빅데이터는 누구의 소유인가?: 빅데이터의 저작권법에 의한 보호와 공공부문의 빅데이터 활용 문제

For a last few years, the “Big data” has become one of the trendiest keywords of the ever-changing world. Big data has been exploited increasingly and considered as an indispensable tool for the proper decision-making not only in the private business branch but also in the public sector. In the course of the modern governance, lots of information can be collected rapidly. It is disputed amongst writers how to regulate the misuse of the personal data when bringing the data into the big data practice. However, it remains not properly discussed who owns the big data that is already collected and organized electronically to be used in analyzing. The Korean Copyright Act has introduced the regime of the database protection, which shall also apply to the big data(bases). As the technology of big data as well as database of the ordinary art are concerned, we can find a large amount of the similarities so far. The Act guarantees the investor thereof an exclusive right to extract and re-use the “substantial” part of data. The big data governed by the public agencies can also claim the protection under the Korean copyright law. Protecting the data from the public’s use might produce some negative effects. Its ownership itself could be, however, the key to enable the efficient management of the big data and to guarantee the quality of the data therein. It is, therefore, necessary to build an appropriate legal basis to promote the use of big data on the one side and to regulate its abuse on the other.