this new use of it. Let's sell it here, let's sell it there. That I think has got to stop because that's where it starts not being the right kind of deal for people. And people just can't know what's going to happen many years from now with this data and all these potential uses and the implications of it. Just not part of the bargain.
- [25:59]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah, so I think a couple of things. So when I was a very young, young person, a toddler, the US arguably led the world on privacy. They coming out of the civil rights era and with the FBI surveillance, she passed the Privacy act that the HEW community and the Fair Information Practice principles which regulated what the government could do. But really since then there's been relatively little regulation on the private sector. And so we've got what, 50 something years of the private sector turning data over to the government. Now I feel like it's hit an entirely new level over the last few months and that, that has me very, very worried. My other observation here is that I, and I've gone back and forth with a bunch of friends and on the privacy advocacy side, you know, there's this sort of notion that if you get rid of the, the small to mid size company collecting data, then you'll be able to deal with the very large Internet giants. And I would say that that strategy, I don't know that all of them use that strategy, but a number of them did. That strategy over the last 10 years has not necessarily borne fruit because the Orwellian idea to me has not been a thousand companies collecting some data. It's been six Companies collecting all your data. And that I think is where things go really south.
- [27:19]
Daniel Solove
Yeah, I would regulate them both. And so I definitely think that I wouldn't give a company a pass just because it's small. That said, I think that the biggest risk is the big companies. So I definitely would not give them a pass. I think we're in a world where we're really seeing the fruits of the kind of oligarchy emerge, where the big tech companies are now cozying up to the government and working with them. And the heads of these companies are essentially now becoming interested in, you know, ruling the world. And I think that that's very troubling and I think that that's where we winded. They're so drunk on their own power that they think that okay, now they were successful commercially and therefore they have a right to, to rule whether they're elected or not. You know, that's something that I think is a product of, you know, letting them get too big and too powerful is, you know, power corrupts and I guess, you know, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Market is better with smaller players without these big players overpowering everything. Especially now in the age of AI, where I don't think it's a good world if only a few tech bros have AI and no one else does.
- [28:40]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah, I think a lot of this is sort of the natural output of a phrase that you use in your book, Internet exceptionalism. And I will confess to have kind of bought into that. I mean, I got into the, the digital media space in 1997 and there was a cultural movement to blow up the existing power structure. Probably the best example would be Napster and the record industry and, but, but there are others. And there was sort of that feeling. And then at some point, Whether it was 2010, ish, 1112, it became clear that, that the interests of big tech were no longer aligned, certainly not with, with my constituency, which is sort of the smaller ad tech and martech companies, but even with society as a whole. And I think that really plays into, plays into, you know, the direction you're taking things here. So my question is, you know, it's about power. Privacy is power. I think that's another phrase you use in your book. How does privacy law and competition law interrelate in your opinion?
- [29:42]
Daniel Solove
Well, I think ultimately, I mean, competition law is focused on, you know, avoiding concentration of power in just a few or one entity that then has an unduly great amount of control. And a lot of the focus there is on, you know, pricing and the Consumer privacy looks a little bit broader to just generally, you know, harms to the consumer regarding privacy, even if it's, you know, not just one company, but a few companies, it looks to things beyond, you know, a lot of antitrust laws focused a lot on price, and I think there's a lot more than that. But there are debates. I'm not an expert in antitrust law. I think there are debates about other considerations in antitrust beyond price, but it's focused a lot on the consumer and what they would choose in a market. Privacy is a little different in that we're focusing on some other considerations, such as protecting them from harms that could befall them from the use of their data. But we are seeing a world that, I think, you know, you mentioned, I think very aptly, the arguments of the early days of the Internet, the commercial Internet as we know it kind of grows up in the mid-90s and then has really taken over the world. And the arguments in the early days were, hey, you know, this is different. This is a space that is radically free. This is going to give us a utopia because it's going to destroy existing power structures. It's going to democratize the world because now we don't have to rely on, you know, if I want to get my thoughts out to the world, I don't have to rely on, you know, getting on the news where only a few entities have control of that. But I think what we've seen is, is that it hasn't borne out to be a utopia, that the world that has been created and the world we're living in now doesn't look like this radical zone of freedom. In fact, it kind of looks like a fairly autocratic world where we're seeing a lot of threats to democracy, a world that also has a lot of disinformation in it, a world where people have very little privacy and are being controlled by, you know, the government or by companies that have undue power over them. So people are less powerful and the world is less democratic. Information is less trustworthy. So we're seeing a lot of the really bad things about this. I actually wrote a book early on, in the days of social media. It was around 2007, I wrote a book called the Future of Reputation, Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet. I was blogging. I really loved using the Internet and social media. But I saw some real problems here, some real tensions that unfortunately, were not addressed at the time. And now we're really seeing, I think, unfortunately, some of the really bad consequences of the kind of unfettered, unregulated use of this technology.
- [33:00]
Alan Chappelle
The impact on the publishing industry, and particularly news publishers is certainly noteworthy because if you've, you know, one of the first things you do if you're trying to set up a dictatorship is you, you rein in the free press. And unfortunately, that, that's, that process has started long before the current political situation we're in right now.
