News and Research articles on Germany

Internet companies are conduits through which states can exercise their authority beyond their borders. As Chinese companies such as Huawei become more commercially dominant, they threaten the geopolitical power of the US.

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.

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.

Facing fragmentation of digital space in the Snowden aftermath, this article considers regulatory models available to avoid the balkanisation of the internet.

Can platforms delete whatever content they want? Not everywhere, say the authors of this paper, which shows why certain social networks ‘must carry’ some content – and how users in some jurisdictions can force the companies to allow them into their communicative space.

This paper shows how platforms are transient in the policies, procedures, and affordances and details the implications for politics.

This paper examines how Google Search ranked 29 junk news domains between 2016 and 2019, finding that SEO — rather than paid advertising — is the most important strategy for generating discoverability via Google Search. Google has taken several steps to combat the spread of disinformation on Search, and these strategies have been largely successful at limiting the discoverability of junk news.

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.

What are the informal arrangements governing online content on platforms in Europe, and what are the factors that make them more or less successful?

This paper analyses social media blocking in Brazil, as a consequence of "regulatory disruption".

Since being first developed through the case law of the European Court of Justice, the Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) has rapidly diffused beyond its European origins: in Latin America for instance. This paper documents the wide spectrum of interpretations the RTBF has had across countries and data protection authorities.

This paper provides qualitative analysis of Google’s and Microsoft’s policies and examines case studies to enhance understanding about the privacy role of information intermediaries in self-regulatory arrangements.

The convergence of media markets and the emergence of video-sharing platforms may make the existing regulative tradition obsolete. This essay demonstrates an emergent need for regulatory convergence on European Union’s Audiovisual Media Service Directive (AVMSD).

In the last two decades, the industry has deployed endlessly the rhetoric of the “digital threat” in order to demand harsher measures against digital piracy. This paper shows that the “digital threat” discourse is based on shaky grounds.