CIPIL University of Cambridge, hosted at IViR University of Amsterdam
Date: 23 April 2016, 9.30-17.00.
Venue: University of Amsterdam, Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 229-231, 1012 EX Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Registration required
Max. capacity: 70 persons
See also full programme and speaker biographies.

The difficulties of commercial journalism
Like music and other branches of publishing, commercial news journalism has faced radical challenges over the last two decades. There is talk of the "death of the newspaper" and questions have been raised about the very future of journalism. While with music, books and films, the greatest threat to existing business models have been seen as the unauthorised and unremunerated home copying and peer-to-peer distribution, with commercial news journalism much of the challenge derives from the fact that advertising has not followed the shift of print-newspapers to the Internet. Such difficulties are compounded, from the point of view of news publishers, by the relatively free availability of news from other online sources. And they’ve been further compounded by the recent rise of social media, particularly Facebook, as a main route to the news.

Questions that arise
The EU Commission just launched a consultation on the introduction of neighbouring rights for publishers (also known as 'ancillary right', or in street language 'Google tax'). Is there sufficient rationale to alter copyright or related laws in a way that benefits news publishers? Should commercial news publishers benefit from any change in the law, given that other means exist for gathering and disseminating news? How strong is an economic case for such a right? To what extent is any economic case for change supplemented by other arguments, such as reward and natural rights arguments, and arguments about media plurality? Should European law treat news publishers in a similar way to other content producers, such as phonogram producers and broadcasters, who benefit from a related right? Would individual journalists benefit from a right afforded to news publishers, and if so, to what extent? Should news publishers benefit from levies and compensation schemes designed to benefit author-journalists?

A one day conference at IViR will seek to address these questions. The conference is part of a two-year, AHRC funded project at CIPIL, Cambridge University, entitled Appraising Potential Legal Responses to Threats to the Production of  News in a Digital Environment, which the IViR will kindly host and facilitate.

The conference brings together an interdisciplinary combination of academics and practitioners to discuss the issue. Representatives from news producing, publishing and disseminating organizations, both traditional and online, have been invited.

Speakers:

• Søren Christian Søborg Andersen, attorney at Danish law firm Horten;
• Chris Beall, accomplished trial attorney at US law firm LSKS LLP;
• Professor Lionel Bently, Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge;
• Dr. Richard Danbury, research associate on the AHRC-funded project Appraising Potential Legal Responses to Threats to the Protection of News in a Digital Environment;
• Professor Mireille van Eechoud, professor of Information Law and director of IViR's LLM programme in Information Law;
• Professor Dr. Michael Grünberger, LL.M. (NYU) holds the Chair of Civil, Commercial and Technology Law at the University of Bayreuth;
• Professor Ian Hargreaves, professor of Digital Economy at Cardiff University;
• Professor Dr. Jan Hegemann;
• Professor Bernt Hugenholtz, professor of Intellectual Property Law and former director of IViR;
• Andrew J. Hughes, International Director, NLA media access, speaking in a personal capacity;
• Dr. Bertin Martens, senior economist and team leader for the Digital Economy research programme at the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), speaking in a personal capacity;
• James Mackenzie, one of the two co-founders of Cutbot, a media and public affairs monitoring company;
• Professor John Naughton, senior research fellow in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge;
• Agustín Reyna, Senior Legal Officer and Digital Team Leader in BEUC, The European Consumer Organisation;
• Matt Rogerson, head of Public Policy at Guardian News & Media;
• Mark Seeley, Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Elsevier;
• Marietje Schaake, Member of the European Parliament for the Dutch Democratic Party with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe political group;
• Professor Raquel Xalabarder, holds the Chair of Intellectual Property at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. 

See here for full speaker biographies.

For further information contact:
Dr Richard Danbury
Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law,
University of Cambridge
Rmd59@cam.ac.uk
 

The conference is free, but registration is required. Please use the form below. Your details will only be used for communication about the event.

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Dr. Tarlach McGonagle (Institute for Information Law, IViR) has been appointed to the Council of Europe’s new Committee of Experts on Media Pluralism and Transparency of Media Ownership. The main task of the Committee is to prepare a recommendation on these topics for adoption by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers. The Recommendation will be addressed to the Council of Europe’s 47 member States.

The new expert committee will also “analyse best practices in Council of Europe member States with regard to policies and other measures ensuring a pluralist media landscape, transparency of media ownership, diversity of media content, inclusiveness in public service media, gender equality in media coverage of election campaigns”.  

McGonagle, a senior researcher at IViR, was Rapporteur for a similar Council of Europe expert committee – on protection of journalism and safety of journalists (2014-2015). The draft recommendation prepared by that expert committee has been submitted to the Committee of Ministers for adoption.

 

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Dr. McGonagle benoemd tot lid van een nieuw Comité van Deskundigen van de Raad van Europa

Dr. Tarlach McGonagle (Instituut voor Informatierecht) is onlangs benoemd tot een nieuw Comité van Deskundigen van de Raad van Europa inzake media pluriformiteit en transparantie. Het Comité van Deskundigen heeft de opdracht gekregen een nieuwe aanbeveling over deze onderwerpen op te stellen en ter goedkeuring voor te leggen aan het Comité van Ministers van de Raad van Europa. De Aanbeveling zal zich richten tot de 47 lidstaten van de Raad van Europa.

Het nieuwe Comité van Deskundigen heeft ook als taak het analyseren van best practices van de lidstaten met betrekking tot het waarborgen van de pluriformiteit, diversiteit en transparantie van de media, inclusiviteit in de publieke omroep en gendergelijkheid in verslaggeving over verkiezingscampagnes.

