Like that car? The tricks of the data body industry 2. Like that car? The tricks of the data body industry In the New Economy, data have become a primary resource. Businesses unable to respond to the pressure of informatisation are quickly left behind. "Information is everything" has become the war-cry of the New Economy. More than ever, business companies now collect data related to their customers, their competitors, economic indicators, etc., and compile them in data warehouses. Large amounts of data acquired can be turned into a systematic collection called a data warehouse through data mining techniques. These data can be used for marketing, stock exchange transactions, risk assessment, and many other purposes. However, there are also many companies that specialise in data body economics as the main line of business. They collect huge amount of data process and enhance them (thereby increasing the value of the data) and offer them on to other companies. Direct marketing companies belong to this category. Direct marketing companies carry out targeted marketing, also called strategic marketing, aimed at individual customers or groups of customers. This process is based on a consumer profile, a collection of data containing personal information such as age, sex, marital status, employment, address, and information about consumer and payment behaviour. Based upon this profile, conclusions regarding possible future consumption are drawn and offers are made. For example, somebody who has been attracted by a car on display in an airport terminal and completes a card with name and address to participate in a draw reveals a lot of economically valuable information about him / herself. Apart from name and address, and other data that is completed on the card, this person also can be assumed to be a potential car buyer (evidently he / she wants a car) and to be relatively affluent (the poor do not normally travel by plane). The time when you complete the card also provides information: in July and August, you are more likely to be a holiday maker than in November. Possibly in small print somewhere on the ticket you complete you agree to receive more information about this and other products, and you agree also that your data are "electronically processed". The data acquired this way can normally be expected to be much more valuable than the car the is offered in the draw. Most people who completed the cards will not win in the draw, but instead end up on directs marketing data warehouses and one day receive offers of products and services which they never knew they wanted.

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RTMark and Adbusters at the WTO Conference in Seattle The 1999 WTO (World Trade Organization) Conference in Seattle not only attracted a multitude of demonstrators, but also artistic and cultural activists like RTMark and Adbusters. Adbusters, well known as fighters against corporate disinformation, injustices in the global economy and "physical and mental pollution", timely for the WTO Conference purchased three billboards in downtown Seattle. Featuring an image with the text "System Error - Type 2000 (progress)", the billboards were meant to challenge "... the WTO's agenda of global corporate growth and expose what isn't reflected in the United State's GNP - human and environmental capital." At the same time RTMark went on-line with its spoof WTO website http://gatt.org. Shortly after its release WTO Director-General Mike Moore accused RTMark of attempting to "undermine WTO transparency" by copying the WTO website's design and using "domain names such as `www.gatt.org` and page titles such as 'World Trade Organization / GATT Home Page' which make it difficult for visitors to realize that these are fake pages." http://gatt.org is not the first time that RTMark has used website imitation aiming at rendering an entity more transparent. RTMark has performed the same "service" for George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Shell Oil, and others with the principal purpose of publicizing corporate abuses of democratic processes.

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Invention According to the WIPO an invention is a "... novel idea which permits in practice the solution of a specific problem in the field of technology." Concerning its protection by law the idea "... must be new in the sense that is has not already been published or publicly used; it must be non-obvious in the sense that it would not have occurred to any specialist in the particular industrial field, had such a specialist been asked to find a solution to the particular problem; and it must be capable of industrial application in the sense that it can be industrially manufactured or used." Protection can be obtained through a patent (granted by a government office) and typically is limited to 20 years.

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Data warehouse A data warehouse is a central repository for all or significant parts of the data that an enterprise's various business systems collect. Data warehousing emphasises the capture of data from various sources, and combines them into economically valuable entities. A data warehouse is the end product of a process of data processing that may include data mining.

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