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Per 1 februari 2016 is het Instituut voor Informatierecht verhuist naar een nieuwe locatie:
As of 1 February 2016 the Institute for Information Law has moved to a new location:

Nieuw bezoekadres: New visiting address:	Nieuw postadres: New postal address:
Instituut voor Informatierecht Vendelstraat 7 1012 XX Amsterdam	Instituut voor Informatierecht Postbus 1030 1000 BA Amsterdam
Institute for Information Law Vendelstraat 7 1012 XX Amsterdam	Institute for Information Law PO Box 1030 1000 BA Amsterdam

 

 

 

Op 5 februari 2016 zal Hielke Hijmans zijn proefschrift getiteld:

The European Union as a Constitutional Guardian of Internet Privacy and Data Protection: the Story of Article 16 TFEU

in het openbaar verdedigen. 

Abstract: 
In a developing information data flow in an unprecedented way, enabling mass surveillance by governments and private companies. It is no longer evident that the rights to privacy and data protection are guaranteed. However, these rights remain essential in our democratic societies under the rule of law. The EU Treaties have provided the European Union a specific mandate to ensure protection, in Article 16 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. This mandate is the subject of this thesis.
The thesis discusses the roles of different actors: the Court of Justice, the EU legislator, the national data protection authorities and their cooperation mechanism. A chapter is dedicated to the strategies of the Union itself in the global context.
The thesis underlines that the exercise of the mandate should be legitimate, in the sense that some democratic control is needed, and effective, meaning that individuals must benefit from the protection in practice. If the European Union manages to fulfil these two conditions, it shows its capability to properly deal with big societal issues, which is also important in a timeframe of widespread euroskeptics.
The thesis is the result of a research at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the University of Amsterdam. The author hopes to receive a joint doctorate at both universities. 

Plaats: Aula van de Universiteit van Amsterdam, Oude Lutherse Kerk, Singel 411, 1012 XM Amsterdam.
Tijd: 13-00-14.00 uur.
Promotoren: Prof. dr. N.A.N.M. van Eijk (UvA) en Prof. dr. P.J.A. De Hert (VUB).

Zie hier een samenvatting van het proefschrift.
See here a summary of the thesis.

On Wednesday, 9 December, Dr. Roberto Galbiati (Sciences Po, Paris) will give a talk on empirical legal research:

Incarceration policy and reoffending: insights from empirical economics

Time: 13:00 – 15:00.
Place: Room A009, Law Faculty, University of Amsterdam, Oudemanhuispoort 4.

This seminar connects law and economics by providing an accessible application of empirical techniques from economics to key concepts in legal policy. Specifically, we will study individuals' responses to expected criminal sentences, and discuss natural experiments in sentencing policies to evaluate how incarceration itself affects reoffending.

Lunch will be provided. No registration needed.

This lunch talk is part of the Empirical Legal Studies Initiative (ELSI). ELSI was developed by the ACLE Amsterdam Center for Law & Economics and the IViR Institute for Information Law, in collaboration with the CREED Center for Research in Experimental Economics and Political Decision-making. The goal is to provide a platform for engaging in discussions about the opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls regarding the combination of normative and empirical research, and to exchange experiences and best practices. ELSI will organise seminars, workshops, and conferences and invites everybody at the law faculty to join our activities. 

Daniel Chen (Harvard, Toulouse School of Economics) will give a talk on 3 February 2015.

The call for papers for the first conference on Empirical Legal Studies in Europe (CELSE) at the University of Amsterdam on 21-22 June 2016 is now open. The keynote speakers are Jennifer H. Arlen (NYU School of Law), Ian Ayres (Yale Law School), Bernard Black (Northwestern University School of Law) and Rens Bod (University of Amsterdam). Paper submission deadline: 15 February 2016 (6:00 CET). For more information please see: http://celse2016.acle.nl/ 

On Friday 18 December 2015, Lodewijk Pessers will defend his PhD thesis in public. The thesis is called:

The Evolution of the Inventiveness Requirement

Place: Aula of the University of Amsterdam (Oude Lutherse kerk, Singel 411, 1012 XM Amsterdam).
Time: 13.00 – 14.00 hours.

