Now that the General Data Protection Regulation has been completed, the European Commission is reviewing the ePrivacy Directive. This law was introduced in 2002 as part of the telecommunications framework, and it was recognised at the time that it was likely to be largely replaced by a future general privacy law. That has taken longer […]
Category: Closed
Documents prepared as part of consultations, for example new Jisc guidance or responses to Government consultation papers.
Last month the Government published a draft Investigatory Powers Bill for a period of pre-legislative scrutiny before a full Bill is introduced, expected to be in the Spring of 2016. Various Parliamentary committees are considering different aspects of the Bill. In our evidence to these committees, Jisc is focussing on the new powers the draft Bill […]
The European Commission has now published its conclusions from the consultation on platforms it carried our earlier this year. This included notice-and-takedown: an issue we’ve been working on for many years. When universities and colleges receive an allegation that information on their website breaks the law, they’re forced to choose between supporting free speech (a […]
As its title suggests, the Commission’s public consultation on the regulatory environment for platforms, online intermediaries, data and cloud computing and the collaborative economy covers a lot of different areas. One of these is the rules for on-line intermediaries: at present networks, caches and hosts that carry third party content. Back in 2012 we responded […]
Categories
House of Lords: Online Platforms
The European Commission have recently announced a consultation into online platforms. Last month the House of Lords EU Internal Market Sub-committee invited submissions of evidence to inform the UK’s response. Although the main focus of both consultations is competition issues, they do revisit the question of intermediary liability for third-party postings. At the moment EU […]
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has published a summary of the responses to its consultation on the proposed EU Directive on Network and Information Security (NIS) (JANET’s response). Summarising that summary (!): There seems to be agreement that there is a role for the EU in Network and Information Security, in particular in […]
Implementation of the new provisions for website operators under the Defamation Act 2013 has come a step closer, with the Ministry of Justice seeking comments on draft implementing Regulations. INFORRM has a summary of the process, with a helpful flowchart. Janet and UCISA have sent a joint response pointing out two frequent situations, and one […]
I’ve just submitted a response to the Intellectual Property Office on their proposed amendments to the education exemptions to UK copyright law. These aim to extend the same permissions for distance learning as currently apply to the premises of an educational establishment. From Janet’s point of view as operator of a network and an access management […]
I’ve been looking at the Intellectual Property Office’s proposals to update copyright exemptions for education, to see if there’s anything I need to comment on. My initial observations are as follows, but I’d be very grateful for comments if I’ve missed something. I’m not an expert on copyright exemptions or education licensing, but I am […]
Categories
Nominet Domain Suspension Paper
Nominet have published an interesting analysis of the legal issues around any possible process for suspending domains associated with criminal activity. This raises the rather worrying issue that the legal position is not clear if a registry is informed of unlawful conduct somewhere in their domain and decides that the evidence is not strong enough […]