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4 Information Concepts in Law: Generic Dreams and Definitional Daylight | Information | Personally Identifiable Information
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Oxford Journal of Legal Studies Advance Access published May 13, 2014
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, (2014), pp. 130
doi:10.1093/ojls/gqu011
Information Concepts in Law: Generic
Dreams and Definitional Daylight
Lee A Bygrave*
Keywords: data, information, biological material, technology neutrality
A striking feature of the legal system is that while information is in many
respects the stuff of law, the law often reflects an underdeveloped, if not poor,
understanding of information. The chief issue tackled herein is whether this
feature gives cause for concern. In the past, it seems to have been little
troublesome. Law could usually be sensibly applied without lawmakers having
first extensively analysed what is meant by information and closely related
concepts, such as data and communication.
That approach, however, sits uneasily with key features of present society,
most notably the processing of unprecedented amounts of data and the
placement of ever greater premiums on the information that the data conveys.
* Professor, Norwegian Research Centre for Computers and Law, Department of Private Law, University of
Oslo. Email: lee.bygrave@jus.uio.no. Special thanks go to Bert-Jaap Koops for thorough criticism of an early draft
of the article. Thanks go also to Jon Bing, Dag Wiese Schartum, Emily Weitzenboeck, Tobias Mahler, OleAndreas Rognstad, and Graham Greenleaf for constructive feedback along the way, and to Andrew Murray and
two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions in finalising the article. The usual disclaimer nonetheless
applies. References to legal instruments are to their amended state as of 1 March 2014.
The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions,
please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
Downloaded from http://ojls.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Western Ontario on June 3, 2014
AbstractThis article concerns the legal significance of basic information
concepts, such as data and information. It describes how the application of
laws increasingly turns on the meaning of these concepts. This development partly
reflects lawmakers generic dreamsthat is, a desire to keep abreast of technological change by drafting laws using relatively generic terminology rather than
technology- or media-specific rules. The overriding argument is that while the
regulatory importance of basic information concepts grows, legal discussion about
their meaning is far from satisfactory. In particular, technological developments
that are challenging the distinction between information and biological material
require jurists to address the meaning of these concepts more rigorously. This
involves recalibrating the regulatory principle of technology neutrality so that laws
intended for the informational world do not haphazardly enter the biological world.
Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Blackwell 1996); Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial
Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (Basic Books 1973).
In roughly chronological order, see eg Jon Bing, Rettslige kommunikasjonsprosesser (Universitetsforlaget 1982);
Peter Blume, Fra tale til data (Akademisk Forlag 1989); Egbert J Dommering, An Introduction to Information
Law: Works of Fact at the Crossroads of Freedom and Protection in Egbert J Dommering and P Bernt
Hugenholtz (eds), Protecting Works of Fact: Copyright, Freedom of Expression and Information Law (Kluwer 1991) 1;
JN Druey, Information als Gegenstand des Rechts (Schulthess Polygraphischer Verlag / Nomos 1995); Viktor MayerSchonberger, Information und Recht: Vom Datenschutz bis zum Urheberrecht (Springer 2001); John Cahir,
Understanding Information Laws: A Sociological Approach (2002) 3 J Information, Law and Technology (now
EJLT) <www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/jilt/2002_3/cahir> accessed 17 April 2014; Michael Kloepfer,
Informationsrecht (Beck 2002); Mads Bryde Andersen, IT-retten (2nd edn, Gjellerup 2005); Henrik Udsen, De
informationsretlige grundstninger. Studier i informationsretten (Jurist- og konomforbundets Forlag 2009); William
Kingston, Beyond Intellectual Property: Matching Information Protection to Innovation (Edward Elgar 2010); Inger
Marie Sunde, Automatisert inndragning (Unipub / Senter for rettsinformatikk 2011) part II.
Notable contributions include DF Libling, The Concept of Property: Property in Intangibles (1978) 94
LQR 103; R Grant Hammond, Quantum Physics, Econometric Models and Property Rights to Information
(1981) 27 McGill L Rev 47; R Grant Hammond, Theft of Information (1984) 100 LQR 252; Arnold S
Weinrib, Information and Property (1988) 38 U Toronto LJ 117; James Rule and Lawrence Hunter, Towards
Property Rights in Personal Data in Colin J Bennett and Rebecca Grant (eds), Visions of Privacy: Policy Choices
for the Digital Age (University of Toronto Press 1999) 168; Paul Kohler and Norman Palmer, Information as
Property in Norman Palmer and Ewan McKendrick (eds), Interests in Goods (2nd edn, LLP 1998) 3; Paul M
Schwartz, Property, Privacy, and Personal Data (2004) 117 Harv L Rev 2055; Nadezhda Purtova, Property
Rights in Personal Data: A European Perspective (Kluwer Law International 2012).
The term informatics is used here to encompass a range of overlapping disciplines, most notably
information science, computer science, information philosophy, and knowledge management. The central remit
of informatics is scientific analysis of the ways in which information is constituted, represented, processed, and
communicated. See further Michael P Fourman, Informatics in John Feather and Paul Sturges (eds),
International Encyclopedia of Information and Library Science (2nd edn, Routledge 2003) 23744. This is a
simplified description of the field, but sufficient for present purposes.
Data and information, especially when organized as knowledge, are now
commonly regarded as linchpins for innovation, productivity, and competitiveness.1 Thus, we might reasonably expect the legal community to have
developed, through systematic reflection, a stable analytical apparatus for
defining information and related concepts. Mostly, it has not.
A rich body of academic literature (mainly in languages other than English)
has analysed the general relationship between law and information.2 Some of
this literature discusses the meaning of information concepts, but much of it
has been concerned with other matters, such as how to arrive at legally relevant
explications of various kinds of information and communications technology
(ICT). The propriety of according property rights over information has also
attracted extensive debate.3 The debate touches on the nature of information
but the treatment is superficial and, again, tends to be dwarfed by other issues,
such as the vexed question of what amounts to property in law.
What are the causes of this state of affairs? One possible cause lies with those
scholars who were amongst the first in the legal community to familiarize
themselves with the relatively elaborate and rigorous ways in which information
concepts are explicated in the field of informatics.4 Many took the view that
strictly applying an information scientists understanding of these concepts is
legally unnecessary. In the opinion of one such scholar, information is a
concept that everyone basically understands, so attempts to reach a more
detailed determination of its content are futile, strained, and redundant, at least
Information Concepts in Law
Blume (n 2) 2930.
Thomas Hoeren, Tractatus germanico-informaticus some fragmentary ideas on DRM and information
law in Arno R Lodder, Alfred Meijboom, and Dinant TL Oosterbaan (eds), IT Law The Global Future:
Achievements, Plans and Ambitions (Elsevier 2006) 149. See too Kloepfer (n 2) 24 [52] (indicating that the
concept of information is well nigh impossible to define).
See generally Francis S Collins, The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine
(HarperCollins 2010).
Biometrics denotes systems for determining or verifying the identity of persons based on their bodily
characteristics. Further on their increasing popularity along with the regulatory challenges they present, see
generally Nancy Liu, Bio-Privacy: Privacy Regulations and the Challenge of Biometrics (Routledge 2011).
Biobanks are basically structured collections of organic material, which may be human or animal in origin
(eg blood samples) or non-human (eg plant seeds). The material is usually linked to associated data sets
consisting of the information derived from the organic material, together with other data enabling linkage
between the material and its source. For more on their characteristics, growth, and regulatory implications, see
generally Herbert Gottweis and Alan Petersen (eds), Biobanks: Governance in Comparative Perspective (Routledge
At the risk of spelling out the obvious, the term information system is used here to denote a system that is
concerned with analysis, design, delivery and use of information for organizations and society: David Avison
and Guy Fitzgerald, Information Systems in Feather and Sturges (n 4) 306.
See generally Martyn Amos, Theoretical and Experimental DNA Computation (Springer 2005).
See eg Collins (n 7) and Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (Fourth Estate
1999). For older examples, see Fritz Machlup, Semantic Quirks in the Study of Information in Fritz Machlup
and Una Mansfield (eds), The Study of Information: Interdisciplinary Messages (Wiley 1983) 641, 65255 and
See eg Ridley ibid 7 (The idea of the genome as a book is not . . . a metaphor. It is literally true).
As does Machlup (n 12).
outside of technical contexts.5 Still others have despaired over the definitional
instability of information, with at least one proclaiming that the concept
cannot be defined.6 Partly because of this mix of pessimism and pragmatism,
few serious attempts have been made to push the rest of the legal world into
more conscious reflection on the meaning of basic information concepts.
The central question is whether such reflection is now needed. This article
argues that it is. The basis of the argument lies not so much in the abovedescribed characteristics of our information age but in a combination of other
One such factor has scientific and technological roots. Advances in the
biological sciences, biotechnology, and ICT are enabling an ever-greater
generation of information from biological material. Increasingly probative
forms of genetic testing highlight this trend well.7 So too does the upsurge in
the deployment of biometrics8 and in the systematic accumulation of biological
samples in biobanks.9 Biological material is not only increasingly a source of
information; it is also starting to provide the core constitutive elements of new
information systems.10 We see this in the nascent development of biocomputers
made up of organic microprocessor units that are programmed by wetware
based on DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).11 Additionally, contemporary discourse in and about the biological sciences makes a great deal of metaphorical
or analogical use of information concepts to describe biological processes.12 In
some cases, the processes are portrayed as genuinely informational.13 One may
question the conceptual veracity of such discourse,14 arguing that at least some
of the processes could perhaps be analysed more accurately in terms of cause
See eg Irma van der Ploeg, Biometrics and the Body as Information: Normative Issues of the SocioTechnical Coding of the Body in David Lyon (ed), Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk, and Automated
Discrimination (Routledge 2002) ch 3.
