very interesting article, especiallyfor me as german. I know, it’s another aspect, but: you know about all that (sorry….) ‘nonsense’ about and around the german data privacy protection. In germany it is not allowed to give such a kind of data to others or to make them public. But sometimes i ask myself: Whenever i moved to another new apartment, how can it be that the most assurances or any other organisations i’m connected to knows my new address w/o i did anything therefore? There are enough other examples that show me that the german data privacy is more or less only maculature… i’m pretty sure that for example the Deutsche Post AG is making a lot of money with selling my data (of course they say they wouldn’t because it is against the law….).

My conclusion at all: basically it would be a good idea to make it possible to sell and buy customer data, but in germany we would need to change the law

With all your arguments about marketplaces, of tech utopianism, strategies and so on of course you are absolutely right.

We will see what happen…

Dietmar