[Updated to add clause 6 on peer-reviewed scientific and academic journals] The House of Lords debate of clause 5 of the Defamation Bill this week suggested that the Bill might make it easier for universities and colleges to support vigorous debate through their websites. As Lord May (once the government’s chief scientific advisor) pointed out, […]
Category: Closed
Documents prepared as part of consultations, for example new Jisc guidance or responses to Government consultation papers.
I’ve submitted a Janet response to a European consultation on a future EU Network and Information Security legislative initiative. The consultation itself seems to suffer from “if you only have a hammer” syndrome: if you’re a legislator then it must be tempting to think that all problems (lack of reporting of “cybercrimes”, insecure end-user computers, […]
Categories
EU Notice and Action Consultation
I’ve sent in a Janet response to the EU’s consultation “A Clean and Open Internet: Procedures for notifying and acting on illegal content hosted by online intermediaries”. At the moment the E-Commerce Directive (transposed into UK law as the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002) says that websites aren’t liable for unlawful material (either criminal […]
Categories
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 […]
Categories
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 […]
Categories
Notice and Takedown Consultations
Two consultations have come along at once – one from Westminster and one from Brussels – that both seem to recognise the problems with incentives that current liability rules create for sites that host third party content. Under both the UK Defamation Act 1996 and the European eCommerce Directive (2000/31/EC) hosts are discouraged from themselves […]
The Information Commissioner has now launched a draft text for a new guide on Personal Information Online, with an opportunity to comment on the text over the next three months. It’s good to see that some of the issues I raised at a preparatory meeting have been included, so I’d encourage readers to have a […]
I’ve just sent in a Janet Submission to the Ministry of Justice’s Call for Evidence on the EU Data Protection proposals. Our response mentions the good and bad things about the proposal, as discussed here previously, for Internet Identifiers: still no clarity on when IP addresses etc. are personal data, but at least more realistic […]
Categories
Intermediary Liability
I’ve just submitted a JANET(UK) response to the Ministry of Justice’s consultation on draft Defamation Bill. In fact my comments don’t relate to the current draft Bill, but to a longer-term part of the consultation paper (pp 40-47) on whether any changes are needed to the law of liability for Internet intermediaries. At the moment […]
Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee is carrying out an enquiry into the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights Online and, in particular, the effectiveness and proportionality of the Digital Economy Act 2010. Since the Act isn’t yet in operation – we are still awaiting the publication of the Implementation Code by Ofcom – it’s […]