In Solums sense of the word: see further Lawrence B Solum, Indeterminacy in Dennis M Patterson (ed),
A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (2nd edn, Blackwell Publishers 2010) 479, 48081.
Lyria Bennett Moses, Adapting the Law to Technological Change: A Comparison of Common Law and
Legislation (2003) 26 U New South Wales LJ 394, 400.
Roger Brownsword, Rights, Regulation, and the Technological Revolution (OUP 2008) 166.
and effect or stimulus and response. Nonetheless, such discourse seems
strongly entrenched. With all of these trends, maintaining a distinction between
biological material and information becomes practically and normatively more
difficult.15
A second factor, with a legal dimension, springs from these difficulties. As
scientific and technological developments challenge the boundary between
information and biological materialand, in effect, the traditional distinction
between the message and the mediumthey can also trigger the application of
laws that employ information concepts to biological material or, in some cases,
to physical material more generally. This is particularly so when the concepts
are embodied in generic terminologythat is, terminology that is not
exclusively tied to a particular technology, medium, or formand when the
lawmakers provide little or no guidance about the terminologys intended
A third factor is that laws are increasingly formulated using such terminology, the meaning of which is frequently unclear due to a paucity of
authoritative guidance. This development and underdeterminacy16 reflect, in
large part, a strategy of lawmakers for coping with technological change. The
strategy seeks to inject flexibility into laws by (re)formulating them using
generic terminology that is left undefined or only partially defined. Data,
information, and communication are three terms in point.
A fourth factor is that such terms have nebulous boundaries and are,
concomitantly, open to various interpretations. In particular, both data and
information can connote something corporeal as well as items or processes
that are more intangible. Accordingly, a rule that turns on the meaning of such
terms risks being over-inclusive. By over-inclusive is meant that the rule may
include within its scope conduct to which it is not appropriate, in that there is
a poorer correlation between the rules and its justification when applied to that
conduct than otherwise.17 There is, in other words, a risk of what Brownsword
terms normative disconnection.18 A basic worry then is that if lawmakers fail
to take steps to clarify the terms meanings, they fail not only to provide
sufficient legal certainty for those affected by the rules in which the terms
feature, but to limit the rules potential for over-inclusiveness and to ensure
proper regulatory connection. Of course, ex post clarification, primarily in the
form of case law, can offset this worry. Yet, it will not necessarily offset another,
perhaps more serious worryand might even exacerbate it: the paucity of
The following case studies derive from different areas of law: data protection
and intellectual property. Each study concerns a legal issue or set of issues that
turns on the meaning of a term embodying a basic information concept. The
significance of the issue(s) is augmented by the fact that the terms in question
are employed in legal instruments of a large number of jurisdictions including
international codes that are high in the legal hierarchy of their respective fields
and, thus, exercise considerable influence over lower-order codes in those
fields. Although involving legal-dogmatic analysis, the ultimate point of the
studies is not to ascertain the state of law as it is but to elucidate some of the
consequences of ambiguity in the relevant terms and concepts.
A. Bodily Data and Information
The first case study concerns the question of whether the terms personal data
and personal information in data protection law may extend to human
biological material per se (eg blood cells as opposed to any data or information
that can otherwise be derived from the cells). This is a key question for how
data protection law relates to the human body and for the extent to which such
legislative guidance aggravates the risk of courts or other actors expanding the
laws scope of application to, say, biological material in a haphazard way,
perhaps well beyond what legislators actually intended, and without adequately
reflecting over the consequences.
The structure of the article is as follows. After this introduction, the article
presents two case studies highlighting the problems outlined above. It then
explicates, firstly, the increase in express reference to basic information
concepts in legal rules and, secondly, lawmakers reluctance to provide detailed
definitional guidance on the concepts and terms in question. The propriety of
such reluctance is then assessed. Attention is directed at information concepts
polysemantic character, points of disagreement over the appropriate properties
of data, information, and communication, and the legal relevance of such
disagreement. The article concludes with a discussion of the principal
regulatory implications of its findings.
Given the subject matter of the article, it would be remiss not to provide
working definitions of data, information, and communication. Unless
otherwise stated, references to data denote signs, patterns, characters, or
symbols that can convey information about facts, concepts, processes, or
objects. References to information denote the meaning (semantic content)
assigned to data, while communication refers to the process whereby
information is imparted from one entity to another. These definitions conform
roughly to those often applied in informatics.
Lee A Bygrave, The Body as Data? Biobank Regulation via the Back Door of Data Protection Law
(2010) 2 Law, Innovation and Technology 1.
See eg Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data
and on the free movement of such data [1995] OJ L281/31 (hereinafter Data Protection Directive), art 2(a);
Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal
Data (hereinafter Data Protection Convention), art 2(a).
See eg Lee A Bygrave, Data Protection Law: Approaching its Rationale, Logic and Limits (Kluwer Law
International 2002) 4150, 21015, 31519.
See the European Commissions commentary with respect to its amended proposal for a data protection
Directive of 15 October 1992: COM (92) 422 final SYN 287, 9. See also its commentary with respect to the
original Directive proposal of 24 September 1990: COM (90) 314 final SYN 287, 15.
See further Bygrave, The Body as Data? (n 19) 1415 and references cited therein.
On the other hand, the European Commissions recently proposed General Data Protection Regulation to
replace Directive 95/46/EC seems to distinguish between biological material and personal data: see Proposal for a
Regulation on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free
movement of such data (General Data Protection Regulation) (COM(2012) 11 final). The proposal elaborates
what constitutes personal data relating to health by stating that such data should include . . . information derived
from the testing or examination of a body part or bodily substance, including biological samples (recital 26). The
syntax in the English version (and, indeed, Danish, Swedish, and French versions) is not entirely free of
ambiguity: while biological samples most likely refers to body part or bodily substance, it could also be read as
referring back to information derived . . .. The German version, however, rules out this possibility
(Informationen, die von der Prufung oder Untersuchung eines Korperteils oder einer korpereigenen Substanz,
darunter biologischer Proben, abgeleitet wurden).
Further on these aspects of the laws aims and scope, see eg Lee A Bygrave, Data Privacy Law: An
International Perspective (OUP 2014) 11718, 135.
See generally Deryk Beyleveld, David Townend, Segole`ne Rouille-Mirza, and Jessica Wright (eds),
Implementation of the Data Protection Directive in Relation to Medical Research in Europe (Ashgate 2004); Bygrave (n
19) 12, 1620.
law may regulate the use of human biological material, particularly in biobanks.
It is also an important point of departure for assessing the propriety of using
data protection law as an instrument for biobank regulation. I have dealt with
this question at length in another article,19 so treatment of it here is brief.
Most data protection legislation fails on its face to provide a definite answer
to the question. It simply defines personal data or personal information as
data or information that can be linked, directly or indirectly, to identifiable
individual persons.20 The precise meaning of the terms data and information
in those definitions has usually been taken for granted, with most effort
directed at elucidating the link between data or information and persons.21
Certainly, the architects of data protection law have generally intended to give
the terms a broad ambit and to draft the legal provisions in a technologyneutral way. The preparatory works for the EU Data Protection Directive are a
case in point.22 Yet, they fail to indicate conclusively that personal data in the
Directive is intended to embrace human biological material as such.23 The
same can be said for many other data protection laws and their preparatory
works.24 This underdeterminacy compounds the laws already considerable
potential for over-inclusivenessa potential brought on not only by the
expansive breadth of their definitions of personal data but also by the frequent
obscurity of their aims.25
Scholars, lawmakers, and other policy entrepreneurs diverge in their
respective stances on how this underdeterminacy should be resolved.26 Many
of those who take the view that human biological material does not constitute
Bygrave (n 19) 1517, 1920.
For examples, see ibid 16, 19 and references cited therein.
S and Marper v UK (2009) 48 EHRR 50.
See further Bygrave (n 19) 89.
For examples, see ibid 9, 12.
personal data or information ground their stance in conceptual logic, claiming
that data is a formalized representation of objects or processes, while
information comprises a cognitive element involving comprehension of the
representation. On that basis, biological material as such cannot be treated as
information and its treatment as data is doubtful.27 I discuss this claim in more
detail in the penultimate section of the article.
Those pushing the view that biological material may be personal data or
information tend to pay more regard to pragmatic considerations than
conceptual logic. Chief amongst such considerations are the need to fill
lacunae in biobank regulation, the growing ease with which persons can be
identified from biological material, and the fact that such material is often only
stored for generating information.28
Sometimes, the decision is made to treat biological material as personal data
without a full explanation being given. A significant instance is the judgment of
the European Court of Human Rights (Grand Chamber) in S and Marper v
UK.29 The case dealt with the legality of police agencies retaining DNA
profiles, fingerprints, and cellular samples taken from persons who have been
suspected of having committed legal offences. On its way to unanimously
concluding that the retention practice violated article 8 of the European
Convention on Human Rights, the Strasbourg court held, in a single sentence,
that the cellular samples (along with the fingerprints and DNA profiles)
constitute personal data within the meaning of the Data Protection
Convention as they relate to identified or identifiable individuals.30 It
elaborated no further. The finding is remarkable not just for its terse
formulation and reasoning but for the fact that the legal sources upon which
it is based offer scant, if any, firm support for it.31
Although the Marper line does not create a legally binding precedent for
interpreting the Data Protection Convention, it is highly persuasive authority
and undoubtedly creates pressure to apply the Convention to a range of
activities that would fall outside the Conventions ambit were samples or other
biological material not to be regarded as personal data. It also creates pressure
to treat other lower-order data protection codes more directly as instruments
of biobank regulation (or transform them into such) in the interest of
maintaining regulatory consistency down the normative chain.
