Public and private sector efforts to develop and improve repositories of non-proprietary, machine readable, and usable datasets (“open data”) have enabled a broad range of beneficial uses, from enhanced transparency of public and private-sector institutions to increasingly sophisticated machine learning models and applications. Open data may also provide a partial response to competition concerns arising from firms holding large repositories of consumer data and proprietary information, or data privacy and security concerns arising from third-party scraping. At the same time, open data is not without its challenges, legal ambiguities, and practical concerns. This workshop brings together a group of experts with informed and diverse perspectives on these challenges, ambiguities, and concerns to discuss what legal or policy interventions related to open data might be desirable to address several issues:
- Intellectual property, licensing, and agreements: There is substantial ambiguity regarding what intellectual property interests are properly recognized in data. Further, users may misunderstand the terms of open licenses under which they are making data available. Is open licensing the correct mechanism to resolve concerns regarding potential misuse of data? Can we address those concerns without resolving underlying questions about the intellectual property rights? Are data sharing agreements a preferable alternative to licensing?
- Privacy and governance: Open data may contain personally identifiable information of individuals that is protected under new regimes by the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation or the California Consumer Privacy Protection Act. Consumers may have the right to notice, deletion, or restrictions on data sharing. How do we reconcile privacy and data governance more broadly with open data sharing and reuse? How helpful are sector-specific privacy regimes?
- Data access and acquisition: The U.S., E.U., and other countries participating in the Open Government Partnership have imposed broad requirements to make data generated and held by public sector institutions available in machine readable and nonproprietary formats. Other regulatory efforts, like the E.U.’s proposed Data Act would extend more limited requirements to the private sector. Even as these efforts seek to make data more available, scraping of publicly available data in violation of terms of service raises questions about appropriate limits on how data is accessed and for what purpose.
- Data standards: Recent legislation like the Financial Data Transparency Act has charged federal agencies with developing more detailed standards for the data and metadata they disclose. Outside of government, proposed “nutrition labels” or “datasheets” have sought to standardize disclosures about datasets to curb their potential misuse. And tools like Google’s “Takeout” may facilitate the migration of data from one platform to another platforms, or interoperability between platforms. What is the appropriate role of government in the development of these standards? What competition issues are raised or resolved by enhanced open data standards?