News and Research articles on Microsoft

Defining the relevant market in the sharing economy

Francesco Russo, University of Amsterdam
Maria Luisa Stasi, European University Institute
PUBLISHED ON: 30 Jun 2016 DOI: 10.14763/2016.2.418

Sharing economy businesses open up new markets and bring about new regulatory challenges. These could be solved with traditional competition instruments, although adapted to the peculiar features of the sharing economy, including, among others, multi-sidedness and the presence of different externalities.

Staking out the unclear ethical terrain of online social experiments

Cornelius Puschmann, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society
Engin Bozdag, Delft University of Technology
PUBLISHED ON: 26 Nov 2014 DOI: 10.14763/2014.4.338

The 'Facebook online social experiment' has caused much controversy. Researchers Cornelius Puschmann and Engin Bozdag review the debate around research ethics and come to the conclusion that "benefits for science should be balanced with possible hazards that may be caused by experiments, rather than precluding that such benefits outweigh the gains".

World internet cup in Brazil - a review

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten

PUBLISHED ON: 26 Apr 2014

In an ambitious move, the Brazilian government, technical and civil society organised a meeting to address key issues of internet governance. While not everybody was happy with the final result, process-wise it was a landmark meeting.

By retracing the stages of development of a 'peer-to-peer cloud' storage service, Francesca Musiani argues that decentralised network architectures are internet governance 'in practice'.

Flawed cloud architectures and the rise of decentral alternatives

Primavera De Filippi, Research and Studies Center of Administrative Science (CERSA/CNRS), Université Paris II (Panthéon-Assas)
PUBLISHED ON: 1 Nov 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.4.212

Currently dominant cloud services raise challenges in terms of security, privacy and user autonomy. Decentralisation, advocated by civil society, may overcome some of the drawbacks.

EU data protection: bumpy piece of road ahead

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten

PUBLISHED ON: 24 Oct 2013

The European Civil Liberties Committee LIBE is pushing the EU data protection regulation draft forward. Yet, many compromises are made along the way, leaving Europeans wondering who will be the good, the bad and the ugly in the data protection saga.

EuroDIG discusses variants for EU net neutrality rule

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten

PUBLISHED ON: 21 Jun 2013

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.

Foreign clouds in the European sky: how US laws affect the privacy of Europeans

Primavera De Filippi, Research and Studies Center of Administrative Science (CERSA/CNRS), Université Paris II (Panthéon-Assas)
PUBLISHED ON: 19 Mar 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.1.113

Cloud computing provides a large number of advantages to many internet users. Most of the perceived benefits are related to the concept of ubiquity, or the ability to access data from anywhere at any time, regardless of the device used. Yet, these benefits come at a cost. The widespread deployment of cloud computing services is source of growing concern as regards the fundamental rights of EU citizens.