It cannot be assumed that such an extension will sit happily with the
respective history, rationale, and customary application of the lower-order
instruments, or enable their sensible application to biobanks. Some of these
instruments distinguish between samples and data or information.32 Moreover,
B. Data in Databases
Database protection under intellectual property law is another context where
lawmakers failure to address thoroughly the meaning of basic information
concepts causes difficulty. The difficulty concerns legislative definitions of the
terms database and compilation. The open-ended, ambiguous way in which
the terms are defined has generated questions about their meaning, in
particular, over whether or not they embrace biobanks along with other
collections of physical objects. Again, I have dealt with this question at length
in another article,37 so treatment of it here is brief.
The point of departure for the discussion is the EU Database Directive.38
With few qualifications, this protects databases in any form (article 1(1)). A
database is defined as a collection of independent works, data or other
materials arranged in a systematic or methodical way and individually
See further ibid 2022; Mark Taylor, Genetic Data and the Law: A Critical Perspective on Privacy Protection
(CUP 2012) ch 7.
As Gibbons and Kaye note, to date we still have no clear, co-ordinated or coherent framework for
governing genetic databases and related activities, even at the domestic level: Susan MC Gibbons and Jane Kaye,
Governing Genetic Databases: Collection, Storage and Use (2007) 18 Kings LJ 201, 203.
See eg Data Protection Directive, art 6(1)(d).
Consider eg the issue as to when a person ought to be accorded a right of access to bodily samples of their
first-degree genetic relatives (ie siblings, parents, or children), along with the issue of whether that person ought
to be able to co-determine (via consent requirements) how such samples are used. For discussion, see eg
Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) and Australian Health Ethics Committee (AHEC), Essentially
Yours: The Protection of Human Genetic Information in Australia, Report No 96 (ARLC/AHEC 2003) [8.48]
[8.54]; Taylor (n 33) 11630.
Lee A Bygrave, The Data Difficulty in Database Protection (2013) 35 EIPR 25.
Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases [1996] OJ L77/20.
applying data protection laws to regulate biobanks will usually involve an
extension of the lawsand thereby an extension in the scope of data protection
authorities competencebeyond what the legislators have consciously considered. While good grounds exist for closely calibrating biobank regulation
with the principles of data protection law,33 and while it is tempting to apply
the latter to body samples given the parlous state of biobank regulation under
other codes,34 such application is unlikely to be plain sailing. At the very least,
the rules in data protection laws will need fine-tuning if extended to biological
material. Some of the current rules (eg the requirement that personal data be
accurate, or erased, or rectified if inaccurate)35 are logically difficult if not
impossible to apply to biological samples. Moreover, usage of some biological
material (eg DNA) involves weighing up group interests that are not readily
accounted for by current data protection rules.36
Thus, the decision to extend data protection laws to biological material
ought not to be taken lightly but be preceded by careful discussion. When
assimilating the human body into the body of data protection law, we should
avoid quick fixes, especially when they are not the product of considered
See eg the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Copyright Treaty 1996, art 5; World Trade
Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights 1994 (hereinafter
TRIPS Agreement), art 10(2); United States (US) Copyright Act 1976 (17 USC), s 101.
For an extensive overview and assessment of these and other criticisms, see Estelle Derclaye, The Legal
Protection of Databases: A Comparative Analysis (Edward Elgar 2008) especially ch 2.
See Bygrave (n 37) and references cited therein.
See further eg Estelle Derclaye, What is a Database? A Critical Analysis of the Definition of a Database in
the European Database Directive and Suggestions for an International Definition (2002) 5 J World Intellectual
Property 981, 984 and references cited therein.
The Oxford Dictionary of English (3rd edn, OUP 2010) defines database as a structured set of data held in
accessible by electronic or other means (article 1(2)). It is primarily the
ambiguous phrase data or other materials combined with the apparent
disregard for form that ignites the discussion. A similar discussion could arise
with respect to the term compilation which is employed in certain other
intellectual property legislation as an equivalent to the database concept. That
legislation requires the protection of compilations of data or other material
largely regardless of their form.39
However, the gravitas of the questions is heightened in the context of the
Database Directive as the way in which the questions are answered bears on
the application of the internationally unique and controversial sui generis
database right provided by the Directive. The right prevents the contents of a
database from being extracted or reutilizedindependent of any copyright
protection that might otherwise applywhere substantial investment has gone
into the obtaining, verification or presentation of the contents (article 7(1)).
The right has been strongly criticized on multiple grounds. Among these are
accusations that it lacks economic justification, engenders improper informational lock-up, and fails to provide adequate legal certainty.40
Minimal guidance on the database definition exists in the legislation, and the
borders it constructs around the term database are porous. The legislation
fails to indicate in what sense it employs the terms data and materials. Both
terms can connote something solid and tangible yet they can also connote
purely informational items (text, images and the like). Nonetheless, the
preparatory works clearly evidence databases as just having informational
constituents.41 Moreover, the first proposal for the Directive only covered
electronic databases. This limitation soon became untenable for various
reasons.42 In my opinion, the limitation and the subsequent need to overcome
that limitation cast light on the breadth of the database definition in article
1(2). The legislator had to adopt a definition that was sufficiently generic to (i)
encompass both electronic and non-electronic collections of data, (ii) take
account of technological developments, and (iii) serve the purposes of both
copyright and the sui generis right. The reference to other materials was
probably inserted to neutralise the connotation of the term database as a
computerized collection of data.43 Unfortunately, the result of this generic
dream was confusingly broad terminology.
Case C444/02 Fixtures Marketing Ltd v Organismos Prognostikon Agonon Podosfairou (OPAP) (Greece)
[2004] ECR I10549, para 28. Recital 10 states that the exponential growth, in the Community and worldwide,
in the amount of information generated and processed annually in all sectors of commerce and industry calls for
investment in all the Member States in advanced information processing systems. Recital 12 states that such an
investment in modern information storage and processing systems will not take place within the Community
unless a stable and uniform legal protection regime is introduced for the protection of the rights of makers of
Case C203/02 British Horseracing Board Limited and Others v William Hill Organisation Ltd [2004] ECR I
10415, paras 31ff; Case C46/02 Fixtures Marketing Ltd v Oy Veikkaus AB AB (Finland) [2004] ECR I10365,
paras 34ff; Case C338/02 Fixtures Marketing Ltd v Svenska Spel AB (Sweden) [2004] ECR I10497, paras 24ff;
OPAP (n 44) paras 40ff.
OPAP, Opinion, para 74; Svenska Spel, Opinion, para 58; Veikkaus, Opinion, para 68.
Svenska Spel (n 45) para 31. See too OPAP (n 44) para 47; Veikkaus (n 45) paras 4244.
See eg Ole-Andreas Rognstad, Opphavsrett (Universitetsforlaget 2009) 3023; Matthias Leistner, British
Horseracing Board v William Hill (2005) 36 Intl Rev Intellectual Property and Competition L 592, 594
Judgment of 9 November 2005, reported in Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht (GRUR) 2006, 225
(holding that the process of producing a database consisting of a topographic map of a natural landscape involved
the collection of pre-existing data). See further Bygrave (n 37) 31.
The informational focus apparent in the preparatory works has been
emphasized in case law. According to the EU Court of Justice (CJEU), the
database concept must be defined in light of the Directives intended function,
which is to encourage the development of systems performing a function of
storage and processing of information, according to the 10th and 12th
recitals.44 The Court, though, has not yet clarified the precise meaning of
data or other materials in article 1(2). The closest that it has come to such
clarification is to hold that generating or creating data is not the same as
obtaining it, and that investment in the former activity thereby fails to attract
application of the sui generis right.45
Distinguishing between the creation of data and the collection of existing
data can be difficult. This is evidenced in the football-fixture cases where the
Court differed from Advocate-General Stix-Hackel as to the classification of
the drawing up of fixture lists. In the Advocate-Generals view, the process
involved the collection of existing data;46 the Court held otherwise.47 The
distinction between creating and obtaining data becomes especially difficult in
the context of scientific research, where natural phenomena are observed and
analysed. When do those processes generate data? Some scholars argue that the
natural phenomena themselves are data such that analysis of them resulting in
recordings of co-ordinates, measurements, etc involves pre-existing data being
collected.48 As is made clear further on in this article, such an argument finds
support in some informatics-based explications of data (though the scholars
concerned do not refer to these). A decision by the Munich District Court
(Landgericht) also provides support for the argument, although it is somewhat
ambiguous on the point.49 My hunch is that the CJEU would be unlikely
to accept the argument. It would rather look for when the formalized
representations of the natural phenomena (typically in the form of recorded
3. Growing Prominence of Generic Information
Do the issues identified in the two case studies exist just within the fields of
data protection and intellectual property law? I argue they do not. Similar
problems exist in other fields of law, although their form and significance can
vary from the case studies due to differences in terminological, technological,
or transactional context. Such problems do not exist across all legal fields;
nonetheless, they pop upor could pop upin various guises in a significant
number of areas. Their compass reflects growth of legislation involving the use
of basic information concepts as front-line statutory terms that are decoupled
from a narrowly specified technological platform or medium.
