Jeremy DE BEER
| Organization | University of Ottawa |
|---|---|
| Organization role |
Full Professor
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| Country | Canada |
| Area of Expertise |
I am a Full Professor of law at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, where I create and shape ideas—about technology innovation, intellectual property, and global trade and development. As an award-winning professor recognized for exceptional contributions to research and law teaching, my current work helps solve practical challenges related to innovation in the digital economy, life science industries, and clean technology sector. I am also a practicing lawyer and expert consultant, having argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court of Canada, advised businesses and law firms both large and small, and consulted for agencies from national governments and the United Nations.
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This member participated in the following Forums
Forum E-consultation on ethical, legal and policy aspects of data sharing affecting farmers
Day 4: Actions to be taken in 2018-2021 to ensure smallholder farmers benefit from agricultural data in the future
Thanks for kicking off discussion Nicolene. In our GODAN research on ownership of open data, we identified 4 strategies for action:
- Institutional cooperation
- Model frameworks
- A certification scheme
- An international treaty
Some of these are long term, while others can be short term.
For example, an international treaty to ensure fair and equitable benefit sharing for farmers is years or probably decades away.
By contrast, action can be taken toward a certification scheme immediately. The idea is to develop a way for stakeholders in the data ecosystem to recognize — through a certification mark — that tells other stakeholders that farmers’ rights have been respected when it comes to the data. Think: “Fair Trade” for data. That’s the concept.
While no individual can make this system a success alone, together we can all take steps to interrogate the data we give and take, asking ourselves whether all in the data value chain have been treated fairly.
What do you think? Could it work?
Day 1: Major challenges from a policy legal and ethical perspective, preventing smallholder farmers benefiting from data sharing
Among the major challenges is a recognition that data can be, and is, often “owned”. Ownership rights accrue most typically not to farmers, but to intermediaries who invest in the aggregation and organization of data. While many in the “open” data community (myself included) would like to believe that data is incapable of being owned, i.e. a common pool resource, or alternatively if owned is owned by farmers about whom or whose land or whose activities the data relates, this is legally incorrect.
For more explanation of the ownership of open data, and possible governance options, you might be interested in this GODAN paper:
http://www.godan.info/documents/ownership-open-data-governance-options-agriculture-and-nutrition-0
What do you think of agricultural data ownership and its impact on farmers (especially small-holder farmers)? What is the best governance option to ensure the benefits of agricultural data are shared inclusively and fairly?