- [33:22]
Daniel Solove
I think that there's a lot of models that existed in the older power structure, any power structure, there's going to be a lot of things problematic and, and there are a lot of business models that weren't democratic that needed before, for sure. I think the idea though, that, you know, well, just like tear it all down, be kind of anarchic, you know, just wreck everything, move fast, just break everything as a strategy is unwise. I, I, I, I'm one for balance and caution. You know, I like change. But I think anytime you kind of just sort of radically go in with a sledgehammer and just knock everything down because it has problems. There's a reason why things are the way they are for good and for bad. You know, that the good takes time to develop, and it's developed over many years for a reason. And there are a lot of good things in that. And so, you know, you mentioned the phrase you don't throw out the baby with the bath water. And I think that's the case with a lot of things and a lot of the existing power structure that was torn down without thinking about the consequences, thinking that, okay, the grass is always greener on the other side. And I haven't is it. That doesn't mean you stay with the existing power structure and just do the status quo. But I think that, you know, there's a good argument for some caution here to avoid, you know, meddling so much and doing such like, radical disruption without considering what the consequences are. I always kind of start with, okay, let's like, really look at something. Let's study something. Let's understand what the benefits are and what the problems are, what the costs are, and then try to figure out how do we address that and then what the alternatives are and map this out like you'd map out a chess match. And I think for a lot of these things, I wrote about this, I've been writing about this for more than 25 years. And the problems were, you know, fairly predictable then. So I feel like now I could kind of say, I told you so, but I'm not like a clairvoyant I'm not, I don't think, like I had this magical power of prediction that other people didn't see. I, I think it was fairly clear that if you looked at it, if you studied it, a lot of the things that we're seeing now were very apparent 25 years ago, just that, you know, people wanted to rush into things. Everyone, oh, we don't want to regulate now. Technology changes, so we shouldn't regulate until technology is somehow fixed and settled. Well, technology is never going to be fixed and settled. It's always going to be moving and changing. In a sense, you have to build the train as it's going down the tracks. That's the only way to regulate technology. But I think we've learned a lot from more than a century of regulation. We've learned what works and what, what doesn't work. And there are a lot of things that work fairly well. I mean, they're problems, but, you know, they, they've been fairly good. And fortunately we don't learn from those things. The thing that's really frustrating to me, for example, is now we see this resurgence of this argument that, oh, we should deregulate.
- [36:35]
Alan Chappelle
If there's anything that's going to run counter to I think what the ethos that you're trying to suggest should happen, the current wave, which might even be larger than the 1980s Reagan wave of deregulation, is going to make that, I think, impossible, for better or worse.
- [36:51]
Daniel Solove
And I think that's absolutely the wrong lesson. And it's actually bad for innovation. And so I actually think what we're doing right now in the United States is the kind of bogeyman is regulation. And so let's just try to.
- [37:09]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah, but only for the last 50 years. Daniel.
- [37:12]
Daniel Solove
Yeah, the problem is that's not what cause I mean, we, we're, we're not only are we putting the stopping regulation, which is actually good for innovation, I think, you know, like forcing car manufacturers to, to make more fuel efficient vehicles, forcing them to make safer vehicles. I actually think it's better in the long run for, for, for the market. It's better for them in the long run. In fact, now they have safer, better cars, fuel efficient cars that are, in fact innovative and are going to be competitive. And I think what's happening now is we're seeing, you know, attacks on science, dismantling of the university system. You know, why is it that we are innovative? If we look at the true reasons, it's not because of the lack of regulation, it's because we have A university system that is creating technological developments and the ideas and the science that goes into the technologies. You look at almost anything with the Internet, the Internet, in fact, it was created by this partnership between the government and universities. Almost all the components and almost all the devices that we have, all the technologies we have, are because of this partnership that's being destroyed. So I look at the next generation, we're going to have a lot less innovation here. We are wrecking the goose that laid the golden egg. We are destroying the. The sources of our innovation. The sources also of the innovation was in fact bringing in people from abroad to come here and help build these technologies. And we got the best and the brightest around the world to come to do that. If you look at the founders of most of the tech companies, they're actually not us born people. So we're destroying all of the things we have, the recipe for what gave us innovation, and we're wrecking all of that. And instead we're replacing it with deregulation. But we're going to have regulation over nothing, deregulation over nothing. And some other countries are going to have all the innovation because we lost the message and attacked a friend rather than an enemy.
- [39:17]
Alan Chappelle
Well, yeah, I think a lot of what you're saying makes sense to me, and I actually don't disagree. It's going to be a really interesting next couple of years, and my hope is that things change. But I will say I'm 56 years old and I've been waiting exactly 56 years for the political pendulum to swing the other way. We'll see what happens.
- [39:38]
Daniel Solove
Yeah, I mean, I hope it does, because I do feel like I like innovation. I think technology can be great.
- [39:45]
Alan Chappelle
Let's leave it there. This has been a fantastic discussion. I really appreciate you coming on.
- [39:50]
Daniel Solove
Thanks for having me.
- [39:53]
Alan Chappelle
That was a great conversation. For what it's worth, I tend to agree with Professor Solove in that privacy regulation can actually be helpful to the business community. And I think we agree that industry should be focusing on practices that are more likely to create consumer harm, which generally would not include things like cookies, but would include the unfettered use of precise location and health data. I think where the professor and I might disagree is in where to draw the line, as I think the opaque middle is larger than he does. But I really enjoyed this debate and it's an honor to have someone so well respected in the privacy community on the show and be so willing to engage. We have a bunch of other fantastic guests coming up on the Monopoly Report podcast. Over the next few weeks, please subscribe to the show@monopolyreportpod.com or on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
- [40:53]
Adelaide Media
Thank you for listening to the Market podcast. New episodes come out every Friday and an insightful vendor interview is published each Monday. You can subscribe to our library of hundreds of executive interviews at Markitecture tv. You can also sign up for free for our weekly newsletter with my original strategic insights on the week's news@news.market. and if you're feeling social, we operate a vibrant Slack community that you can apply to join@adtechgod.com.