See too Mark J Davison and P Bernt Hugenholtz, Football Fixtures, Horse Races and Spin-offs: The ECJ
Domesticates the Database Right (2005) 27 EIPR 113, 115; Jens L Gaster, Der Rechtsschutz von Datenbanken
(Carl Heymanns Verlag 1999) 37.
See further Bygrave (n 37) 3132.
This assumes, of course, that the blood samples already existed, such that the substantial investment
required for art 7(1) protection was directed at obtaining the samples (as opposed to generating them).
measurements) are first made and regard that process as creating, rather than
obtaining or collecting data.50 This approach would seem to tally better with
the Directives legislative history and aims.
However, it is not inconceivable that the Court would judge certain types of
biobanks as fitting within the database concept, thus emulating, in a way, the
judicial line taken in the Marper case. The Court would probably do so if it
regarded the biobank as primarily filling an informational function such that its
protection, in the Courts view, could be justified against the considerations
mentioned in recitals 10 and 12 of the Directives preambleconsiderations
emphasized in the OPAP case.51 A pertinent example could be a collection of
blood samples for genetic testing, managed as part of a commercial enterprise
(eg development and sale of new pharmaceutical products).52
The issue of database protection for biobanks appears not yet to have been
the subject of litigation, and a more general discussion about the precise
meaning of data or other materials has hitherto been largely confined to the
ivory tower of academia. Yet, the issue remains important in principle and in
the broader regulatory context. This is especially so in light of the overprotective potential of the sui generis database right together with the Directives
harmonization objective. Accordingly, just as human body samples should not
be assimilated into the body of data protection law in a manner akin to the
Marper one liner, so should careful discussion precede any extension of
database protection to biobanks.
See eg the Official Information Act 1982 of New Zealand (NZ); Freedom of Information Act 2000 of the
United Kingdom (UK); and Government Information (Open Access) Act 2009 of New South Wales (NSW).
See eg Irelands Freedom of Information Act 1997 which employs record as the basic unit of disclosure
and defines the term as encompassing any form . . . (including machine-readable form) or thing in which
information is held or stored manually, mechanically or electronically (s 2(1)). Cf Canadas federal Access to
Information Act (Revised Statutes of Canada (RSC) 1985, c A-1) which also employs record as the basic unit of
disclosure but defines this as any documentary material, regardless of medium or form (s 3).
See eg the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime 2001 (hereinafter Cybercrime Convention), arts
25; Canadas federal Criminal Code (RSC 1985, c C-46), s 430(1.1) dealing with mischief relating to data;
Norways General Civil Penal Code 1902 (Almindelig borgerlig straffelov 22 mai 1902 nr 10), 145(2) dealing with
unjustified access to data (see further below).
See eg European Convention on Human Rights, art 10(1), which includes freedom to receive and impart
See eg United Nations (UN) Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International
Contracts 2006 (not yet in force) (hereinafter Electronic Communications Convention or ECC), art 4(b)
(defining electronic communication in terms of data messages); UK Communications Act 2003, s 32(1)
(defining an electronic communications network as a transmission system for the conveyance, by the use of
electrical, magnetic or electro-magnetic energy, of signals of any description) and s 32(10)(a) (defining signal in
terms of data of any description).
See eg TRIPS Agreement, art 39 on the protection of undisclosed information (in effect, trade secrets).
See eg the preparatory works for Norways Freedom of Information Act 2006 (lov om rett til innsyn i
dokument i offentleg verksemd 19 mai 2006 nr 16), particularly Ny offentlighetslov, Norges Offentlige Utredninger
(Norwegian Official Reports; abbreviated as NOU), 2003 no 30, 8081, 257 and Odelstingsproposisjon
(Government Bill) no 102 (200405) 11920, both of which employ basic information concepts to explain the
meaning of the term dokument (document) in 4(1) of the legislation.
See eg use of the term content in the definition of document in Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of
public sector information (hereinafter PSI Directive) [2003] OJ L345/90, art 2(3). According to the Directives
preamble, the intention is to lay down a generic definition of the term document, in line with developments in
the information society (recital 11).
Examples include administrative law and criminal law. In administrative law,
we see, for instance, freedom of information (FOI) statutes now frequently
employing information as the basic unit of disclosure, either directly53 or
more indirectly, by defining the formal primary unit of disclosure (such as
record or document) in terms of information.54 Turning to criminal law,
particularly pertinent statutory provisions are those criminalizing unauthorized
access to, alteration or destruction of data in computer systems.55 Basic
information concepts also come to the fore in rules on freedom of expression56
and electronic communications.57 Additionally, in intellectual property law,
basic information concepts are not only applied in the protection of databases,
but also in, say, the protection of trade secrets.58
The above list of relevant legal fields does not pretend to be exhaustive.
Further, the true operational impact of basic information concepts cannot be
measured simply in terms of their employment as front-line statutory terms.
They also figure in other legal sources (typically preparatory works) to explain
statutory provisions employing related concepts, such as document, record,
or file.59 Moreover, other generic terms are sometimes inserted in legislation
to fulfil the role of a basic information concept and render the law more
technology-neutral.60
Legislative use of basic information concepts seems to have grown markedly
since the late 1980s. This does not mean that they were previously absent from
legislation. Nor does it mean that legislation or law more generally was not
4. Loosening Media Moorings
The above elaboration of the role traditionally played by media in the
application of law helps to throw into relief the legislative developments that
are the main concern of this article. In many respects, the developments
involve loosening legal rules from their media moorings. The extent of such
loosening affects the extent to which the rules become vulnerable to the sorts of
problems highlighted in the case studies. Consequently, not all instances in
which legal rules are recast in more generic terminology will result in their
possible or ready application to aspects of the organic world. This is the case,
for example, with instances of electronic communications law which, despite
See eg the references to Irish and Canadian legislation, n 54 above. Application of the equivalent UK
legislation also presumes that the information be held in recorded form: see Freedom of Information Act 2000, s
84; Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2000, s 73.
See eg Hong Kongs Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance of 1995 which applies only to information that is
in the form of data held in a document (s 2).
already substantially engaged in the regulation of information. There has
always been extensive legal regulation of information, though often in indirect
forms focused on certain communication contexts. These contexts are (or have
been) often constituted and delimited by reference to certain types of media
(eg paper, computers), service (eg broadcasting, telephony), negotiation
(eg contract), decisional process (eg decision-making by government agencies),
or combinations of these. Many contract formation rules, for instance, deal
essentially with communication and quality of information, although they are
clothed in other context-specific terminology, such as offer, invitation to
treat, (mis)representation, and acceptance.
The delineation of context has helped to anchor the relevant legal rules,
providing them with a measure of certainty and reducing the risk of overinclusiveness. The role played by media is particularly important in this regard.
Laws are often framed so that they specifically govern particular media rather
than the data and information that they carry. Even laws that are primarily
aimed at regulating data or information frequently require for their application
that information be embodied in a specified medium. For instance, FOI laws
often apply only to data or information in some sort of documentary or
recorded form.61 In other words, they will not apply to information held simply
in a persons mind. Some data protection laws also operate with such a
limitation.62 This media-specific focus of law partly reflects distaste for direct
interference with purely cognitive processes; lawmakers are reluctant to engage
in thought control. It also reflects the concern for legal certainty and the
practicability of enforcement.
See eg the Norwegian Electronic Communications Act 2003 (Lov om elektronisk kommunikasjon 4 juli 2003
nr 83) s 1-5(1) which defines electronic communication as transmission of sound, text, pictures or other data
with the aid of electromagnetic signals in free space or by cable in a system for signal transmission.
The case, for instance, with the UN ECC and UK Communications Act (n 57).
This vagueness extends also to what the Conventions Explanatory Report refers to as cyber-space (sic),
which is simply referred to as the common space created by interconnection of communication and information
services: Explanatory Report to the Convention on Cybercrime (Council of Europe, 8 November 2001) para 8.
Note that the report does not constitute an instrument providing an authoritative interpretation of the
Convention, although it might be of such a nature as to facilitate the understanding of the provisions contained
therein: ibid para II.
ibid para 23.
adopting a broad definition of the signals being communicated, specify a
particular channel for signal transmission, such as free space or cable.63
However, we cannot assume that retention of the criteria electronic, electromagnetic, automated or automatic as prerequisites for applying law64 will,
in itself, necessarily steer law clear of the organic world. It is trite to observe
that biological processes are both generators and conductors of electricity, and
that they can be automated in the sense of them occurring without human
intervention. Retention of other contextual factors may nonetheless help to
prevent law being applied to biological material or processes. Thus, the UN
Electronic Communications Convention makes clear that it applies only to
communication of data messages in the context of the formation or
performance of a contract (article 4(a)).
Yet, the legislative delineation of such contextual factors often fails
unequivocally to prevent the law concerned from being able to drift into the
biological world. This is particularly the case when the key terms for its
application are also generically formulated. We see this in the case studies. We
can also discern it in criminal law and administrative law. Take, for example,
the Cybercrime Convention. While its title, preamble, and explanatory report
evidence that the Convention is aimed at combatting criminal activity in
cyberspacewhich is commonly understood as a virtual dimension and, as
such, quite separate from the organic worlddelineation of its scope of
application is otherwise vague.65 And the key terms upon which its application
turnscomputer system and computer dataare not defined in their
ordinary literal sense but in a more generic way, which might encompass
certain biological processes, such as biocomputing. The Convention defines a
computer system to include any device or a group of interconnected or
related devices, one or more of which, pursuant to a program, performs
automatic processing of data (article 1(a)). The terms device and program
are not defined in the Convention. The explanatory report fails to elaborate on
the term device, although it refers to a program as a set of instructions that
can be executed by the computer to achieve the desired result.66 The term
computer data is defined as any representation of facts, information or
concepts in a form suitable for processing in a computer system (article 1(b)).