Summary of the book:

This book follows the requirement of inventiveness (in patent law) in its historical evolution, that is, from the very first moment that we can distinguish its contours up to the present day. In doing so, it focuses on three aspects in particular: what are the historical phases that can be discerned in the requirement’s evolution? What are the socio-economic and political forces that have determined or influenced its course? And how can (dis)similarities between the jurisdictions under examination (i.e. the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands) be explained? For reasons of structure and overview, the book is divided into two parts. The first describes the evolution in its first three phases: the medieval, the mercantilist and the pre-modern ones. The latter is dedicated to the modern phase and pays particular attention to two different ‘schools’ that have developed in the 19^th century and that continue to be relevant for the doctrine’s direction, even today. It will be argued that this dichotomy, that in this book is dubbed the qualitative – quantitative divide, has gradually merged into a hybrid approach that is rather qualitative in its appearance, but quantitative in its application.

On Thursday 24 September 2015 the Personalised Communication project was launched. With a festive kick-off event in the Agnietenkapel, the joint research initiative between ASCoR and IViR, funded by the University of Amsterdam, officially started.

More information about the event and the project can be found here. 
 

A student on the Informatierecht LL.M. programme, Patrick Leerssen, has been invited to participate in a high-level Council of Europe conference on freedom of expression. The conference, ‘Freedom of expression: still a precondition for democracy?’, will take place in Strasbourg on 13-14 October. It is shaping up to be the biggest conference that the Council of Europe has ever organized on the theme of freedom of expression, with the expected participation of more than 300 experts.

Speakers include several judges of the European Court of Human Rights, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. Various panels will focus on topics such as pluralist public debate; the democratic potential of the media; the limits of freedom of expression, the fight against terrorism and the dangers of mass surveillance.

Patrick will be session rapporteur for the panel focusing on freedom of expression online and the role of intermediaries. Earlier this year, he presented a paper on this theme at the VOX-Pol conference in Budapest and subsequently reworked the paper and had it accepted for publication in the forthcoming issue of the international, peer-reviewed journal, JIPITEC –  the Journal of Intellectual Property, Information Technology and Electronic Commerce Law. 

Tarlach McGonagle, who coordinates the Informatierecht LL.M. programme, is General Rapporteur for the Council of Europe conference.

Judgment of the Court:
Maximillian Schrems / Data Protection Commissioner, European Court of Justice, 6 October 2015

 

Axel Arnbak:

• Datatransport – Hof EU nog steeds niet volwassen, Het Financieele Dagblad, Opinie & Dialoog, 7 oktober 2015.
   

Ot van Daalen:

• Europese Commissie vertrouwt op nieuw EU-verdrag data-uitwisseling, NPO Radio 1, 6 oktober 2015.
• Gegevens Europese internetgebruikers niet zomaar naar VS, BNR.nl & BNR Radio, 6 oktober 2015.
• Privacybescherming in VS onvoldoende – Meer waarborgen voor EU-data vereist, Tweakers.net, 6 oktober 2015.
• Data Transfer Pact Between U.S. and Europe Is Ruled Invalid, The New York Times, 6 oktober 2015.
• Facebook mag onze gegevens niet meer zomaar in Amerika opslaan. Wat zijn hiervan de gevolgen?, De Correspondent, 7 oktober 2015.

Ot van Daalen & Axel Arnbak: 

• Dit gebeurt er met jouw gegevens op servers in de VS, RTLZ.nl, 5 oktober 2015.
• 'Makkelijker protesteren tegen privacyschending', NOS.nl, 6 oktober 2015.

Nico van Eijk:

• 'Inlichtingenwet Plasterk op losse schroeven na uitspraak Europees Hof', NU.nl, 8 oktober 2015.
• Safe harbour: afnemers cloud-diensten moeten zich beraden op strategie, www.it-executive.nl, 10 oktober 2015.

