Breaking Away

This book explores how data-opolies colonize and dominate markets, identifying shortcomings in the proposed remedies and providing solutions that can promote privacy, deter the toxic competition caused by behavioral advertising, and balance privacy and healthy competition when they conflict.

Stucke (law, Univ. of Tennessee) discusses data privacy in an approachable manner for lay readers. He covers how a few large tech companies, such as Google's parent company Alphabet, hoard data. He then describes the attempts of international, federal, and state laws to rein in data collection, mostly to little effect. These discussions serve as an introduction to his analysis of data privacy, especially data that include personal identifiable information...This book sounds a clarion call for ordinary people and experts alike to take data privacy seriously.

The arguments in the book are clear, well evidenced and indicative of the author's distinguished career as a scholar, lawyer and legal advisor...Stucke uses concise language and useful examples to make specialised concepts easily comprehensible to readers who are unfamiliar with either or both fields. This makes Breaking Away a valuable read not only for scholars, lawyers, consumer groups and policymakers, but also anyone interested in how their data are being used and what can be done about it.

Maurice E. Stucke is the Douglas A. Blaze Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the law firm, Konkurrenz. With 25 years experience handling a range of policy issues in both private practice and as a prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice, he advises governments, law firms, consumer groups, and multi-national firms on competition and privacy issues. He has testified before, and provided expert reports for, multiple governments and inter-governmental agencies, including the European Commission, United Nations, OECD, and World Bank. He has been quoted, and his research has been featured, in numerous media outlets.