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Appendix 6: Rules and Regulationsaround Data Sharing To facilitate data sharing, rules and regulations need to be established. These rules and regulations may address aspects like data regulator, user registration, data disclosure requirements, audit requirements, data usage context and others. 1. Different countries are adopting different strategies and experimenting with regulations to govern data.
i. The European Commission has published a slew of communications on ‘A European strategy for data73’, and ‘Shaping Europe’s digital future74’ and a whitepaper on ‘On Artificial Intelligence - A European approach to excellence and trust75’.
ii. The last G20 meeting launched the ‘Osaka Track’, a proposed plurilateral agreement on digital trade, that provided global rules for “data governance” based on “free flow of data with trust”. India and a few other developing countries have refused to sign up to the Osaka Track76.
iii. In Germany, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs announced a federated data infrastructure called “Gaia-x”, a legal-cum-software layer to implement granular national data policy, that would allow firms to move data and computing workloads between rival clouds more easily.
iv. Some Western countries may soon discuss a “Data Freedom Act” which would
create a new regulated entity for that purpose77. The ideas discussed in the proposed Act include78: o Data about people is not just a personal asset, because many parties have shared, overlapping legitimate interests in it. o Enhancing individual user's powers to negotiate over their data may in fact handover greater control to bigger companies. Increased collective bargaining power should be the basis of any new data policy. o Stronger privacy laws are only a first step, but not enough. ‘Financial interests’ (economic value of the data pertaining to an individual / community) and ‘Control interests’ (purposes for which the data of the individual / community may be used) exist beyond privacy interests.
v. Several jurisdictions such as the EU and US have already initiated investigations into the impact of virtual data monopolies on competition in the market. For example, recognizing these very imbalances, the German Competition Law was 73https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/communication-european-strategy-data-19feb2020_en.pdf 74https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/communication-shaping-europes-digital-future-feb2020_en_3.pdf 75https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/commission-white-paper-artificial-intelligence-feb2020_en.pdf 76 https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/02/20/governments-are-erecting-borders-for-data 77https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/02/20/who-will-benefit-most-from-the-data-economy 78https://issuu.com/radicalxchange/docs/data_legislation_paper_--_20191031
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