Special Edition on Dissemination Pieces: ESRs Insights on Law and Technology (Part I)

Welcome to our special edition blog post highlighting the exciting research of our 15 Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs). These talented individuals have been tackling some of the most pressing challenges at the intersection of law and technology. In this edition, we’ve compiled their abstracts, each designed for a general, non-specialist audience. Each ESR has worked to break down complex interdisciplinary research into accessible narratives that explore critical issues like privacy, data sharing, AI, and the broader regulatory landscape of the data economy. Their findings offer innovative solutions, reveal key limitations, and propose paths for future exploration.

These research pieces are written in a way that makes them valuable to a wide range of readers—from policymakers and lawyers to computer scientists and engaged citizens. They illustrate the power of interdisciplinary collaboration in driving progress and finding solutions to today’s most urgent legal-tech challenges. The complete collection of these insightful abstracts will be published in a special issue of the open-access journal Opinion Juris in Comparitione. Stay tuned for more updates and discover how this work shapes the future of law and technology.

Qifan Yang – ESR 1: Your Data Rights: How does the GDPR affect the Social Media Market?

With the development of digitalization, personal data has gradually become a valuable resource for social media companies to extract value and obtain market dominance. Personal data processing can raise serious concerns about privacy leaks and misuse. In response, the adoption of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enhances personal data protection and market competition, but also potentially influences economic interests, the rights of data subjects, as well as market dynamics. The chapter uses the social media market to understand the complex relationship between the GDPR and market competition.

 

 

Louis Sahi – ESR 2: Evaluation and Harmonization of Data Quality Criteria: Insights from Expert Interviews for Legal Application

This article focuses on the development of a framework for assessing data quality, with the goal of enabling automated evaluation. It highlights the increasing importance of data quality in modern, data-driven organizations, especially in light of evolving regulatory frameworks such as the GDPR, Open data EU regulation. The paper begins by addressing inconsistencies
in current data quality criteria (DQCs) and proposes a unified list based on a comprehensive literature review. The research seeks to align data quality standards with the broader context of data processing, including governance and lifecycle management. Through expert interviews with professionals in data management and legal fields, the study aims to consolidate the DQCs while ensuring compliance with EU regulations. The article emphasizes the need for collaborative data processing in decentralized environments, such as the European Common Data Spaces, and the importance of ensuring trust, legal compliance, and reliability in shared data. The research contributes towards bridging the gap between academic methodologies and real-world industrial applications of data quality assessment.

 

Tommaso Crepax – ESR 3: BYOD – Bring Your Own Data. The struggle of re-using data in a world of heterogeneous systems

Data portability, often seen as straightforward, is a complex issue in the digital era, intersecting with law, technology, and economics. This contribution uses a BBQ analogy to illustrate the challenges of ensuring data remains functional and meaningful across systems. Examining regulations like GDPR, the Digital Markets Act, and the Data Act, highlights gaps in addressing data semantics and content completeness. The piece advocates for a holistic, integrated approach to enhance data portability, emphasizing the need for a Legality Attentive Data Scientist (LeADS) approach to drive innovation and user empowerment in the digital marketplace.