Data Access, Consumer Interests and Public Welfare

Abstract

Data are considered to be key for the functioning of the data economy as well as for pursuing multiple public interest concerns. Against this backdrop this book strives to device new data access rules for future legislation. To do so, the contributions first explain the justification for such rules from an economic and more general policy perspective. Then, building on the constitutional foundations and existing access regimes, they explore the potential of various fields of the law (competition and contract law, data protection and consumer law, sector-specific regulation) as a basis for the future legal framework. The book also addresses the need to coordinate data access rules with intellectual property rights and to integrate these rules as one of multiple measures in larger data governance systems. Finally, the book discusses the enforcement of the Government’s interest in using privately held data as well as potential data access rights of the users of connected devices.