What’s the price of your product? In the past, one would probably assume that by your we mean the product you are selling. With the advent of massive information regarding prospective consumers, we are approaching an era in which your is more likely to stand for the product you are buying.

Firms want to maximize profits, and if they are constrained to charge a single price for every potential consumer, they might leave money on the table. However, if a customer reveals her willingness to pay (the key concept in this chapter), sellers may charge different prices to different people for the same goods or services.

Algorithmic pricing did not arise in a vacuum but is part of a wider phenomenon of using personal data to profile individuals on the market and make predictions about their preferences and behaviour in future market settings. The potential for price personalization is one of the most important and salient aspects of the wider phenomenon of algorithms and big data analytics that have come to dominate consumer market. The personalization of the contract should not be regarded separately from the personalization of other elements of a market relationship, neither theoretically nor from a practical perspective.

With the continued advances in big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), it is now possible to rapidly adjust prices of goods and services offered in digital consumer markets. In particular, traders may try to increase their surplus from a purchase based on the availability of a variety of consumers’ data. This may result in different prices being charged to consumers based on their predicted willingness to pay.

The prospects of personalized pricing have sparked a vigorous debate in Europe. Although wide deployment of this practice in the European Union (EU) markets has not been evidenced, it has already become a cause of concern.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) allow collecting and processing massive amounts of data obtained from people’s online records. Data is of particular importance regarding consumers and their activity in online markets because it allows access to (many) consumers’ personal and family characteristics, as well as prior consumption history. This, in turn, grants the ability to derive design proxies about preferences, interests, and personal valuations of goods and services. Naturally, this has significant economic impact.

Given the enormous size of the population of consumers, the use of big data, through AI, makes the approximation to individual consumer’s preferences, needs, concerns, and interests very accurate.

Of the many concerns triggered by the rapid growth of digital commerce and the expansion of the data-based economy, price personalization occupies a prominent yet peculiar position. For many firms, the availability of big data and refined algorithmic tools has opened unprecedented avenues to learn about consumers’ financial and personal standing, market preferences, and transactional behaviour patterns. Building on these insights, firms have (at least to some degree) obtained an ability to make behavioural predictions about the future conduct of their clients, including their interest in a particular assortment of products, responsiveness to certain forms of advertising, and – not least importantly – their willingness to pay a certain price.

The Constitution of Zambia protects freedom of thought is one of the two components of freedom of conscience, with the other component being freedom of religion or belief. This chapter considers the extent to which the letter of the law comports with the spirit of the law. The analysis suggests that the letter of the law hardly comports with the spirit of the law. First, the letter of the law appears to wrongly conflate three distinct types of freedom insofar as it portrays freedom of conscience is ‘an umbrella freedom’ and freedom of thought and freedom of religion or belief as specific components thereof. Second, the letter of the law does not appear to comport with the spirit of the law insofar as it suggests that it protects a person from being hindered in the enjoyment of his/her freedom of thought or freedom of conscience only where the hindrance occurs without one’s own consent. Third, the letter of the law does not appear to comport with the spirit of the law insofar as it suggests that the state can impose restrictions on, and derogate from, freedom of thought and freedom of conscience. The chapter culminates in a call for reform.

While research on the right to freedom of thought (FOT), as such, is already scarce, this chapter targets the European regional human rights framework in particular, attempting to fill the existing gap in research and literature. It aims to offer an exploratory analysis of the right to FOT through the prism of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and related jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Specifically, this chapter inquires whether the right to FOT can indeed be considered a right with independent value in the context of the ECHR, or whether it must rather be understood as an ancillary right, subordinate to and dependent on related ECHR rights (in a similar fashion as Article 14). In exploring this, a distinction must be drawn between the theoretical set-up of FOT in the ECHR and the drafters’ intention compared to how the ECtHR’s interpretation and application shaped the right in practice. By focusing on the question of its nature within the ECHR this chapter aims to stimulate further engagement with this under-researched right.

The Human Rights Act incorporates Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights guaranteeing the right to freedom of thought. Yet, in the absence of any guidance from the European Court of Human Rights and in line with the UK’s legal traditions, the right is protected in a piecemeal fashion akin to liberty and non-interference rather than the positive obligatory rights-based approach. As such, this chapter considers whether the right to freedom of thought exists in the common law. Finding that it does exist but that there is no certainty on its content, scope, or application, it is argued that this does not prevent the courts from determining the right under the common law. Attention is given to legal jurists and philosophers, as well as certain historical developments, which have influenced the UK’s development and protection of the right. The right to freedom of thought, like speech, is the liberty to speak truth to power, to dissent, and to organise an alternative form of governance. Contemporary legislation appears to acknowledge the forum internum (the inner realm of the mind) as a subject necessitating protection, albeit, not under the label of human rights.

Judges often speak of “freedom of thought” as a liberty central to American constitutional jurisprudence. But why does thought need protection even when it remains unexpressed in speech and hidden? This chapter explores two possible answers. One is that understanding a principle of freedom of thought explains why speech is strongly shielded by the First Amendment of the US Constitution: Our thought, judges and scholars stress, is central to how we define ourselves and speech is the key means of conveying thought and shaping it. Yet a right to freedom of thought might also stand on its own. The Court’s 1969 decision in Stanley v. Georgia provides two possible accounts of how it might do so. The first reaffirms and modestly expands the long-standing principle that officials may not target and punish us solely because of our thoughts. The second reading of Stanley goes further: It protects us not only against state action aimed at controlling thought but also that which interferes with certain environments or resources that allow us to shape our thought. This second account, the chapter explains, is more suited than the first to address certain challenges raised by emerging neurotechnologies.

This chapter explores the status of freedom of thought in Malaysia. It begins with a consideration of certain definitional issues surrounding freedom of thought and it provides a brief overview of the Malaysian legal system. As there is no explicit right to freedom of thought in Malaysia, this chapter considers the limited utility of international human rights treaties in protecting freedom of thought within the Malaysian context and the inherent difficulties in using qualified constitutional provisions on freedom of religion and freedom of expression to safeguard the absolute right to freedom of thought. It also considers the impact of various restrictive legislation upon the right to freedom of thought. The chapter concludes with the pessimistic view that freedom of thought is insufficiently protected within the Malaysian jurisdiction.