The sole criterion posing a substantial conceptual hindrance to the
5. Technology and Generic Dreams
The ever-greater legal salience of basic information concepts has a complex
aetiology and its full explication lies beyond the scope of this article. For
present purposesand at the clear risk of oversimplificationthe development
is due in considerable part to the effects of computer technology on
information processing, combined with a determination to regulate these
effects in line with certain values.
According to the Explanatory Report, the apparent breadth of the definition is also undercut by a
requirement that the data concerned must be put in such a form that it can be directly processed by the
computer system (emphasis added): ibid para 25. However, that requirement scarcely hinders application to the
This denotes a replication of biological material using processes that are functionally akin to the printing of
paper documents: see eg <www.explainingthefuture.com/bioprinting.html> accessed 17 April 2014. The
technology is still in its infancy and its potential is shrouded in both hype and controversy: see eg <http://
angelasaini.blogspot.it/2011/09/could-we-really-print-body-parts.html> accessed 17 April 2014. Nonetheless,
jurists and other policy entrepreneurs would be foolish to write it off as a permanent part of science fiction.
See further Philip Coppel, Information Rights: Law and Practice (3rd edn, Hart 2010) 333 [9-003] and
references cited therein, and noting that [t]he medium on which matter is recorded should not, in principle,
impinge upon its characterisation as information.
Conventions application to biological material or processes is the reference to
representation.67 The hindrance is based on an assumption that data, as a
representation, must be an abstraction and accordingly separate from the
natural or biological world. I discuss the strength of that assumption towards
Turning to administrative law, generic information concepts are gradually
usurping the place traditionally played by document, record, and the like. As
indicated above, this is happening partly through replacement of the latter by
the former as front-line statutory terms, or the latter are retained in that role,
but are redefined so that they are, in effect, reduced to their informational
bones. In both cases, the rules are being significantly loosened from their
traditional media moorings. At the same time, the moorings themselves are
becoming looser as their specification becomes more generic. Consider, for
instance, the PSI Directive, which defines document to cover any content
whatever its medium (written on paper or stored in electronic form or as a
sound, visual or audiovisual recording) (art 2(3); emphasis added). The
definitions media specification may perhaps be tightened by the elaboration in
parentheses; if so, this would make it difficult, if not impossible to consider,
say, a bioprint68 as a document for the purposes of the Directive. We cannot be
sure, though, that the parenthetical elaboration forms the outer boundaries of
the documentary medium here. Media specification under equivalent FOI
regimes in certain other jurisdictions is even looser than under the PSI
Directive. The UK Freedom of Information Act, for example, applies to
information recorded in any form (section 84).69 Thus, its potential
application to a bioprint is conceptually easy.
See eg Jon Bing, Information Law? (1982) 2 J Law and Media Practice 219.
See especially the work of the UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) with respect to
its Model Law on Electronic Commerce 1996, particularly arts 512, and the UN Electronic Communications
Convention (ECC), particularly its preamble (para 5) along with arts 8, 9, and 12.
See eg Bygrave, Data Protection Law (n 21) 5052 and references cited therein.
See too Ian Walden, Computer Crimes and Digital Investigations (OUP 2007) 61 [2.178] and Bert-Jaap
Koops, Should ICT Regulation Be Technology-Neutral? in Bert-Jaap Koops, Miriam Lips, Corien Prins, and
Maurice Schellekens (eds), Starting Points for ICT Regulation: Deconstructing Prevalent Policy One-Liners (TMC
Asser Press 2006) 77, 8789.
Both digitization (ie the conversion of data into binary digital signs) and
convergence (in this context, the merger of technological-organizational
platforms for data processing and delivery of services) have been particularly
salient in pushing lawmakers to recast legal rules using relatively generic
information concepts. Both processes have loosened information from its paper
mediuman outcome often summed up in the popular, though somewhat
misleading phrase of the 1980s that the computer has set information free.70
In light of this liberation, lawmakers have set about attempting to liberate
legal rules from the boundaries of paper and sometimes other relatively specific
media with fixed physical and logical walls. The attempt is exemplified by the
comprehensive round of law reform aimed at ensuring that the bulk of
transactions carried out electronically are ascribed similar legal status to nonelectronic transactions.71 It is also exemplified in the shift in focus of data
protection law from regulating systematically structured collections of personal
data in the form of registers or filesa focus typical for data protection
instruments drafted in the 1970s and early 1980sto regulating the processing
of personal data largely regardless of how the data is organized.72
The efforts of lawmakers here cannot simply be explained as responses to
digitization, convergence, and other technological-organizational developments.
The nature of their response also has an ideological dimension as manifest in
their choice of particular strategies to cope with rapid technological change.
These strategies embody various guiding regulatory principles, ideals, and
demands. At a basic level, they embody a demand for legal sustainability or
futureproofing. This is a demand that laws are capable, for the foreseeable
future, of meeting their goals in the face of technological flux, thereby reducing
the number of times the Sisyphean stone of legal reform has to be rolled
uphill.73 The demand is so intrinsic to the lawmaking process, and so
uncontroversial, that it is rarely singled out for special critique or reflection.
Linked to that demand are the guiding principles of technology neutrality
and functional equivalence. These have developed into basic regulatory
axioms, particularly for coping with changes in ICT. The principle of
technological neutrality has several connotations and dimensions, the essential
one being a demand that legal rules (either in their formulation or effects),
along with regulation more generally, ought not to favour unduly one particular
6. Scarcity of Statutory Definitions of Information Concepts
Although basic information concepts are increasingly employed as front-line
legislative terms, lawmakers often leave them either undefined or only partially
defined. For instance, the term data is not defined in the UK Computer
Misuse Act 1990, nor is the term information defined in the UK Freedom of
Information Act 2000. As highlighted in the case studies and further below,
numerous examples exist in other areas of law too.
In some cases, the paucity of definition might be simply the result of
oversight. In other cases, it can reflect a view that clarification is unnecessary
For in-depth analysis of the meanings, realism, and desirability of the principle, see Koops, ibid and Chris
Reed, Taking Sides on Technology Neutrality (2007) 4:3 SCRIPTed 263 <hwww.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/
vol4-3/reed.asp> accessed 17 April 2014.
For discussion of these connotations, see Maurice Schellekens, What Holds Off-Line, Also Holds OnLine? in Koops and others (n 73) 5175; Chris Reed, Online and Offline Equivalence: Aspiration and
Achievement (2010) 18 Intl J Law and Information Technology 248.
See too Koops (n 73) 85; Schellekens, ibid 75. However, as Reed points out (ibid), considerable obstacles
lie in the way of achieving full equivalence.
See eg Sunde (n 2) ch 6 and references cited therein.
technology over another.74 In practice, avoiding such discrimination will often
require legal rules to be (re-)drafted so that their application is not exclusively
tied to a particular or narrowly defined technology.
As for functional equivalence, the thrust of this principle posits that what is
legally possible using non-electronic means should, as a point of departure, be
legally possible using electronic meansa norm that is sometimes summed up
in the phrase what holds off-line should also hold on-line. Like technology
neutrality, functional equivalence has several connotations.75 As a substantive
regulatory guideline, its application essentially involves (i) analysing the basic
functions of paper-based or other off-line documents and activity, and (ii)
ensuring that, where desirable, the regulatory framework permits reproduction
of the equivalent functionality in the digital or on-line environment. In practice,
the principle tends to be intertwined with technology neutrality and serves
frequently as a goal for the latter.76
For the purposes of this article, the especially noteworthy aspect of these
principles is that they encourage use of relatively generic information concepts
in law. While this point is noted at least indirectly in some legislative materials
(chiefly preparatory works) and law reform proposals,77 it has attracted
surprisingly little comment in academic literature. I am not suggesting that
application of the principles always necessitates making greater use of generic
information concepts in legal instruments. Yet, their logical thrust (particularly
that of technology neutrality) involves replacing much of the conceptual
apparatus that arose in the paper age with more obviously generic concepts.
because the term in question has an obvious ordinary meaning and is to be
applied in accordance with that meaning. This is the case with the term
information in New Zealands Official Information Act 1982. In Commissioner
of Police v Ombudsman,78 McMullin J of the NZ Court of Appeal stated:
Information is not defined in the [Official Information] Act. From this it may be
inferred that the draftsman was prepared to adopt the ordinary dictionary meaning of
that word. Information in its ordinary dictionary meaning is that which informs,
instructs, tells or makes aware.79
[1988] 1 NZLR 385.
ibid 402.
Law Commission, Computer Misuse (Law Com No 186, 1989) [3.30].
See references cited in n 6.
Lov om straff 20 mai 2005 nr 28 (not yet in force).
Odelstingsproposisjon no 22 (200809) 21.
Scottish Law Commission, Report on Computer Crime (Scot Law Com No 174, 1987) [4.17]. The English
Law Commission has shared this scepticism, as have others involved in drafting computer crime legislation in the
UK: Martin Wasik, Crime and the Computer (Clarendon Press 1991) 5, 78 and references cited therein.