Kristina Irion:

• Cloud services made in Europ after Snowden and Schrems, Internet Policy Review, 23 October 2015.

See also:

• Ten standards for oversight and transparency of national intelligence services, S. Eskens, O. van Daalen & N. van Eijk, Institute for Information Law, 2015.

 

The Institute for Informaton Law (IViR) was awarded a prestigious NWO grant to carry out a research project on copyright issues that prevent both online access to as well as re-use of the audio-visual materials digitized in the mass digitization project Images for the Future. 

In 2007 the Dutch government launched Images for the Future with the goal to preserve, digitize and make accessible online a large amount of audio-visual material held by, amongst others, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Today while an important part of the archives has been digitized, the material is hardly available online for the general public: copyright issues stand in the way of a broad dissemination. Whereas the digitization of audio-visual material has taken place on the basis of an exception in the Dutch Copyright Act, the making available of that material would most likely infringe the copyright owner's exclusive right, if done without prior authorization. As a result the unprecedented educational, cultural, societal, and economical value of Images for the Future mostly remains untapped, as long as the material cannot be made legally accessible.

The current project will investigate the underlying legal and practical issues relating to the making available of the Images for the Future. The project will develop strategies to overcome the main obstacles that prevent the use of the digitized material by different audiences and for different purposes, focusing on the public broadcasting collection. In doing so, the project will also explore the possibility of cooperating with private partners to develop new business models for making the Images for the Future available to the public with the permission of the rights holders and in such a way that different types of value can be generated from providing access to the digitized material."

The project has started on 1 July 2015.
For more information, contact Lucie Guibault or Simone Schroff

See also the press release (English) and persbericht (Dutch).

 

 

 

Ten standards for oversight and transparency of national intelligence services,
Sarah Eskens, Ot van Daalen en Nico van Eijk, IViR, 2015.

In dit rapport doen de onderzoekers tien aanbevelingen voor het toezicht op geheime diensten. Zo moet rechterlijke controle bij het toezicht de voorkeur hebben. Ook moet meer openheid worden gegeven over de uitoefening van bevoegdheden, onder meer door het publiceren van statistische gegevens.
De aanbevelingen vloeien voort uit een analyse van Europese mensenrechtenuitspraken van de afgelopen decennia. De onderzoekers hebben hiertoe vonnissen van het Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens en het Hof van Justitie van de Europese Uni bestudeerd. De onderzoekers hebben zich vooral gericht op het onderscheppen van communicatie, maar de aanbevelingen zijn ook toepasbaar bij het toezicht op andere gebieden.

In this report, the researchers offer ten policy recommendations for oversight on intelligence services. Recommendations include that intelligence services should be subject to independent, prior oversight and that governments should be transparent about the exercise of surveillance powers.
The recommendations are based on an analysis of European human rights jurisprudence of the past decades. The researchers have studied of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. The researchers mostly focused on the interception of communication, but the policy recommendations are also applicable to oversight in other areas.

Media attention:

• Inlichtingendiensten te vrij in nieuw wetsvoorstel, De Volkskrant, 23 juli 2015.
• Onderzoekers: onvoldoende toezicht op inlichtingendiensten, Tweakers.net, 23 juli 2015.
• ‘Toezicht op Nederlandse geheime diensten moet beter’, NU.nl, 23 juli 2015.
• Slechte controle op veiligheidsdiensten, BNR, 23 juli 2015.
• Nieuwe bevoegdheden AIVD in strijd met mensenrechten, NPO Radio 1, De Ochtend, 23 juli 2015.

Op zaterdag 6 juni 2015 is tijdens de Universiteitsdag van de Universiteit van Amsterdam de UvA-Scriptieprijs 2015 uitgereikt.

Het Instituut voor Informatierecht feliciteert Alexander de Leeuw, oud onderzoeksmaster student Informatierecht, met zijn derde plaats!