Music Information Retrieval as a Key Framework to Explore Legal Issues Linked to Personal Data Computation

Abstract—The forthcoming European regulation on data privacy penalizes violations by a fine of up to one hundred million euros: European Music Information Retrieval researchers must be compliant with any personal data processes. They are not allowed to transfer personal data to the rest of the world, excepted by using so-called “Safe Harbors”. Detection of any personal data is mandatory, and “whether a person is identifiable, account should be taken of all the means reasonably likely to be used to identify or single out the individual directly or indirectly. To ascertain whether means are reasonably likely to be used to identify the individual, account should be taken of all objective factors, such as the costs of and the amount of time required for identification”. The paper proposes a roadmap for ISMIR involving:- Methodology (Is “Privacy by Design ” a universal solution?);- Epistemology (Are all authorship attribution algorithms separable into data and processes?);- Science (What characterizes a maximal subset from the big data that could not ever be computed by any Turing machine to identify a natural person with any algorithm?); Politics (How can ISMIR influence data privacy policies? Is it possible through some metadata standardization activities?). I