Article 15 of the European Ecommerce Directive states that Member States shall not impose a general obligation on providers … to monitor the information which they transmit or store, nor a general obligation actively to seek facts or circumstances indicating illegal activity. However recital 47 says that “this does not concern monitoring obligations in a […]
Month: July 2012
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“Internet” means Open Internet
A couple of developments in network neutrality. The Broadband Stakeholders Group have announced an update to its Open Internet Code of Practice, which has already been signed by a number of UK ISPs. The previous version of this voluntary code concentrated on transparency, by requiring those who signed up to document their traffic management practices. […]
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Ofcom Digital Economy Act Code
I’ve just sent off a Janet response to Ofcom’s consultation on the latest draft Initial Obligations Code under the Digital Economy Act 2010. On the wording of the Code itself there are just a couple of minor observations. There seems to be a drafting hiccup that means any ISP that becomes Qualifying in the second […]
Statewatch have published what appears to be a document from the Council of (European) Ministers containing comments on the proposed Data Protection Regulation. It’s interesting to see that there seems at last to be a recognition that the current legal treatment of indirectly linked identifiers is unsatisfactory. At the moment European law has been interpreted […]
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Digital Economy Act: Who is Covered?
Ofcom’s draft Digital Economy Act Code recognises that the real Internet is more complex than the Act’s model, and that there may be a variety of “communications providers”, “Qualifying ISPs” and “non-Qualifying ISPs” involved in getting packets (and possibly Copyright Infringement Notices) delivered to “subscribers”. This post describes some of the combinations likely to be […]
One definition of a “hacker”, according to Wikipedia, is someone “who makes innovative customizations or combinations of retail electronic and computer equipment”. I was recently asked by TERENA to have a think about the legal issues around using federated access management to control access to resources in eResearch. This has quickly come to feel like […]
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Clouds and Law: Work to Do
A new Opinion on Cloud Computing from the Article 29 Working Party highlights a number of difficulties in applying current data protection law to the cloud computing model and suggests that changes are needed both to cloud contracts and to European law. The main concerns are over lack of control by the client using the […]
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Notice and Action procedures
The European Commission have opened a consultation on “notice and action” procedures (in the UK we tend to refer to them as notice and takedown) by those who host content on the Internet. Since Janet customers may see a different side of the issue from us as operators of the network, it would be helpful […]
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Pseudonyms and Data Protection
The Information Commissioner’s consultation on an Anonymisation Code of Practice is mainly concerned with the exchange or publication of datasets derived from personal data. However it once again highlights the long-standing confusion around the treatment of pseudonyms under Data Protection law. A pseudonym is an identifier (often randomly generated) whose value is unique to me, […]