quote: "So what exactly does this meddling, nanny state, "change them for the better" project do other than create work for busy bodies, and costs for businesses, for no good purpose."
First thing I spotted was that they are calling for an interoperable transfer format, which would help facilitate data transfer between organisations when a consumer wishes to move. e.g. make it simpler to go from BT to Virgin, or Vodafone to Orange. Surely a common customer data format would make things cheaper and easier for businesses who deal with migrant customer bases (especially in high churn sectors like mobile)?
I realise that the transferer would rather not lose the customer, so this would only really "benefit" the transferee, however unless you are a massive failure as a company you should be gaining at least as many as you lose to competitors ;)
Purely as an aside, since companies already have to comply with DPA requests, being able to use a common export format also means that in-house developers can start building reusable libraries relevant to your existing systems, simplifying the task of providing the data when a customer asks for it. Eventually you'll see commercial products offering fully compliant export (probably aimed more at the SME parket), customisable to your existing database schemas, and/or off the shelf CRM apps offering built-in export functions. Which is going to (eventually) reduce costs in complying with existing legislation regarding customer data requests.
Or something.