Vol 7 No 1 - Roger Williams University School of Law

cases where the manner of collection allows fairly preciseidentification, even without a name, such collection will not beallowed.An interesting question that arose in the DoubleClick caseand that is allied to the notion of database rights is whether thedata subject has a right to claim payment for the data that hasbeen collected and is being exploited. There, the court explained:Plaintiffs also contend that they have suffered economicdamages consisting of the value of: (1) the opportunity topresent plaintiffs with advertising; and (2) thedemographic information DoubleClick has collected.Essentially, they argue that because companies payDoubleClick for plaintiffs’ attention (to advertisements)and demographic information, the value of these servicesmust, in some part, have rightfully belonged to plaintiffs.They point to AOL in which the court appeared to holdthat damage to “reputation and goodwill” countedtowards the damage threshold and argue that, by thesame logic, the economic value of their attention anddemographic information should count as well.Even assuming that the economic value of plaintiffs’attention and demographic information could be countedtowards the monetary threshold—a dubiousassumption—it would still be insufficient. We do notcommonly believe that the economic value of ourattention is unjustly taken from us when we choose towatch a television show or read a newspaper withadvertisements and we are unaware of any statute orcaselaw that holds it is. We see no reason why Web siteadvertising should be treated any differently. A personwho chooses to visit a Web page and is confronted by atargeted advertisement is no more deprived of hisattention’s economic value than are his off-line peers.Similarly, although demographic information is valuedhighly (as DoubleClick undoubtedly believed when it paidover one billion dollars for Abacus), the value of itscollection has never been considered a economic loss tofactors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or socialidentity”).