The latest case brought by rightsholders under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 has found that bittorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay does infringe copyright according to the Act. Following this decision it seems likely that rightsholders will seek injunctions under s97A of the Act requiring ISPs to “block” access to the site, as […]
After ruling last year on the balance between the rights of copyright holders, users and network providers, the European Court of Justice has now ruled on the same question applied to the case of a hosting provider, the social network Netlog. As in the earlier Scarlett case, the copyright collecting society (SABAM) had asked the […]
An interesting talk by Ken van Wyk on threats to mobile devices at the FIRST/TF-CSIRT meeting last week. While it’s tempting to treat smartphones just as small-screen laptops (let’s face it, users do!) there are significant differences in the threats to which the two types of devices are exposed. These need to be recognised in […]
The European Commission’s proposed Data Protection Regulation supports recent thinking in moving away from using consent as a basis for federated access management systems. The consent of the data subject is still one of the legitimate grounds for processing personal data but it cannot be used “where there is a significant imbalance” between the organisation […]
In dealing with breaches of privacy the Commission’s enthusiasm to protect and reassure Internet users seems to run the risk of having the opposite effect. Article 4(9) of the proposed Regulation defines ‘personal data breach’ means a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, […]