News and Research articles on GovernmentalThere might be a good argument and even a sound business proposal for the Brazil-EU link, but it's not what you think it is.
As many top level domains 'corpses' are left lying in the ropes of the internet, 1,200 new names are expected to flood the shores in two years from now. Are we doing this right?
The whole family of internet self-governing bodies are busy preparing their takes on how to reign the future Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). As a coordinator of core infrastructure services for naming (ICANN), numbering (Regional Internet Registries) and standardisation (IETF), IANA has been in the middle of quite some fights. This one might well be the biggest one.
Copyright reform in the EU has been elusive for years. Now a new Commissioner coming from a quite different field of expertise has the mandate to cut the Gordian knot. Yet, experts like Monica Horten doubt that this will ever happen. This is why.
This paper examines how various stakeholders in the 2014 EC consultation on copyright attempted to shape the definition of user-generated content and what this means for the reform of copyright in Europe.
The recently-released report of the French Conseil d’Etat emphasises the ‘two faces’ of the internet vis-à-vis fundamental rights, and calls for fifty ‘digitally-suited’ legal measures. Comment by Francesca Musiani, member of the French Commission on Rights in the Digital Age.
The UN High Commissioner explains to Member States that privacy is a fundamental human right. But surveillance practices and legislation have yet to change.
For less than a week now, German internet access providers have completed filing their requests for reservations of vectoring locations - in which they can offer vectoring enhanced internet access to customers. Vectoring technology allows to push broadband speed of old DSL subscriber lines to 100 Mbit/s by removing what the experts call 'crosstalk', an interference in the copper bundles resulting from putting more and more data onto them.
Much of our economy is moving online, but who will pay taxes, when virtual is tax exempted or when only some regions earn from the digital businesses lured by nice lax tax regulation or otherwise. Read up on how the struggle for tax and data are intertwined.
Governments have been barking at 'spying on friends'. Yet so far civil rights organisations and activists are those turning the heat on intelligence services and authorities by using the courts.
Early this month, the mobile and internet operator Vodafone released a report putting figures on data disclosures made to governments. That's a first but can it be called real transparency?
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are often seen as a threat by governmental and financial institutions worldwide. Regulation could help minimise the risks involved. The author explores some legal and self-regulatory precedents from which we can learn.
There are different reactions to the revelations of US whistleblower Edward Snowden. In Finland, civil society, industry and technical experts are alarmed and concerned about a potential case of ‘NSA envy’ at the Finnish Defense Ministry.
Germany’s largest telecommunications operator for the first time on 5 May 2014 published a ‘transparency report’ on surveillance requests by German authorities. Kirsten Gollatz reveals how this new statitical input fits into the larger picture.
The European Union’s Court of Justice has ruled against Google in a case in which a Spanish citizen, backed by his national data protection authority, wanted the company to remove search links to an old local newspaper story related to his bankruptcy. Jef Ausloos argues that implications should not be too extreme, but warns of the Court’s prioritising of data subjects over internet users.
The NETmundial conference on internet governance was heralded as a success. But in civil society, assessments have been more nuanced.
It was a fail. At the 27th WIPO meeting in Geneva the European Commission and Council representatives did not agree on advancing work on copyright exemptions for libraries and archives.
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.
Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 our international system is based upon the principle of territorial sovereignty. Today, however, cross-border online spaces made possible by the internet span across a system of fragmented national jurisdictions. Tension rises since we do not have the legal equivalent to the technical interoperability that enables the global internet. A choice has to be made.
On April 8, the European Court of Justice made a clear decision invalidating the EU data retention directive. Legal scholar Sebastian Leuschner hits the floor running with an op-ed on what this landmark decision means for national data retention laws.