Privacy Regulation Benefits Must Outweigh Innovation Costs, ITIF Says

Lawmakers can't ignore cost to innovation when considering stringent privacy regulations, said the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Wednesday. Senior Policy Analyst Alan McQuinn and Vice President Daniel Castro said that if European digital advertising revenue grew at the same rate as in the U.S., the EU, where "strict privacy regulations reduce the revenue digital companies can earn from online ads," would have had an additional 11.7 billion euros flow through its digital ecosystem 2012-17. The report suggested a three-part test for adopting potential privacy regulations: Lawmakers should “target specific, substantial harms,” “directly limit those harms,” and “the costs of the regulations must be outweighed by their countervailing benefits.”