Similarly, the UK Law Commission took the view that providing a definition of
data in the Computer Misuse Act 1990 was unnecessary, as the terms
putatively ordinary meaning as information or facts held on a computer
sufficed.80
In yet other cases, the paucity of definition can reflect a view that the term
in question is incapable of being defined in a legally useful way or, indeed,
at all. As noted above, some legal scholars have taken this view.81 While not
all legislators share such pessimism to the same degree, they do sometimes
doubt their ability to provide a statutory definition of information or data
that is sufficiently precise to serve a legally useful purpose. The doubt is
manifest in the decision of the Norwegian Ministry of Justice to omit
definitions of the terms data and datasystem in Norways Penal Code
2005,82 despite the legislation containing a raft of provisions expressly aimed at
protecting various forms of data and ICT. In the Ministrys view, both terms
are too hard to define with sufficient precision yet flexibility to take account
of technological change.83 Thus, the Ministrys decision is also an instance of
lawmakers refraining from defining a term in order to preserve its flexibility and, thereby, to futureproof it. We see this also exemplified in scepticism of
lawmakers towards providing a statutory definition of the term computer.
The Scottish Law Commission, for instance, has opined that since computer technology is advancing so rapidly, any definition even if expressed
in terms of function rather than construction, would rapidly become
obsolete.84
Fear of obsolescence is often accompanied by a fear of over-inclusiveness.
Like the former, the latter fear is exacerbated by concern over technological
This worry arose particularly in the wake of statutory definitions of computer in US legislation from the
1980s: Wasik, ibid 45 and references cited therein.
Quoting the Australian Model Criminal Code Officers Committee of the Standing Committee of
Attorneys-General, Model Criminal Code, Chapter 4: Damages and Computer Offences (Final Report, January 2001)
129 (where the Committee claims that such understanding, rather than statutory definitions, provides the safest
guides to the meaning of computer, data, program and like terms).
For discussion of the relative flexibility of the common law in light of technological change, see Bennett
Moses (n 17) 4035.
development. Thus, as computer technology becomes increasingly pervasive,
there is the worry that a statutory definition of computer risks encompassing a
range of devices that are not typically associated with or regarded as
computers.85 The fear is also discernible in the above-mentioned concern of
the Norwegian Ministry of Justice about achieving definitional precision in the
face of technological change. In the context of criminal law, the fear of overinclusiveness becomes one of over-criminalization.
The scepticism towards statutory definitions tends to rest on at least two
assumptions. One assumption is that a term such as information or data has
an ordinary meaning that is sufficiently stable and uniformly understood so
that lawmakers may take for granted that the term can be sensibly applied
without upfront instruction from them. A second assumption, which can go
hand-in-hand with the first, is that those bodies charged with interpreting and
applying lawprimarily the courtsare willing to construe the undefined
terms in a way that keeps pace with technological development or, at least,
with evolving common understanding of those terms modified, where
necessary, by their statutory context.86 A variant of this assumption could
be a belief that the judiciary will not do a worse job of definition than
legislators will, coupled perhaps with a belief that the judiciary can fix its own
definitional errors more readily than having errors fixed through the legislative
system.87
Both assumptions are contestable, though not often contested. The remainder of this article deals largely with the first-mentioned assumption. In doing
so, attention is also paid to the above-noted claim by some scholars that
information (and perhaps related concepts such as data) is too conceptually
inchoate to be precisely defined, at least in law. That claim undercuts the
assumption of definitional stability. It might also imply that lawmakers ought to
avoid or minimise express references to basic information concepts in legal
Before examining the issue of definitional stability, it is pertinent to consider
briefly the assumption about courts willingness to construe undefined terms in
line with technological developments. The degree of such willingness depends
on judicial culture generally along with a range of more specific factors, such as
The CJEU being an especially notable instance: see further eg Paul Craig and Grainne de Burca, EU Law
(5th edn, OUP 2011) 64 and references cited therein.
Stefan Vogenauer, A Retreat from Pepper v Hart? A Reply to Lord Steyne (2005) 25 OJLS 629.
Norwegian Supreme Court decision of 22 December 1994, reported in Norsk Retstidende (Norwegian Law
Reports; abbreviated as Rt) 1994, 1610.
ibid 161213.
Rt 1995 35. In this judgment, the Court simply followed the line of the majority in Rt 1994 1610 without
the prevailing approach to statutory interpretation. For example, a purposive or
teleological approach to interpreting legislative terms is arguably more
conducive to the ability of law to keep pace with technological change than
is an approach requiring adoption of the intrinsic literal meaning of statutory
language. The purposive approach is popular with many courts and jurisdictions,88 but has had to struggle to gain favour with English courts.89 Yet, even
when it does have traction, its ability to accommodate technological change can
be frustrated by other factors, such as obscurity of parliamentary intention or
strict adherence to the principle that clear legal authority is required for state
measures that infringe upon citizens autonomy.
That principle is particularly weighty in the field of criminal law, where
courts are traditionally hesitant to expand the scope of ambiguously formulated
statutory offences to the detriment of the accused. Thus, in criminal law
especially, legal provisions that have been drafted in relatively generic terms in
order to keep abreast of technological developments can end up being
inflexibly applied by courts.
An example of relevant judicial inflexibility comes from case law of the
Norwegian Supreme Court (Hyesterett). In the late 1980s, the Norwegian
Penal Code 1902 was amended to improve its ability to combat computer
crime. The amendments included a new provision, making it a criminal offence
to gain unjustified access to protected data or software which are stored or
transferred by electronic or other technical means (section 145(2)). In the case
concerned, the Supreme Court was called upon to determine whether use of
pirate decoders to decrypt scrambled television signals sent by satellite
constituted such an offence.90 A 32 majority concluded in the negative,
holding that the term data covered neither television programmes nor signals:
data was rather to be understood in terms of computer-processed information (EDB-basert informasjon), which was on general understanding
something different than television programmes.91 While acknowledging the
legislators intent to give data a broad meaning and that policy considerations (reelle hensyn) favoured criminal punishment of the marketing of
pirate decoders, the majority held that the preparatory works failed to provide a
sufficiently solid basis for construing data expansively.92 The majority line was
followed shortly afterwards by the Court in a unanimous judgment.93
The Courts line has been criticized for failing to adopt a view of data in
accordance with the thrust of the preparatory works and, in effect, with what is
7. Complexity of Information Concepts
A. Semantics of Information
One of our most prominent contemporary information theorists, Luciano
Floridi, laments that [i]nformation is a conceptual labyrinth96 due to its
multidimensional character. The concept denotes a process (the action of being
informedalso often called communication), result (that which is imparted
also typically called knowledge, at least if it leads to a change or confirmation
of beliefs) or object (that which is informative).97 And in terms of the latter,
consensus as to which physical objects constitute information is rough and
shiftingas the above case studies show.
Compounding this multidimensionality is that information also has special
meanings in particular contexts. Law provides one such example: in common
law jurisdictions, information has been used to denote a particular type of
The strongest criticism is expressed by Knut S Selmer in his short article, Hva er data? (1995) Lov og
Rett 149.
See too Gunnar Aasland, Noen betraktninger om rettskildesprsmal i Hyesteretts praksis (2000) Jussens
Venner 157, 164.
Luciano Floridi, Information: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2010) 19.
Michael Buckland, Information and Information Systems (Praeger 1991) 34, 3940.
common in informatics.94 While the criticism has merit, it is weakened by lack
of detailed guidance in the preparatory works on the intended ambit of the
term in question. One must also take into account that the object of
interpretation was a penal provision and that application of criminal sanctions
requires clear legal authority.95
However, the legal propriety of the judges view of data is not of primary
concern here. More important is that their view highlights that we cannot
reasonably expect uniformity of views about the meaning of data. The
regulatory consequences of the judges line are also important. In response to
the case, provisions were added to the Penal Code dealing specifically with
unauthorized access to television and radio signals ( 262(4)(a)) and services
provided via electronic telecommunication (section 262(4)(b)). These provisions are much less technology-neutral than section 145(2). They are, in other
words, an example of generic dreams giving way to definitional daylight in a
technology-specific form. They illustrate that movement from technologyspecific to technology-neutral rules is not purely unidirectional: when the latter
rules are not provided with requisite clarity, they can be replaced or
supplemented by more precisely drawn norms. While such a result is
praiseworthy for enhancing legal certainty, the expense of the legislative
amendment might have been avoided had legislators first taken proper account
of the ambiguity of the terminology they initially employed.
See eg Canadas Criminal Code 1985, s 576(2) (No criminal information shall be laid or granted . . .).
See especially CE Shannon, A Mathematical Theory of Communication (1948) 27 Bell System Technical
J 379, 623.
RVL Hartley, Transmission of Information (1928) 7 Bell System Technical J 535, 536.
information, n (OED Online, OUP March 2014) <www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/95568>
accessed 17 April 2014.
Luciano Floridi, The Philosophy of Information (OUP 2011) 83; Floridi (n 96) 20.
ISO 2382-1, Information TechnologyVocabularyPart 1: Fundamental Terms (1993).
See too Cahir (n 2) s 4; Mayer-Schonberger (n 2) 1617.
See eg Directive 2002/21/EC on a common regulatory framework for electronic communications networks
and services [2002] OJ L108/33, preamble recital 5 (noting that while [i]t is necessary to separate the regulation
of transmission from the regulation of content, such separation does not prejudice the taking into account of the
links existing between them, in particular in order to guarantee media pluralism, cultural diversity and consumer
charge or complaint presented to a court.98 Another example is the mathematical theory of communication developed by Claude Shannon and others.99
This employs the term information to denote a quantified degree of choice
regarding the selection of one symbol from a set of possible symbols within a
given communication channel, the semantic value of what is communicated
being of secondary relevance.100
Conveyance of meaning, however, usually figures prominently in common
usage of the information concept. It is apposite to recall the above-noted line
taken by the NZ Court of Appeal: [i]nformation in its ordinary dictionary
meaning is that which informs, instructs, tells or makes aware. Etymologically,
information stems at least in part from the Latin verb informare, which
roughly means give form to (an idea), instruct, or teach.101 As such,
conveyance of meaning is integral to information as both a process and a result.
