Data is the fuel of the 21st century – and clean, high-quality, compliant language data is crucial for the development of state-of-the-art Language Technologies. In this field, data sharing and trading has a long history, which follows the parallel evolution of both language data and Language Technology. Some of the most relevant initiatives and projects in the last 15 years (e.g., META-SHARE, ELRC, ELG) have resulted in platforms and infrastructures with different architectures and focuses, depending on the stakeholders and communities they address(ed).

Despite the different policies adopted, e.g., regarding authentication or access restriction, most of these data sets are shared under Creative Commons licensing schemes and come mainly (though not exclusively) from or are intended for public administration, research and academia. On this very last point, the Language Data Space aims at a novelty approach: it will open the language data market, whose main features are presented below, to the private sector.

• Sovereignty: Common European Data Spaces will ensure that more data becomes available for use in the economy and society, while keeping the companies and individuals who generate the data in control.² Data owners will be able to decide on the usage of data as an economic asset.
• Security: data from across the EU will be made available and exchanged in a trustworthy and secure manner, tracking its provenance and lineage. By doing so, data owners will know that they can trust the way in which data is used to boost innovation. This will help overcoming existing legal and technical barriers.³
• Resource valorisation: although eligible data sets will continue to be available under Creative Common licences, contributors will also be able to sell their data, if wished.
• Openness: participation in Common European Data Spaces is open to all organisations or individuals that respect EU rules and values and comply with the rules and scopes of each Data Space.³
• EU standards and respect of EU rules and values: the LDS architecture will enforce the usage of policies, standards, rules, contracts, ensuring GDPR and IPR compliance. Not least, this solid legal framework will help to establish trust between the participants and contributors, and ultimately increase the acceptance of this new approach to the data collection.

² European Commission: A European Strategy for data
³ European Commission: Staff working document on Data Spaces