Can you own your personal data? The HAT (Hub-Of-All-Things) data ownership model

This paper sets out 11 principles of the HAT data ownership model as the basis for the legal, economic and technical engineering of personal data rights for individuals, sui generis, through the HAT Microserver artefact and re-commodification of personal data into a new asset class of PPD (person-controlled personal data) for a market to emerge. We argue that the formation of PPD as an asset class can emerge a primary market for personal data due to its ability to create differential privacy through selected data (without revealing personal identifying information), bundled multi-source data from the individuals themselves that is verifiable, data that is shareable in real time and on demand from the cloud and that is dynamically accurate, due to individuals themselves being the stakeholders of their data. The HAT Project’s ultimate objective is that an explicit, primary market for personal data, similar to the emergence of a primary market for digital music in the early 2000s, would reduce illegal and inefficient personal data markets as well as reduce externalities relating to privacy, as future applications switch to using HATs as user accounts. The HAT model sets up a parallel asset class to challenge the OPD asset class through easier access, higher quality and lower friction, much like the way music licensees challenged music piracy.