[Opinion] The Practical Benefits of Data Ownership

Roundtable on Data Economy Planning. Professor Shin Minsu. / Photo by Kim Hyunmin kimhyun81@

The role of data is crucial in enhancing industrial competitiveness. For data to properly create added value, an effective data distribution market is essential alongside the generation and accumulation of large amounts of data, and one of the factors to consider for this is data ownership.

Data ownership is necessary to explain the consent to use data, the creation of economic value through data processing, and how the economic benefits generated through this process are distributed. The purpose of proposing the concept of ownership is to recognize absolute ownership not only for tangible goods but also for data, thereby protecting the economic utilization potential and benefits of the data-owning entity. The data revolution started with big data, passed through open data, and is currently culminating in MyData. To promote the data revolution, one appropriate incentive method is to recognize data ownership so that economic benefits from data utilization can be monopolized, avoiding the tragedy of the commons and privatizing social benefits.

However, there is room for different interpretations of the benefits of data ownership from an economic perspective. Data can create new value through the consent of the information subject and utilization by third parties, but in this case, due to laws and regulations related to personal information protection, transaction costs increase. In other words, overprotection of personal information can lead to results that hinder social benefits. If exclusive rights to monopolistic data are recognized, utilization becomes difficult, increasing transaction costs and leading to a decrease in social benefits.

In a situation where there are conflicting views on data ownership, the question that requires consideration is whether the introduction of data ownership has practical benefits. If legal protection of data as a commodity is incomplete, opportunistic behavior may occur. However, if data ownership is recognized, such behavior can be prevented, thereby increasing the value of data.

On the other hand, in the digital age, a person who collects data and develops programs according to certain rules may acquire the possibility or opportunity to effectively control the data. Maintaining effective control may make legal enforcement difficult, and transactions with third parties may occur. In this case, a data market can be established with de facto possession rights of data without securing legal data ownership.

Most agree that efficiency should be maximized by utilizing new resources like data and that the benefits obtained in the process should be distributed fairly. The problem is that the government and a few large corporations tend to monopolize and oligopolize data and the benefits generated from its use. In the worst case, recognizing data ownership could solidify an unfair distribution of data power. It is also difficult to deny that the disclosure and sharing of data and the appropriate distribution of benefits to stakeholders who participated in or contributed to the data generation process are not being properly carried out. For example, questions arise about what the final profit distribution should look like from data collected and processed through complex procedures.

Setting specific distribution criteria is a difficult issue both technically and ideologically, and if there is no clear answer to these problems, the benefits that can be gained through data ownership are limited. To resolve these issues and improve the situation, social consensus on a data-based society is necessary. Through this, it is hoped that a desirable data economy system will be established in Korea.

Shin Minsu, Professor, Department of Business Administration, Hanyang University

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.