Digital information is the fuel of the new economy. But like the old economy’s carbon fuel, it also pollutes. Harmful “data emissions” are leaked into the digital ecosystem, disrupting social institutions and public interests. This talk will challenge the hegemony of the prevailing view—that the injuries from digital data enterprise are exclusively private. The data pollution concept offers a novel perspective why existing regulatory tools—torts, contracts, and disclosure law—are ineffective, mirroring their historical futility in curbing the harms from industrial pollution. The data pollution framework also opens up a rich roadmap for new regulatory devices—“an environmental law for data protection”—which focuses on controlling these external effects.

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Speakers:

Omri Ben-Shahar

Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law, Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics, University of Chicago Law School

Omri Ben-Shahar earned his PhD in Economics and SJD from Harvard in 1995 and his BA and LLB from the Hebrew University in 1990. Before coming to Chicago, he was the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Michigan. Prior to that, he taught at Tel-Aviv University, was a member of Israel's Antitrust Court and clerked at the Supreme Court of Israel. He writes primarily in the fields of contract law and consumer protection. He is the co-author of More Than You Wanted to Know: The Failure of Mandated Disclosure (Princeton 2014). He is the Co-Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Consumer Contracts. He also writes a biweekly column for Forbes.

Ruoying Chen

Associate Professor, Peking University Law School

Ruoying Chen delivered the 2019 Dieter Heremans Lctures in Law and Economics in KU Leuven and was Global Professor at KU Leuven Faculty of Law, visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School and the Buchmann Faculty of Law of Tel Aviv University. Previously, she worked for international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. Ruoying earned her J.S.D., M.Juris and LL.B from the University of Chicago, the University of Oxford and Peking University, respectively. Her recent research has been focusing on regulatory theories and the regulation of platforms, land and bond restructuring.