What about a tax on the sale of personal information, including the use of personal information for ad placement? To be clear, I’m not talking about a tax on collecting information or on using the information collected. I’m talking a tax on two-types of commercial transactions; selling information about individuals to third parties, or indirectly selling information to third parties via targeted advertising. It would be sort of a carbon tax for privacy pollution. We could even give “credits” for companies that reduce the amount of personal information that they collect (although I’m not sure we want to allow firms to trade them). We could have additional fines for data breaches the way we do for other toxic waste spills that require clean up.
Harold Feld
Harold Feld, Free Press and economist (and Nobel laureate) Paul Roemer have each somewhat unique take on how to solve the privacy debate, reign in big technology, and create taxation on internet services. Well, as I have been saying, it is open season on Silicon Valley. After all, this is where next big pot of lobbying dollars and think tank money is going to come from.