Introduction to data and private law

• Main Authors: CLIFFORD, Damian, LAU, Kwan Ho, PATERSON, Jeannie Marie
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: Private law; personal data; data protection; data privacy; Law and Society; Privacy Law; Science and Technology Law
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/4442
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Relatively little has been written about the application of private law doctrines to transactions and interactions concerning data, and demands for data protection. Indeed, we would suggest that the application of private law to this domain has been drastically under-explored. This might be explained by the fact that expertise often exists in siloes, with experts sometimes failing to discuss the overlaps and gaps that may or may not exist and consider intra-disciplinary questions. Traditionally, the governance of digital technologies in the context of data has primarily been the domain of regulatory theorists and human rights lawyers interested in privacy, data protection and freedom of expression issues. Yet this kind of discipline focus has been changing. Given the increasing digitalisation of the marketplace, other areas of regulatory intervention, such as in consumer law and labour law, have evolved to consider companies’ uses of data and the effects of individual rights and availability of remedies. This increasingly diverse patchwork of regulatory responses clearly requires a transversal analysis, and we suggest that an important part of this analysis must include recognition of the role played by private law.We hope this work contributes to encouraging such a debate. The contributors to this volume provide different views on the role of and potential for private law in responding to the potential benefits and risks of harm arising from the collection and use of data. But the overall contribution, we hope, is to show that private law is at the least worthy of serious consideration, and may even make a significant contribution, in understanding how the law responds to data protection and the need for reform in this field.