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Comments by Professors Shishido, Inatani, and Wakameda appeared in the Nikkei.

What Should Law Be in the Digital Age? (Multiple Perspectives) The rapid development of digital technology is changing more than people’s lives and corporate activities. Unless the nature of regulations and laws, and even the criminal-justice system, are reconsidered, Japan will fall behind in the global innovation race, including in responding to the coronavirus crisis. nikkei.com

If the argument is that law should be changed to be purpose-based, I completely agree.

That aside, I was struck by Mr. Wakameda’s statement in the article that “big data is a valuable resource described as the ‘oil of the 21st century.’” I posted a series of tweets about it and am now consolidating them in this blog post.

I believe this expression began attracting attention in Japan around the publication of “Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class,” a report issued in January 2011 by the World Economic Forum, organizer of the Davos meeting. This report has produced various misunderstandings, and I feel responsible as one of the 33 people acknowledged for contributing to it.

At the start of the report, it prominently features a statement made in March 2009 by Meglena Kuneva, then the EU Consumer Commissioner: “Personal data is the new oil of the Internet and the new currency of the digital world.” This is followed by the statement, “It will emerge as a new asset class touching all aspects of society.”

This presentation was very catchy and, I think, highly effective in drawing people to the report. At the same time, however, it likely created major misunderstandings among people who did not read the report properly—especially in Japanese.

That is because the opening statement was translated and adapted as “the oil of the 21st century,” as quoted by Mr. Wakameda. I believe it should instead have been translated as “the crude oil of the 21st century.”

The reason is that crude oil conveys the nuance of a toxic and environmentally polluting substance that is unmanageable unless refined, that can explode and burn if mishandled, and that destroys ecosystems if spilled—but that creates tremendous value when properly refined and used carefully. Simply saying “oil” loses that nuance.

The report was being written in 2010, just when the Gulf of Mexico oil spill occurred, and we used it as a point of reference when explaining personal data in this way. When I said this in a WEF interview, the editor seems to have found and placed Kuneva’s statement above. In fact, I did not know about her statement at the time.

A photograph taken during efforts to extinguish the Gulf of Mexico oil spill (2010/4). (Source) Wikimedia. Public Domain.

The expression “asset” is also problematic because it evokes the idea of property rights.

In fact, apart from this passage, the report links personal data with the word “asset” in only 2 places. Of those, 1 is phrased as a question, and the response uses only the word “value.” During the preparation of the report, we were deeply concerned that readers might understand data in terms of property rights, and we repeatedly pointed this out, leading to changes at the draft stage. The other occurrence was one we missed. There is no problem when knowledgeable people use the metaphor mockingly—for example, saying, “You are not FB’s customer; you are the product,” is a deliberately ironic expression in property terms. But ordinary readers will probably take it literally as a property-rights concept.

So although parts of it are regrettable, I think the report as a whole is quite good and rewarding to read. I hope people will read it in full rather than reading only the catchy parts and assuming they understand it. It contains useful insights throughout.

For example, page 7 lists the following types of personal data:

  • Volunteered data
  • Observed data
  • Inferred data

It also embraces a user-centric approach and devotes substantial space to the Personal Data Ecosystem and Trust Framework.1 I recall spending considerable time explaining these matters to Justin Rico Oyola, who coordinated the project, together with Scott David and others at a side meeting of IIW #10 (May 2010).2

Incidentally, this blog post of mine, https://sakimura.org/2011/02/1036/, was among the earliest introductions of the WEF report in Japan. Looking back at it just now, I noticed that I had written something rather clever.

It may originally have come from Scott David or someone around him.3 It said:

Sending electrons through wires created the electric-power industry; sending waves of electrons created telephony; and sending packets created the Internet. Next, structured “information generated by individuals (Personal Data)” will flow through them, creating a new industry. This is the Personal Data Ecosystem, and the trust framework forms its foundation.

(Source) https://sakimura.org/2011/02/1036/

Looking back at interviews from that period (2010 – 2011), the people involved said that some portion of the revenue Google and Facebook earned from advertising using personal data would be redirected toward giving individuals control over their personal data and returning power to them. Regrettably, this has not been realized at all. It is deeply disappointing.

Even so, we have no choice but to keep moving forward little by little. Amid the #novel_coronavirus issue, there are signs of some movement toward resolving the problem of Japan’s 2000 domestic personal-information-protection laws. We must seize this opportunity and make progress.

Footnotes

  1. Japan’s so-called information banks are also a kind of Trust Framework seeking to form a Personal Data Ecosystem.
  2. Although even without my explanation, this outcome was probably natural because John Clippinger and Scott David were on the Steering Board.
  3. Then again, it might have been mine. Apparently I sometimes say clever things unconsciously. Around 7 years ago, Don Thibeau, then Executive Director of the OpenID Foundation, gave a speech at a meeting in the UK Cabinet Office saying that “personal data is a toxic asset.” When I praised him by saying, “That is a very good way of putting it,” he replied, “What are you talking about? Those are your words.”

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