The centrality of semantic value is also increasingly stressed in informatics,
where a General Definition of Information (GDI) in terms of data + meaning has become an operational standard.102 This is reflected in the definition
of information given by the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO): the meaning assigned to data by means of conventions applied to that
data.103
Information usually denotes a form of semantic content in law and attendant
discourse too. Law is primarily concerned with regulating human relations;
therein, the production and exchange of meaning play a key role.104 Even when
law deals specifically with signal transmission, the rules tend to serve aims
(such as pluralism and freedom of expression) that ultimately revolve around
the semantic significance of what is transmitted.105
Focus on meaning pushes context and the relational nature of information to
the fore: the degree to which information is generated from data or other
information, along with the type of information generated, depends on the
interplay of many contextual factors. This is also recognized in legal rules,
perhaps most explicitly in those laying down criteria for assessing when data
or information becomes personal.106 Numerous instances of more implicit
legal recognition exist tooeg in judicially developed rules for determining
when a course of negotiations becomes a legally binding contract and what the
terms of such agreement are.107
B. Semantics of Data
See eg Data Protection Directive art 2(a) (personal data shall mean any information relating to
an . . . identifiable natural person . . . ; an identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in
particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical,
physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity).
See eg Gibson v Manchester City Council [1979] UKHL 6, [1979] 1 WLR 294; Butler Machine Tool Co Ltd v
Ex-Cell-O Corp (England) Ltd [1977] EWCA Civ 9, [1979] 1 WLR 401.
For an overview, see Machlup (n 12) 64649.
datum, n OED Online, OUP March 2014) <www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/47434> accessed
Thus, in a US Supreme Court case dealing with the scope of copyright under US law, raw data has been
described as wholly factual information not accompanied by any original written expression: Feist Publications v
Rural Telephone Service Co (1991) 499 US 340, 345 (OConnor J).
See eg Floridi (n 96) 2021; Fourman (n 4) 241; Peter Rob and Carlos Coronel, Database Systems: Design,
Implementation, and Management (8th edn, Thomson 2009) 56; Chrisanthi Avgerou and Tony Cornford,
Developing Information Systems: Concepts, Issues and Practice (2nd edn, Macmillan 1998) 115.
Floridi (n 102) 84; Floridi (n 96) 2021.
Like information, the term data is pregnant with confusing definitional
variation.108 In everyday discourse in English, data is often used as a synonym
for information generally. Judges, legislators, and legal scholars also frequently
conflate the two termsas we see, for instance, in data protection law.
However, data is also often used to refer principally to a particular class of
information; namely facts, quantities, or conditions derived from systematic
observation or experimentation.109 This use of the term is typical for the social
and biological sciences. The equation of data with facts occurs occasionally
in law too.110
In informatics, however, data is usually seen as a vehicle of information
rather than as information per se. More specifically, data typically denotes
signs, patterns, characters, or symbols which potentially represent some object
or process and, through this representation, can communicate information
about that object or process.111 This way of defining data is in keeping with
its etymology, data being the plural form of the Latin word datum, which
roughly means gift or something given. In the terminology of semiotics, data
has a primarily sigmatic (representational) function, while information has
primarily semantic and cognitive elements. Syntax plays a role too: in order to
generate a particular type of information, data must be formed and structured
in a particular manner. Integrated, therefore, in the above-mentioned General
Definition of Information (GDI) as explicated by Floridi is the qualification
that data is well formed.112 This qualification is also reflected in the definition
of data given by the ISO: a representation of facts, concepts or instructions in
a formalized manner suitable for communication, interpretation or processing
C. Semantics of Communication
The term communication does not seem to present the same degree of
definitional instability as data and information, although it is inevitably
afflicted by some of the ambiguity inherent in the latter. Communication is
broadly understood as denoting the passing on, sharing, or exchange of
information. Thus conceived, communication is more than mere transmission,
but connotes an informative (information-giving) processie impartation. This
is in keeping with its etymological roots in the Latin term communico, which
means to share. As Cherry notes, communication is essentially a social
affair.116 The notion of communication as impartation, though, is not always
clearly reflected in the legal use of the term. Laws sometimes employ the term
to denote the mere transmission of data.117 The term is also applied to cover
transmission processes between non-human nodes.118 Surprisingly, the term is
even occasionally defined to cover situations that apparently do not involve any
data transmission at all.119
As indicated earlier in the article, laws frequently regulate particular forms of
communication rather than communication generally. In doing so, they tend to
ISO (n 103).
Jennifer Rowley, The Wisdom Hierarchy: Representations of the DIKW hierarchy (2007) 33 J
Information Science 163 and references cited therein.
Floridi (n 102) 84; Floridi (n 96) 17.
Colin Cherry, On Human Communication: A Review, a Survey, and a Criticism (3rd edn, MIT Press 1978)
4, 306.
See eg Norwegian Electronic Communications Act of 2003, 1-5(1).
See eg UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, s 81(1) (defining communication as including
signals serving either for the impartation of anything between persons, between a person and a thing or between
things or for the actuation or control of any apparatus).
See UN Electronic Communications Convention, art 4(a) (defining communication in terms of any
statement, declaration . . . and the like without specifying that transmission of the statement etc must occur).
by human beings or by automatic means.113 Thus, some sort of formalized
language (with agreed syntax and semantics) will typically form the bridge
between data and information. Also implicit is that the conversion of data to
information involves an increase in epistemic value. This increase is often
expressed in terms of a broader DIKW hierarchy (Data-InformationKnowledge-Wisdom hierarchy), which embodies an assumed linear rise in
epistemic value from D (low value) through to W (high value), each stage being
reached on the basis of ever-higher degrees of reflection, organization, and
accumulated learning.114
Although data and information tend to be differentiated epistemically and
functionally in informatics, they are also viewed as inextricably interconnected.
Data, at least according to the GDI as explicated by Floridi, is a necessary
constituent of information. In other words, information cannot be dataless.115
This helps bolster the commonplace conflation of the two in everyday
D. Data as Artefact and Abstraction
A question that is definitively decisive for the current application of law is
whether data must be created, directly or indirectly, by human beings. Also
decisive is the closely related question of whether data must be a formalized
representation of objects or processes in the real world. Both questions concern
not just the nature of data and, thereby, information, but also the relationship
between data and information on the one hand and their media on the other.
How these questions are answered helps to determine the degree to which laws
that specifically refer to data may apply to phenomena in the natural or
It is pertinent to consider these questions, taking as a point of departure the
characterization of data and information advanced in the GDI. For the
purposes of the GDI, data is regarded in its most basic form as an absence of
uniformity.124 Only through such difference is information generated.
Differentiation may occur at various levels: Floridi distinguishes between lack
of uniformity in the real world (diaphora de reeg contrast in colours),
differences between signals or physical states (diaphora de signoeg electrical
charges) and differences between symbols (diaphora de dictoeg letters in an
alphabet).125 If all of these situations are viewed as involving types of data, it is
For early analysis on this point, see Nils Kristian Einstabland, Kringkastingsbegrepet (TANO 1992).
See eg South Africas Electronic Communications Act 2005, s 1 (defining broadcasting as any form of
unidirectional electronic communications intended for reception by (a) the public; (b) sections of the public; or
(c) subscribers to any broadcasting service, whether conveyed by means of radio frequency spectrum or any
electronic communications network or any combination thereof).
See eg Audiovisual Media Services Directive 2007/65/EC amending Council Directive 89/552/EEC on the
coordination of certain provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action in Member States
concerning the pursuit of television broadcasting activities [2007] OJ L332/27, art 1(2) (introducing a distinction
between linear and non-linear audiovisual media services, and limiting television broadcasting to the linear
See eg Neal Geach, Convergent Regulation for Convergent Media: An Overview of the Audiovisual
Services Media Directive (2008) 1 J Information, Law and Technology (now EJLT) paras 2.12.1.1 <www2.
warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/jilt/2008_1/geach> accessed 17 April 2014.
Floridi (n 102) 8586; Floridi (n 96) 2324. In other words, data (like information) is relational.
use terms other than communication to denote the specific communicative
processes they are intended to regulate. Such terms can also give rise to
definitional problems, particularly as they have usually been linked to specific
service modes and technological platforms. Examples are telephony, telecommunication and broadcasting. Convergence has called into question the
workability of the legal conceptual frameworks employed to distinguish them
from each other. The concept of broadcasting, for instance, has been
successively tested by new or converging media platforms,120 and it has
typically been redefined using more generic terminology121 or more refined
criteria.122 The success of some of these attempts at redefinition is, at the very
least, debatable.123
Recall the episode in Mario Puzos novel, The Godfather (1969)and in the 1972 film of the same name
directed by Francis Ford Coppolawhen the severed head of a race horse is placed in the bedroom of the horses
owner, thus signalling that his life is threatened if he does not accede to a particular request of the mafia.
Floridi (n 96) 32.
