The content of this book is rather controversial. It paints a rather bleak picture, that the current EU legal economic system being developed for the data-driven economy is both outdated and – to some extent – a policy at war with itself. It promotes dominant platforms to detriment of others. Moreover, the fundamentals for creating rules are also missing. A liberal economic system needs to be based on aspects of a rights system, otherwise, we risk losing innovation, the establishment of new markets, and the creation of wealth, while we will see increasing market failures. Without a legal system for rights to data, we will lose out of a just system for the distribution of wealth. Indeed, it is time that the data-driven economy and the internet economy are granted their ‘property’ rights, reflecting the new paradigm of the data-driven industrial revolution. Moreover, such a regime fits well with the European economic constitution now being established.

Providing access and transfer rights (ATRs) to data for the benefit of business users (i.e., content providers and other firms) in their relationship with platforms is not an easy fix. However, such rights can be identified as intellectual property rights and, in Germany (the jurisdiction where this has been discussed most), the idea of covering data with property rights has been strongly rejected by both intellectual-property and competition-law academics.1