News and Research articles on Civil Society

Data protection

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.

Volume 2, Issue 4

Network architecture as internet governance

Francesca Musiani, MINES ParisTech
PUBLISHED ON: 24 Oct 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.4.208

Changes in the internet's architectural design affect the repartition of competences and responsibilities between service providers, content producers, users and network operators. This article outlines the dialectic between centralised and distributed architectures, institutions and practices, and how they mutually affect each other.

KEYWORDS: Internet architecture, Internet governance, Decentralisation
User-generated content

User-generated content in a legal vacuum

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

PUBLISHED ON: 19 Sep 2013

There is user-generated content in many shapes – from musicians setting up their own labels, funded and supported by users to remixes of the latest political campaign slogans. What is still pending, is a genuine European copyright reform which would address this type of content.

Volume 2, Issue 3

Growing information asymmetries as the cloud spreads

Primavera De Filippi, Research and Studies Center of Administrative Science (CERSA/CNRS), Université Paris II (Panthéon-Assas)
PUBLISHED ON: 22 Aug 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.3.192

Cloud-based information intermediaries curate information and distribute in a way that fundamentally challenges the right of access to information.

KEYWORDS: Cloud computing, Infomediary, User-generated content, Freedom of expression, Information bias, Censorship
Volume 2, Issue 3

Necessary and inherent limits to internet surveillance

Joss Wright, Oxford Internet Institute
PUBLISHED ON: 5 Aug 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.3.184

There are significant dangers in surveilling online communications unless the mechanisms and policies of surveillance are subject to strict and legally enforceable standards of transparency, oversight, and control.

KEYWORDS: Surveillance, Intelligence services, Base rate fallacy, Interception, Fundamental principles, Predictive algorithms, Privacy, Security, Content data, Communications data, Bundestrojaner, National Security Agency (NSA), PRISM, Tempora, Encryption, Liability, Transparency, Cyber security, Content, Censorship, Filtering
Volume 2, Issue 2
3

How open hardware drives digital fabrication tools such as the 3D printer

Johan Söderberg, Institut Francilien Recherche Innovation Société (IFRIS)
PUBLISHED ON: 18 Jun 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.2.138

According to a row of policy institutes, digital fabrication will become a motor for economic growth and social innovation. The sudden appearance of digital fabrication tools only makes sense when understood against the backdrop of an emerging movement around open hardware development.

KEYWORDS: Digital fabrication, 3D Printer, Innovation, Open hardware, Arduino, Ronja, Rep-rap, Hardware
Volume 2, Issue 2

Enforcement vs. access: wrestling with intellectual property on the internet

Sebastian Haunss, University of Bremen
PUBLISHED ON: 3 Jun 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.2.132

The last years have seen a growing politicisation of intellectual property issues, especially those relative to the internet. Sebastian Haunss assesses the current state of the policy field and draws attention to three parallel processes, which structure the future development of intellectual property policies related to the internet: the growing focus on enforcement, the plurilateralisation of international IP policies, and the trend to open access.

KEYWORDS: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Intellectual property, Copyright, Content, Academic publication, Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), Free trade agreements, Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), Digital rights management (DRM)
Intellectual property

Trade partnership gets nod from majority in European Parliament

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

PUBLISHED ON: 3 Jun 2013

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.

Apple's data protection directives

Apple in Germany: the potentially long-lasting impact of a short judgment

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

PUBLISHED ON: 28 May 2013

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.

Volume 2, Issue 2

WSIS+10: the self-praising feast of multi-stakeholderism in internet governance

Francesca Musiani, MINES ParisTech
PUBLISHED ON: 12 Apr 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.2.121

Ten years after the first World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS+10 was held in February 2013 at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Internet governance scholar Francesca Musiani attended and reports back with a critical assessment of the “multi-stakeholder” approach to global governance of information and communication technologies.

KEYWORDS: Internet governance, WSIS+10, Internet Governance Forum (IGF), World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), Knowledge society, Multi-stakeholderism
Open access

Wikimedia and the (political) meaning of free knowledge

Nikolas Becker, Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG)

PUBLISHED ON: 2 Apr 2013

In Europe, education and free knowledge are subject to political restrictions that can only be effectively changed on the EU level. Wikimedia, the not-for-profit organisation behind the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, believes this. The organisation could therefore soon open an office in Brussels to participate in the future debates about a European knowledge society. Nikolas Becker is a member of the board of Wikimedia Germany. Using three concise examples, he explains why and where he sees need for action.

Volume 1, Issue 4

Consent under pressure and the Right to Informational Self-Determination

Julian Staben, Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG)
PUBLISHED ON: 17 Dec 2012 DOI: 10.14763/2012.4.265

Name, address, location: In order to use internet services one easily agrees to the processing of personal data. But what is the future value of a quickly checked box?

KEYWORDS: Data protection, Consent, EU Data Protection Regulation, Informational self-determination, General right of personality