Freedom to Share: How Government's Data Sharing Policies Concerning Publicly Available Data Impact Academic Research and Journalism in the Public Interest

Our societies rely on quality academic and scientific research and journalism to thrive and prosper. They also depend on them to find solutions to address common challenges, including the climate emergency, global public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing armed conflicts and humanitarian crises. A necessary condition for public-interest research and journalism is access to data unencumbered by unnecessary legal barriers. And while the value of research and journalism is vastly recognized as a principle and important pillar of free and democratic societies, several recent legal developments have tended to undermine such principles and raise barriers to access to data, including publicly available data. Examples include copyright law (including sui generis database rights) as well as privacy and data protection laws. Acknowledging the critical need to protect privacy as a fundamental right, we nonetheless recall the need to uphold equally important rights of access to information, unconstrained research, and media freedom, in a fair and balanced manner, guided by the public interest. Commemorating the ten-year anniversary of the tragic death of data access activist and digital rights champion Aaron Swartz, this article examines the policy legal landscapes in the European Union and in the United States, two jurisdictions with rapidly shifting norms and expectations regarding access to data. It offers recommendations to strike a necessary balance between privacy and data protection on the one hand, and research and journalism freedoms on the other, as a means to support better sharing of data in the public interest. It also calls for more examples from other jurisdictions, so as to enable a more complete understanding of the issue and a more global approach to supporting researchers and journalists on the international level