The Telecommunications Business Act of Japan does not protect the secrecy of communications handled by those who, dealing with confidential information, correspond neither to telecommunications carriers nor to those who operate telecommunications businesses, such as operators of bulletin board systems without having facilities. This is presumably not the outcome of legal policy but of the situation where legislators fail to keep up with the increase in the number of such operators, which has led to creating a “legal vacuum of protection on communications under the Act.” In order to improve the situation, it is necessary to amend the notion of “telecommunications service” to encompass not only the act of mediating and providing facilities for telecommunications between others but also the act of “virtual mediating” that intermediate such telecommunications without involving transmission of information. It will also be necessary to ensure secrecy of communications handled not only by telecommunications carriers (except for those who do not deal with confidential information) but also by “telecommunications service providers” engaging in virtual mediating. As increasing number of providers are engaging in virtual mediating and such providers are gradually diversified, it is increasingly important to reconstruct the notion of telecommunications service providers as well as the legal range of secrecy of communications under the Act.

Data play an important role in economic growth, job creation, etc. However, it is important to clarify the rules of access to data and to ensure legal certainty. In the European Union, for personal data, the comprehensive legal framework has been settled but for non-personal data it has not. In January 2017, the European Commission published a document explaining its ideas regarding the rules for non-personal data, such as considering the rules of access to non-personal data by third parties. This paper overviews the published document and implements an economic analysis taking into account the characteristics of data such as information asymmetry.