Although the GDPR paves the way for a coordinated EU-wide legal action against data protection infringements, only a reform of private international law rules can enhance the opportunities of data subjects to enforce their rights.
News and Research articles on European Commission
The percentages and figures used in the impact assessment accompanying the European Commission’s e-evidence package strongly influence the analysis of the problem and limit the assessment of the problem of cross-border access to e-evidence to technical and efficiency considerations.
The internet is a forum for geopolitical struggle as states wield power beyond their terrestrial territorial borders through the extraterritorial geographies of data flows. This exertion of power across multiple jurisdictions, and via the infrastructure of transnational technology companies, creates new challenges for traditional forms of regulatory governance and the protection of human rights.
The European Commission recently released its first review of two years of application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). René Mahieu and Jef Ausloos do not agree with the largely positive self-assessment and explain their main points of contention by summarising their own submission to the Commission.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Recital 23 brought an obligation to all companies that receive, control or process personal data of European Union (EU) residents to comply with the minimal safeguards stated in European legislation.
Introduction: transparency in AI Transparency is indeed a multifaceted concept used by various disciplines (Margetts, 2011; Hood, 2006). Recently, it has gone through a resurgence with regards to contemporary discourses around artificial intelligence (AI). For example, the ethical guidelines published by the EU Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG) in April 2019 states transparency as one of seven key requirements for the realisation of ‘trustworthy AI’, which also has made its clear mark in the Commission’s white paper on AI, published in February 2020. In fact, “transparency” is the single most common, and one of the key five principles emphasised in the vast number – a …
The "Enabling act” passed by the Hungarian parliament on 30 March 2020 empowered the Hungarian government with uncontrolled opportunity to rule by decrees. The act also amended the criminal code. The new rules are suitable to limit free and critical reporting about governmental measures.
The COVID-19 pandemic represents the most urgent situation in relation to both disinformation and misinformation since the establishment of European Union’s 2018 codes of practice on disinformation. Pressure to change the regulatory framework is growing.
Feel like living in a dystopia? Take a deep breath, get a strong coffee, and let us challenge your ideas of where reality ends, and sci-fi begins…
In the wake of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, it is timely to review the state of the debate about the impact of data-driven elections and to identify key questions that require academic research and regulatory response. The papers in this collection, by some of the world’s most prominent elections researchers, offer that assessment.
This paper discusses how online political micro-targeting is regulated in Europe, from the perspective of data protection law, freedom of expression, and political advertising rules.
Is the “European approach” an adequate response to the challenges of disinformation and political manipulation, especially in election periods?
Ad archives are a novel tool in online advertising governance. They promise significant benefits, but only if their operators address key criticisms.
This paper is part of Transnational materialities, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by José van Dijck and Bernhard Rieder. Introduction In March 2019, the European Commission fined Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. 1.5 billion euro for antitrust violations in the online advertising market—the third fine in three years. In July 2018, European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had levied a record fine of 4.3 billion euro on Google for breaching European competition rules by forcing cell phone manufacturers to pre-install a dozen of the firms’ apps when using Android—Google’s mobile operating system. And in 2016, the company was punished for unlawfully favouring Google …
Why did China’s Alibaba platform reform its enforcement practices in line with demands from the US government and US companies?
What are the informal arrangements governing online content on platforms in Europe, and what are the factors that make them more or less successful?
Data ethics has gained traction in policy-making. The article presents an analytical investigation of the different dimensions and actors shaping data ethics in European policy-making.
This issue brings together a selection of articles presented in the Communication Policy and Technology section of the IAMCR conference in 2018.
Introduction
Christina, you’ve been an editor at an open access journal yourself and are now spearheading open access at Freie Universität Berlin. We have a candid and naive question for you: what does open access mean in 2018?