Law is a reconstruction of the world through definitions and categories, expressed in words, to which are imputed rules. There is always a share of invention in Law, articulated to a share of fidelity to the concrete world that it retranscribes, a combination enabling Law to regulate the latter.

Law is put in difficulty by what the term "data", quite new, is not easy to define. The fact that it is strangely formulated in Latin to show that there is plurality, the data, before associating it with an English adjective when there are many, the "big data", does not advance us more on what a "data" is. Law is a practical art that works well only if it manipulates categories whose definition is mastered.

This is why, in a first stage, we must recognize the uncertainties of the very notions of "data" (I), in order to orientate the adequate rules in the second step towards what is a given, namely a "pure" value in our consumer information society (II).

Read the article written in French on the basis à this working paper