Copyright reform in the EU has been elusive for years. Now a new Commissioner coming from a quite different field of expertise has the mandate to cut the Gordian knot. Yet, experts like Monica Horten doubt that this will ever happen. This is why.
Privacy
Digital assets post-mortem
The way we handle digital assets post-mortem is a young field of inquiry and it is researcher Edina Harbinja's sandbox. Journalist Philippa Warr takes a look at the issues.
Conseil d’Etat
French Council of State: for a more ‘digitally-suited’ law?
The recently-released report of the French Conseil d’Etat emphasises the ‘two faces’ of the internet vis-à-vis fundamental rights, and calls for fifty ‘digitally-suited’ legal measures. Comment by Francesca Musiani, member of the French Commission on Rights in the Digital Age.
Free trade agreements
Approval for trade deal with Canada no done deal for European Parliament
Will the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA) fail just like the notorious Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement? Despite many positive aspects, the trade deal might fail to get a majority approval in the European Parliament because of the much debated Investor State Dispute Settlement provisions.
Freedom of expression
Internet freedom in Turkey: “It just keeps getting worse and worse”
When ‘governance’ started rhyming with ‘government’, Turkish activists thought, "it’s time to organise an alternative conference alongside the official UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF)". Read this interview with three organisers of the Internet Ungovernance Forum , which took place in Istanbul on 4-5 September 2014.
The representatives of internet firms at this year's Internet Governance Forum referred to transparency, human rights and privacy. But when searching for those guilty of surveillance, they exclusively pointed to governments and not to their own policies.
Facebook announced a first zero-service in 2010, but at this year's Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul, it was Wikipedia who had to defend itself against network neutrality advocates.
A picture taken by a money has erupted into a transatlantic copyright row and brought focus on the world’s largest database of public domain images.
Cryptocurrencies have now become commonplace in the online world. Although most of the media attention is focused on decentralised payment systems, the true revolution is happening at a much deeper level, argue Primavera de Filippi and Raffaele Mauro.
Google Spain case (C-131/12)
German constitutional judge expresses concerns about the “right to be forgotten” decision
The so-called right to be forgotten needs to be discussed a little more. Google has received 70,000 requests for takedowns of search results since the decision of the European Court of Justice in May 2014. Now the company gets support from an unexpected place: a German constitutional judge warns against potential dangers of the decision.
