JAN 29, 2020 | US
USMCA Formalizes Free Flow of Data, Other Tech Issues
Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2020
By Agam Shah and Jared Council
The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement hands executives and companies more certainty about technology issues, including liability protection and free flow of data across borders, analysts say.
Victoria Espinel, president and CEO of software-industry trade group BSA, said, “This agreement is a big deal for CIOs, and it is entirely different from Nafta,” adding that the internet, cloud computing and artificial intelligence weren’t commercial realities in the early 1990s. “The major technological innovations over the past couple of decades that shape our lives and have such a significant impact on...the jobs that CIOs do—they didn’t exist when Nafta was negotiated.”
USMCA also includes a provision that restricts governments from forcing companies to disclose their underlying source code, such as algorithms that power AI systems. Ms. Espinel of BSA said this provision promotes business predictability and avoids situations where businesses are forced to unveil trade secrets.
“For any company that’s creating software—and as you know that’s not just software companies—knowing that governments won’t be able to force them to disclose the source code for their software is a real benefit,” she said.
Original Posting: https://www.wsj.com/articles/cios-businesses-to-benefit-from-new-trade-deal-11580340128
À PROPOS DE BSA
Le Business Software Alliance (www.bsa.org) est le principal organisme de défense et de promotion de l’industrie du logiciel auprès des administrations gouvernementales et sur le marché international. Ses membres comptent parmi les entreprises les plus innovantes au monde, à l’origine de solutions logicielles qui stimulent l’économie et améliorent la vie moderne.