Data ownership, a bone of contention

The ownership of aggregate data remains a bone of contention between the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and stakeholders, including start-ups and SMEs, in the ongoing consultations over the draft e-commerce policy. The issue had come up for discussion during a recent meeting between industry representatives and DPIIT officials.

While the draft e-commerce policy stated, “India and its citizens have a sovereign right to their data… Even after anonymisation, the interests of the individual cannot be completely separated from the derivatives that may be obtained by analysing and drawing inferences from a certain set of data,” some of the technology firms that The Hindu spoke to said that they invest capital and resources to collect this data. Hence, so saying that it also belongs to the citizens is unfair.