Concorrenza e mercato

The paper explores from a competition law perspective the difference between control of information and data before and after the emergence of the Big Data environment. The Internet of Things (IoT) is examined to capture the novelty of the current features of data generated and controlled by firms in terms of quantity, quality and scope. The tools and underpinnings of antitrust are revisited in order to deal with its interface with the IoT; the resulting analysis focuses on the adaptation of traditional rules on restrictive agreements, unilateral abuses of market power and mergers in the novel context. It is argued that the analytical shortcomings of traditional, Chicago law and economics approaches are magnified by their application to the new context, as shown by the overoptimistic treatment of perfect price discrimination by law and economics scholarship. The paper concludes with a proposal for radical rethinking of antitrust, which should identify the appropriate regulatory fora and regain its original, foundational political dimension. It is argued that this approach should be grounded on the openness and interoperability mandate which is based on the information commons theory, as advocated by Elinor Ostrom.