The European Commission recently published wide proposals to reform copyright law. One particular concern is that the proposals appear to reduce the existing legal protections for sites that host third party content. Under the current e-Commerce Directive, such sites are generally protected from liability until they are informed of allegedly infringing content (Article 14), and […]
Category: Consultations
Invitations to comment on draft documents, for example new guidance or responses to Government consultation papers.
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 […]
A new EU law, created earlier this year, requires public network providers to ensure “network neutrality” – roughly, that every packet be treated alike unless there are legitimate reasons not to. The Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) has now published draft guidelines on how this will be implemented, in particular the circumstances […]
Shortly after the recent attacks on TalkTalk the Culture, Media and Sport Committee decided to hold an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the data breach, but also the wider implications for telecoms and internet service providers. This raised a number of issues around the premature speculation around the causes of the incident, cybersecurity within the telecoms industry, and […]
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 […]
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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 […]