Legal challenges for data-driven society

Abstract

A legal system should bring to society expectations of stability, and should balance rights and obligations. But the emergence of revolutionary new technologies can change and even break the current order and balance. Big data applied to the everyday life of people is such a technology; it is deemed to create a brand new social paradigm bringing about entirely different perspectives in people's observations of the world. This poses a challenge to the existing legal system, such as how to balance the utilization of big data and the security of data resources, and the exploitation of the data available and the protection of personal privacy. Other challenges concern how to determine the ownership of data, and how to determine the rights and obligations in exchange of data. This paper mainly discusses the changes that big data is bringing to society and the legal challenges that the data-driven society will be confronted with. It puts forward suggestions regarding the development and security of big data industry, protection of personal privacy through the establishment of commercial rules for big data and through international coordination mediated by international organizations.