Big Tech companies could soon face policy changes with regards to access and disclosure of anonymous non-personal user data, The Economic Times reported. It will also reveal any such acquisition to public.
The Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) may make it mandatory for companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon to sell publicly available user data to government and private entities, the paper quoted a senior official say.
The data would include public information gathered by companies during the course of their operations. The move would be subject to 'an exhaustive consultation process' in line with intellectual property (IP) models for medicines, the official said.
Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.
The data would be shared for an ‘economic fee’ as these companies do the work, ensure competition and universal access to citizens’ database, the report stated. “There is a lot of misunderstanding among companies. The government will not take the data for free, and whatever it takes will be revealed to the public,” an official said.
The move comes after MeitY changed its stance on monetisation and ownership of public data, and said companies and not the government should be the responsible party.
It would impact current norms, by which companies have to take user consent before allowing access, where there is no alternative offered.
Another official told the paper that consensus among ministries is for the public data guidelines and private data legislation to be streamlined.
Experts feel that India could tie up with other interested parties such as the European Union and Japan to work out a way around the stronghold over public data held by Big Tech.
For perspective, US-based Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook, and China-based Tencent and Alibaba hold close to 67 percent of all data market by value, a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report on digital economies found.
The proposed plan, which follows the tabling of the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill in the Parliament, violates intellectual property rights (IPR), industry groups told the paper.
Data acquisition by the government will not pass muster in a court of law, since the companies have gathered the data after spending “time and resources,” the official added.
Justice BN Srikrishna, who led the panel that prepared the draft bill, called the bill placed in Parliament 'dangerous' and can turn India into an 'Orwellian state'.
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