A line advanced also in Jon Bing, Informasjon i informasjonsretten (2009) 46 Ugeskrift for Retsvsen
Evidenced in part by the International Association for Computing and Philosophy awarding Floridi with
the Covey Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy, in 2012.
not difficult to see that data in terms of the GDI may take numerous and
sometimes surprising forms, not just as letters on a piece of paper, 1s and 0s in
a computer program, or smoke signals, but also, presumably, as a horses
head,126 at least in certain contexts. Particularly important is that data, in the
view of Floridi and some others, may also consist of a lack of uniformity in the
natural environment (eg concentric rings in a felled tree trunk).127
A corollary of this perspective is that data may consist of differences in and
between biological materials. The perspective also has implications regarding
when and how data arises. In particular, it has a bearing on when data is
created, as opposed to collected or obtained. As shown in the above case study
on database protection, that issue is germane to the application of the Database
Directive and the attendant national rules.
Such a broad view of data challenges, if not breaks with, more everyday
assumptions about what the concept properly denotes. This is especially so
with the example of data in natura. A characteristic often ascribed to dataand
implicit in the above-cited definition of data given by the ISOis that it is
more or less consciously shaped with the intention of communicating or
otherwise processing information. In other words, data is essentially artificial.
As such, it cannot exist in natura.128
Nonetheless, we cannot simply dismiss the broader conception of data
advanced by Floridi as belonging to the margins of the informatics community.
Floridis work commands considerable respect and influence.129 Moreover, his
assumption that data is a necessary constituent of information accords with the
apparent fact that naturally occurring phenomena do provide us with
information. They do this based on our sensory perception, filtered by and
combined with previously acquired information, which has, in turn, been
organized as knowledge. It is not clear whether this factor constitutes a logical
flaw in the ISOs approach, as it is not clear if the ISOs definition of
information (or, for that matter, data) purports to cover all types of
information (or data): if it does, there is a flaw.
Even if one accepts the ISOs view of data, the conceptual barriers to treating
biological material as data are not as profound as they appear. If separated
from its natural environment and structured as a sample or set of samples with
the intention of providing information, such material can function at the very
least analogously to data in the above-described sense. This will typically be the
case with biobanks.
E. The Role of Media
We must also not forget the media in which data inheres. As the carrier or
supplier of potential information, data has a physical existence, even though
this can often be relatively invisible (eg as electronic impulses). Data is always
incorporated in, or attached to physical material, which thereby functions as
data media. Paper, magnetic tape, plastic, and silicon are typical examples. Yet,
biological material can also function as a data medium. Data may thus have an
embodiment with significant natural elements, even if data putatively cannot
exist in natura.
Moreover, data is often so tightly connected or converged with its carrier
that it cannot be easily separated from it physically. Examples are ink on paper,
runes and hieroglyphics on stone, and tattoos on skin. And some forms of data
are inseparable from their media because the latter are the data, at least if we
accept Floridis explication of data. The horses head mentioned above is an
example in point. In these sorts of cases, we may ask where the logical
boundary is between the data and the physical material.
The pertinence of that question is compounded by the scientific and
technological developments outlined in the introduction. With biological
material increasingly mined for, and treated as information, justifying a
distinction between the former and the latterie between medium and
messagebecomes more difficult.
R (S and Marper) v South Yorkshire Police (Consolidated Appeals) [2004] UKHL 39, [2004] 1 WLR 2196
[70]. For a similar line, see ALRC and AHEC (n 37) [8.32].
The case with the German Federal Data Protection Act, according to the most authoritative academic
commentary on it: see Ulrich Dammann, 3 Weitere Begriffsbestimmungen in Spiros Simitis (ed),
Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (7th edn, Nomos 2011) 297, 3023.
See too Taylor (n 33) 21819 and ch 7.
We see such a view in the UK litigation of the Marper case, particularly in
the judgment of Baroness Hale in the then House of Lords (now Supreme
Court) who stated that the only reason [the DNA samples] . . . are taken or
kept is for the information which they contain, that the samples therefore are
kept as information . . . and nothing else, and that [t]he same privacy
principles should apply to the samples as to the fingerprints and profiles.130
Academic commentary on particular national data protection laws also states
that biological material may become personal data pursuant to the legislation
concerned, from the time that the material is isolated and structured for the
purpose of generating information that facilitates identification of individuals.131 I see considerable sense in such a line, both conceptually and as a
matter of principle,132 even ifas pointed out at the close of the first case
studythere may be difficulties in its legal operationalization.
Lyria Bennett Moses, Recurring Dilemmas: The Laws Race to Keep Up with Technological Change
(2007) 7 U Illinois J Law, Technology and Policy 239, 259.
Chris Reed, How to Make Bad Law: Lessons from Cyberspace (2010) 73 MLR 903.
See too eg Timothy AO Endicott, Vagueness in Law (OUP 2000) esp 190; Bennett Moses (n 132) 250ff.
The analysis highlights the complexity of basic information concepts along with
the controversy and confusion accompanying their meanings. Hence, the
aspirations and strategiesthe generic dreamspromoting the use of such
concepts as front-line legal terms need to be accompanied by definitional
daylight in the form of appropriate guidance from lawmakers. Arguably, the
most pressing dilemma that such guidance must address concerns the extent to
which law should clearly distinguish between data and information on the one
hand and biological material and processes on the other.
The article thus provides a corrective to single-minded pursuit of the
regulatory principles of technology neutrality and, to a lesser extent, functional
equivalence. It indicates that the modernization of the legal conceptual
apparatus of the paper age has occurred with too little consideration of the
ambiguity of the new generic nomenclature in light of recent biotechnological
advances. In a sense, the modernization has not been sufficiently modern.
Hence, we need a recalibration of both principles so that laws intended for the
informational world do not haphazardly enter the biological world. In the
terminology of Bennett Moses, we need greater targeting of these laws.133
I am not suggesting that these laws ought never to apply to biological
material or processes. Rather, their application should occur only after
systematic assessment of their suitability for the biological world. Neither do
I suggest that generic dreams are intrinsically in tension with definitional
daylight. Rather, the basic aim of such dreamsto ensure the sensible
application of law in the face of technological changecan usually be met only
if definitional issues receive thorough attention. Concomitantly, we need more
rigorous analysis of the information concepts that populate generic dreams.
The definitional daylight I am calling for is a far cry from the overly precise
tick-box style of legislation criticized by Reed.134 The daylight need not
translate into extensive or cumbersome definitional provisions, but could
simply clarify the limits of information conceptsaddressing, in particular,
whether or not information or data encompasses biological material or other
tangible objects. Clarification need not occur just in legislation; it could occur
in preparatory works too (assuming, obviously, that these are regarded as
proper sources of statutory interpretation). As intimated above, it would be
unrealistic to expect definitions to address every ambiguity. Law must
inevitably live with a measure of uncertainty.135
The definitions typically applied within informatics provide useful points of
departure for defining information concepts in law. While agreement within
See further eg Giuseppe Dari-Mattiaci and Bruno Deffains, Uncertainty of Law and the Legal Process
(2007) 163 J Institutional and Theoretical Economics 627, 64749; Bennett Moses (n 17).
See too Brownswords reservations about relying on purposive interpretation by the judiciary in the face
of productive regulatory disconnection: Brownsword (n 18) ch 6.
informatics over the proper definition of these concepts is incomplete, it
provides sufficiently firm ground on which to launch the definitional efforts of
jurists and other policy entrepreneurs. Informatics teases out the numerous
dimensions of information and related concepts, providing lawmakers with a
menu of issues, questions, and options that can help structure their own use of
these conceptsas this article itself illustrates.
This does not mean that lawmakers ought slavishly to adopt the views of
information scientists, nor that one set of definitions ought to apply across the
entire legal board. Applying a single set of definitions to cover all regulatory
contexts is unrealistic and undesirable. We must ensure that the plea for
conceptual rigour does not end in conceptual rigor mortis. Risk of the latter is
particularly acute with a polysemantic concept such as information. Thus,
allowances must be made for divergence from the advocated definitional point
of departure. Yet, divergence should only occur if there are good reasons for it
and lawmakers themselves are aware of and communicate those reasons.
In making their decisions on these and attendant issues, lawmakers willand
ought tobe driven partly by pragmatic concerns. One such concern is the
optimal division of tasks between different legal codes (eg is biobank regulation
best carried out under the auspices of data protection law?). Another concern
is the optimal division of tasks between the legislature and judiciary in
generating legal certainty and regulatory connection. This carries over to
consideration of the propriety of providing such certainty and connection ex
ante (primarily through legislation) or ex post (primarily through adjudication).
The precise balance to be struck between ex ante and ex post means is difficult
to determine, particularly as they have mutually related effects and are affected
by other factors (such as litigation costs and propensity to risk-aversion).136
The thrust of my argument favours ex ante legislative provision of certainty
for the legal-regulatory issues that are the focus of this article. It does so for the
reasons given at the beginning of this final section. I fear too that the scale of
the biotechnological developments outlined in the introduction is too large and
too much a game-changer to be handled simply through ad hoc court
litigation. The developments require systematic attention from legislatures with
an eye for the big picture rather than the usually more narrowly focused
perspectives of litigants and judges.137
In any case, it is vital that jurists and other policy entrepreneurs do not treat
information concepts in a cavalier fashion, but that they give due respect to
conceptual and terminological integrity. The legal meaning attributed to such
concepts is a significant factor in establishing solid terminological bases for
regulation. Indeed, the process of understanding how best to apply such
concepts in law ought to be seen as part of a larger endeavour to develop an
appropriate philosophy of information (Floridi)138 in keeping with the age in
Floridi, Information (n 96) 8.
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