After years of legal fights before national courts the Luxembourg court will hold a hearing on cases brought forward by Austria and Ireland.
How can European states protect themselves against surveillance programmes such as those of the US and the UK? Different takes on the question where delivered at EuroDIG, in Lisbon.
It looks like a negotiated revolution: members of the World Intellectual Property Organization signed a treaty that will allow exemptions from copyright in favour of visually impaired people.
Details about a future European net neutrality rule are still lacking, but competing models from EU member states are already on the table. Should it be a law, like in the Netherlands and Slovenia, or are co-regulatory guidelines like in Norway doing the job. The Internet Policy Review's Monika Ermert was at EuroDIG this week and found some leads.
The 4th generation mobile or LTE network coverage in the European Union looks like a patchwork blanket. Reasons for the different speeds in building and offering the newest mobile broadband network vary, and as Monika Ermert finds out, business analysts simply cannot agree.
We knew the US (and other governments) were watching us, many politicians and engineers said after The Guardian and the Washington Post published information about the spy programme PRISM, which allows US agencies access to all of your whereabouts on the net.
The majority of the European Parliament welcomed the start of the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – a EU-US free trade agreement - in a resolution released in Strasbourg on May 15. The Green Party wanted more conditions to avoid a potential degradation of European standards in data protection. European civil rights organisations warn against a mega-ACTA-like free trade agreement.
Until the early days of June, Apple still has time to appeal against a Court ruling that nobody expects the tech company can afford to accept. The Berlin Regional Court in April decided [PDF] Apple's data protection directives were illegal according to German law. Will Apple appeal the decision? Yes, says everybody except Apple itself.
For many years the internet address registry for Europe and the Middle East RIPE has managed a scarce resource: IPv4 addresses. Since September, IPv4 addresses have run out. At the 66th meeting of the RIPE community in Dublin this week, discussions addressed the question of whether the end of the IPv4 protocol should also mean abandoning the “needs based principle” in allocating addresses. If so, could this serve as a stepping-stone for the new IPv6 protocol?
About 1,000 internet policy specialists are currently discussing internet related issues at the 5th World Telecom Policy Conference in Geneva (WTPF). While only non-binding “opinions” on “internet related public policy issues” are on the agenda, the conference is seen as a stepping stone towards potential changes in the future mandate of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the role of governments in internet governance.