With a large majority of 500 to 23 votes with 110 abstentions, the European Parliament adopted its position on the EU Commission’s draft for a “Data Act” on Tuesday. According to the planned ordinance, every user should in principle have access to all information that he has contributed to the creation of. Providers of networked products and related services want to oblige MEPs to make the corresponding data available to the user in an easily accessible form in real time and free of charge. Virtual language assistants and chatbots such as Alexa, Siri, Assistant or Cortana would be affected, as would services in the Internet of Things, including connected cars and wind turbines.
Damian Boeselager from the Volt party called it a success on Twitterthat during the parliamentary deliberations, after the rather restrictive recommendations from the leading industry committee, it was possible “to put the owner of the connected device back at the center of the law”. This should now be left to decide with whom to conclude a contract and with whom to share the data from a networked device. Also included the parliament line Incentives for owners and data holders to make non-personal information available on data markets. This ensures that “smart minds can develop innovative solutions, which in turn become the core of new business models, products and services”.
Law to promote data exchange
The core concern of the initiative is to promote the exchange of data between companies and with the public sector. The data law is intended to contribute to the development of new services, especially in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). When drafting contracts for data sharing, the law aims to strengthen the bargaining power of small and medium-sized companies and prohibit abusive contract terms used by large corporations. Above all, medium-sized companies previously felt overwhelmed by the obligation to release data. MEPs also want to improve the protection of trade secrets and prevent competitors from abusing the planned expanded access to data. They are also calling for stricter conditions for data requests from companies to authorities.
The regulation will also set out how public bodies can access and use data held by the private sector. According to Parliament, this clause, which is viewed critically by industry, will apply in particular in the event of emergencies and disasters such as floods and forest fires. Switching between providers of cloud services should be made easier. The Commission brought “functional equivalence” into play here. Service providers would have to ensure extensive compatibility with open standards or programming interfaces (APIs) for all other relevant services. Standardization organizations should develop harmonized standards for the interoperability of cloud services.
Which is also in the Data Act
At the same time, the representatives of the people want to increase protection against illegal international data transmissions by operators such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft & Co. The EU Council of Ministers still has to set out its negotiating course. In January, the federal government pushed for a completely new, broad clause that would give researchers in the public interest access to pseudonymised or anonymized data from business and government. It also wants to enable reverse engineering for the purpose of replicating technical objects. The German executive is also opposed to the regulation of technologically supported contracts (smart contracts) in order not to hinder innovations in the field of cryptocurrencies and the services they enable. The IT association CCIA welcomed the fact that Parliament had introduced some improvements. However, users would be prohibited from exporting their own data to services of their choice if these are operated by a large “gatekeeper”.
(mki)
