Digital transformation: The legal dimension

Abstract

The legal dimension of digital transformation is being formed by approaches to the legal regulation of social relationships backed by the interests of its actors: states, businesses and users. The so-called information law as an amorphous institution without its own subject and method was not able to meet the challenges of digital transformation. Effective regulation should be carried out using the method of de facto possibility coinciding with the legal possibility, i. e. subjective right. The issues of personal data as the main “fuel” of the digital economy are discussed between the state and business. This leads to the exclusion of citizens from the discussion due to their lack of resources to defend their own interests. Such resources may be provided only by the introduction of instruments that guarantee responsibility to the data subject for violation of his or her rights. In the area of industrial and other non-personal data, the lack of regulation is more of a factor for the acceleration of market growth. However, there is growing inequality between parties (equipment suppliers and users) in access to data. The right to access one’s own data, as well as the mechanisms of data portability between platforms, should be the tools to protect the interests of users here. Although the interests of the state in the digital sphere are related to ensuring its own sovereignty, attempts to ground certain types of data on information systems located on the territory of the state (“data localization”) contradict the structure of information flows that have undergone a digital transformation. Under these conditions, regulation should take into account the formation of data sets and services online, at a certain point of assembly, which requires freedom of circulation of metadata on the basis of which the assembly is carried out. The perceived needs and interests help to develop the digital economy in the most equitable way, drawing new subjects into the state of agreed interests and, thus, effectively limiting each other’s interests. Governmental regulation being less efficient should be applied as a last resort, only if legal equality cannot be achieved by the efforts of various participants or interaction of market players.