Join METRO’s Director of Programs and Partnerships, Davis Erin Anderson, for a conversation with Sarah Lamdan about Lamdan’s new book, Data Cartels: The Companies That Control and Monopolize Our Information.

About the book:
In our digital world, data is power. Information hoarding businesses reign supreme, using intimidation, aggression, and force to maintain influence and control. Lamdan brings us into the unregulated underworld of these “data cartels,” demonstrating how the entities mining, commodifying, and selling our data and informational resources perpetuate social inequalities and threaten the democratic sharing of knowledge.

Lamdan contends that privatization and tech exceptionalism have prevented us from creating effective legal regulation. This in turn has allowed oversized information oligopolies to coalesce. In addition to specific legal and market-based solutions, Lamdan calls for treating information like a public good and creating digital infrastructure that supports our democratic ideals.

About the author:
Sarah Lamdan is a Professor of Law. She teaches administrative law, environmental law, data privacy, information access, and government transparency courses. Before teaching law, Lamdan was a librarian in academic and private libraries.