Influencing Data Privacy Practices By Global Free Access: The International Privacy Law Library
20 Pages Posted: 29 Sep 2014 Last revised: 14 Jan 2015
Date Written: November 14, 2014
Abstract
This paper explores how one group of organisations, legal information institutes (LIIs) can use shared resources to assist other global and regional groupings of organisations involved in data privacy to achieve their objectives. Bodies established by legislation to protect privacy (DPAs, PEAs etc), now in nearly 100 countries, wish to be able to better access and compare decisions on similar issues, data privacy legislation, and commentary on same. Civil society bodies and academics want effective access to the same material.
The World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) provides free access, via cooperation between seventeen LIIs, to a considerable amount of this information, sometimes as distinct databases, but just as often buried in very large generic databases of case law, legislation or scholarship. The challenge in building the International Privacy Law Library is to pre-select material potentially relevant to privacy issues to create a high value searchable global collection, but to do so on a low and sustainable budget.
The resulting International Privacy Law Library contains over 15,000 documents. It is a combination of two main elements: (i) pre-selected databases, some maintained by active provision of data by DPAs/PEAs; and (ii) a set of ‘virtual’ databases (one each for case law, legislation, scholarship etc.) drawn from all other content found on the LIIs, which, once they are built, are self-maintaining (updated daily) and expand as relevant new content is added to any collaborating LII. The paper explains the method used to build ‘virtual’ databases, the content of the Library, and its usage.
Keywords: privacy, data protection, DPA, PEA, legal information institute, LII, WorldLII, AustLII, search engine, database
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