Berlin, Brussels For the industry it is a huge treasure. Imagine a factory being equipped with robots and sensors – but the data that is collected does not end up with the factory owner, but with the robot manufacturer. Business secrets would thus be revealed and potential for optimization would be wasted.
An EU law is therefore to regulate for the first time who may use data and under what conditions. Is it the manufacturer of a device? Or is it her owner?
The “Data Act”, which the EU Commission will present this Wednesday and which is already available to the Handelsblatt, answers this question clearly: Whoever buys a device also has the right to use the data that it generates with it. What sounds obvious is not the case so far. The data sets that a modern car constantly generates are often only accessible to the manufacturer.
The Data Act now states:
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- Anyone who develops a product must ensure that the data generated during use is accessible.
- At the request of the user, the data holder must provide the data as quickly as possible, possibly even in real time.
- The user may also request that the data be transferred to a third party as soon as possible.
- These third parties may only use the data for the purposes for which they received the data.
The EU push for networked cars is particularly relevant. Modern wagons constantly collect information about their environment and their own operational status. The manufacturer uses this data to improve its products, but the customer has only had limited access to it so far.
In the future, car owners should have the right to use their data themselves or to pass it on to someone else, such as an independent workshop. This should strengthen the position of customers and at the same time make innovations possible in an area in which Europe has so far lagged behind.
According to the draft, the amount of data generated by humans and machines is increasing exponentially. But most of the data remained unused. Every networked household item is also covered by the law. A corresponding washing machine can send error reports to the manufacturer. This could use the data to make its devices better. But the owner of the washing machine also has an interest in the data. He could use them to fix the problem himself or hire a technician.
Data from language assistants should be able to be evaluated
Wherever the data is generated: the user should have unimpeded access to it. The Data Act wants to make that clear. This could be interesting in relation to language assistants who constantly record what is being said in an apartment. The Data Act is intended to enable users to evaluate this data.
Until now, manufacturers have primarily used the networked objects to retain customers: the Amazon voice assistant “Alexa” makes purchases from Amazon, and the car transmits its data exclusively to the authorized workshop. In the new data world, the opposite is possible: Smart objects can be networked at will, service providers can be changed.
Researchers like Sahin Albayrak from the TU Berlin are waiting for the Data Act because they want clear rules. Albayrak is working on a test track for autonomous driving in the middle of the capital. The Federal Ministry of Transport and various companies and public services are also involved.
In addition to the test track for self-driving cars, a separate data and software platform is to be created on which the collected mobility data will be made available. In order to be able to do this with legal certainty, he needs clear rules according to which he can collect, store and use data.
Customers should be able to easily transfer data when changing providers
He would have expected even more from the EU Commission’s draft: “The Data Act does not create the clarity that we would need when it comes to handling data when developing autonomous vehicles in Germany and the EU,” criticizes Albayrak. The EU has formulated rules that are too general, which means that the laws are distributed at state, federal and EU level. This “rule mosaic” slows down networked mobility offers a bit.
Another focus is on cloud platforms. Anyone who stores data there should be able to easily move it to other providers. The cloud provider must remove any obstacles that stand in the way of this. Contracts can be terminated within 30 days. At the same time, the EU Commission wants to commission industry standards in order to place cloud services on a technical basis that is as uniform as possible.
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