LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
JULY 2019 23
world are buying into the concept that data
is the new driver of the economy. What-
ever the merits of this argument (while
data is important, of course, in many cir-
cumstances its strategic importance can
be overblown), the result is that regulators
who oversee competition policy are taking
an ever greater interest in data, and the so-
called platform companies that aggregate,
commercialize and distribute it. us, as
part of the Digital Charter exercise, the fed-
eral government has written to the Com-
missioner of Competition and asked them
to weigh in on concerns raised by the new
market dynamics surrounding data. In par-
ticular, the government is concerned that
consumers not be harmed by market abuses
triggered by technology, and in particular
data-related business models.
Also on the topic of competition, there
will likely be an interesting debate about
data portability- namely, should a con-
sumer be able to require a company which
holds transaction data pertaining to the
consumer to share that data with third par-
ties, such as another company the consumer
wants to do business with. is is a highly
multi-faceted issue, and legislation in this
space should tread very carefully.
ese are just some of the highlights of
what you can expect, likely next year, in the
area of tech-driven law reform flowing from
the federal government's Digital Charter.
May you live in interesting times!
the issue of algorithmic transparency in
the contract under which you acquire the
system. In other words, you will try to
shi responsibility for compliance with
the law to the third party that built the
system (and the supplier may well push
back, arguing that the output results of
the system are best understood by the
entity that is feeding it the big data sets –
namely you, the user). In short, get ready
for some very interesting contract nego-
tiations in this regard, at least until an
industry consensus forms as to how this
risk ought to be shared between supplier
and user.
Competition Concerns
It appears that governments around the
George Takach is a senior partner in the Technology
practice at McCarthy Tétrault LLP.
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