2018年经济学人 反垄断:科技公司的收购与兼并(2)（在线收听）

To ensure that the platforms do not favour their own products, oversight groups could be set up to deliberate on complaints from rivals

要确保平台不偏袒自己的产品，可以设立监督小组来审议对手的投诉，

a bit like the independent “technical committee” created by the antitrust case against Microsoft in 2001. Immunity to content liability must go, too.

这有点像2001年针对微软反垄断案成立的独立“技术委员会”。对内容免责的豁免也必须取消。

Second, trustbusters need to think afresh about how tech markets work.

其次，反垄断机构需要重新思考科技市场的运作方式。

A central insight, one increasingly discussed among economists and regulators, is that personal data are the currency in which customers actually buy services.

经济学家和监管机构讨论的越来越多的一个重要见解是，消费者实际上是用个人数据作为货币来购买服务的。

Through that prism, the tech titans receive valuable information—on their users’ behaviour, friends and purchasing habits—in return for their products.

从这个角度看，科技巨头通过产品获得了关于用户行为、人际关系和购买习惯的宝贵信息。

Just as America drew up sophisticated rules about intellectual property in the 19th century,

美国在19世纪制定了有关知识产权的复杂规则，同样，

so it needs a new set of laws to govern the ownership and exchange of data, with the aim of giving solid rights to individuals.

现在它需要一套新的法律来管理数据的所有权和交换，好让个人能切实掌握自己的权利。

In essence this means giving people more control over their information.

这实质上是让人们更好地控制自己的信息。

If a user so desires, key data should be made available in real time to other firms—as banks in Europe are now required to do with customers’ account information.

如果用户有需要，关键数据就应实时提供给其他公司，现在欧洲的银行在处理客户账户信息方面就被要求做到这一点。

Regulators could oblige platform firms to make anonymised bulk data available to competitors, in return for a fee, a bit like the compulsory licensing of a patent.

监管机构可以要求平台公司向竞争对手提供匿名的批量数据，换取一定的费用，有点像专利的强制许可。

Such data-sharing requirements could be calibrated to firms’ size: the bigger platforms are, the more they have to share.

这种数据共享要求可以根据企业的规模作调整：企业越大，要共享的数据就越多。

These mechanisms would turn data from something titans hoard, to suppress competition, into something users share, to foster innovation.

这些做法能把巨头为了抑制竞争而囤积的数据变成可供用户分享、促进创新的数据。

None of this will be simple, but it would tame the titans without wrecking the gains they have brought.

这些事做起来都不容易，但能让科技巨头收敛，同时又不破坏它们带来的好处。

Users would find it easier to switch between services.

用户转换服务也会更容易。

Upstart competitors would have access to some of the data that larger firms hold and thus be better equipped to grow to maturity without being gobbled up.

崛起的竞争对手可以获得大公司持有的部分数据，从而更有可能成长壮大而不是被吞并。

And shareholders could no longer assume monopoly profits for decades to come.

股东们则再也不能指望未来几十年都获得垄断利润了。