McGonagle, senioronderzoeker op het IViR, was in 2014-2015 rapporteur bij een soortgelijk Comité van Deskunigen van de Raad van Europa dat over het beschermen van de journalistiek en de veiligheid van journalisten ging. De opgestelde conceptaanbeveling van dit  comité is ter goedkeuring voorgelegd aan het Comité van Ministers.

 

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

 

 

 

Het IViR is verheugd te kunnen melden dat het SIDN fonds een subsidie heeft toegekend voor het project

Politieke profiling, ook in Nederland?

In de Verenigde Staten wordt in politieke campagnes volop gebruik gemaakt van dataveillance en profiling van kiezers. Veel minder bekend is of en hoe spin-doctors in Nederland gebruik maken van online verzamelde data over individuele kiezers, om ze gericht te kunnen benaderen. Dit project gaat dit tijdens de verkiezingscampagnes van 2017 in kaart brengen en analyseren. De database wordt geanonimiseerd toegankelijk gemaakt voor iedereen. 

English abstract:

Unwinding the spin-doctors’ webs – monitoring data-driven micro-targeting during the Dutch 2017 elections”

Political communication is increasingly tailor-made. Parties and candidates focus more and more of their efforts on convincing opinion leaders and floating voters, which have increased in numbers in the recent two decades. Two important internet related developments support this change. On the one hand, there are many entities that observe us and collect data on our behavior from credit card companies to online services. A whole data broker industry developed based on that data, selling highly detailed information on the majority of individuals in Western societies. On the other hand, the proliferation of media outlets, including the plethora of online services offer better targeting opportunities. Our highly detailed online profiles on social media websites enable even better micro targeting opportunities for anyone willing to pay for the opportunity. Both of these developments promise huge payoffs for political campaigns. Campaigns in the USA are already among the biggest customers of the data broker industry. They are using highly sophisticated databases to maximize the impact of campaign spending. Experts expect similar developments to unfold in Europe in the near future. Despite the rapid emergence of data-driven micro targeting, no one is aware how these developments affect the foundations of our democratic system. We lack information on how the personalization of political communication takes place: how political parties utilize dataveillance, how they communicate online with citizens, to what extent and to what effect they personalize their messages. We propose an infrastructure with which we can observe the development of data-driven political micro targeting. Such an infrastructure would be unique, not only in the Netherlands, but in Europe, and would provide a much needed, yet currently non-existent insight into the process and consequences of the internet-driven transformation of political communication.

See also https://www.sidnfonds.nl/nieuws/ for more information about the different projects that were awarded with a grant by SIDN.

October 21, 2015

Just two weeks after Europe’s highest court struck down the “safe-harbor” agreement that let companies move digital information between the EU and the US, a group of nineteen privacy law and technology experts from the European Union and the United States released ten practical proposals  to increase the level of privacy protection in Trans-Atlantic Internet environment. The goal of this report is to bridge gaps between the existing approaches to data privacy of the European Union (EU) and the United States (US), in a way that produces a high level of privacy protection, furthering the rights of individuals and increasing certainty for commercial organizations.

“Privacy Bridges,” as described in the group’s report, will increase user control over personal data online, foster shared norms on new privacy challenges such as big data analytics and Internet of things, and develop common approaches to shared privacy obligations such as data breach notification and de-identification standards.

Describing the work of the group, co-chair Daniel Weitzner, Director of the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative explains, “our study over the last two years shows that the European Union and the United States share common democratic values, from which much of our privacy law and practice has developed. However, each legal system has made very different choices in how we implement those values. With Internet services that operate across the US-EU border in real time, we believe  that increased practical engagement between civil society, industry, academia and governments is vital to develop shared privacy practices. Respecting existing law, these shared practices can advance the practical privacy rights of Internet users whether they are in Europe, the United States or elsewhere.”

The Privacy Bridges report is being released at a sensitive moment in EU-US privacy relations, with the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) declaring the Safe Harbor agreement invalid for failure to protect the fundamental rights of EU citizens.

Prof. Nico van Eijk, co-convenor of the Bridges group from the University of Amsterdam explains, “Our goal with Privacy Bridges is to encourage a set of common set of privacy practices that treat all users equally, regardless of where they live. The recent ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union demonstrates how urgent this task is today.”

The Privacy Bridges project has been invited to present the results of our work as the centerpiece of the 37th International Privacy Conference, the annual gathering of data protection and privacy regulators from around the world, held this year in Amsterdam on 27-28 October. The report is the result of a 1½ year long study process convened by the University of Amsterdam Institute for Information Law and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Internet Policy Research Initiative. The Privacy Bridges project began nearly 2 years ago with strong encouragement from Dutch Data Protection Commission Chair Jacob Kohnstamm so we are pleased to have the chance to present this work at the International Conference which he is chairing this year.

The bridges

These ten privacy bridges are all practical steps that require no change to the law yet will result in better-informed, more consistent regulatory cooperation, policy guidance, and enforcement activity. While many members of the expert group that produced these recommendations have strong views about the future direction of US and EU privacy laws, here we seek to contribute to privacy challenges facing the information society, without entering into debates on changes to underlying constitutional or statutory frameworks. Privacy Bridges mission has never sought to define the legal relationships between the US and the European Union. We believe that is a matter for democratic debate and government leadership. There is urgency for governments to take on these questions, but we believe we cannot wait to undertake these practical steps in parallel.

• Bridge 1: Deepen the Article 29 Working Party/Federal Trade Commission relationship
• Bridge 2: Promote widespread implementation of  user control technologies
• Bridge 3: Develop new approaches to transparency
• Bridge 4: Implement user-complaint mechanisms to ease redress of violations outside a user’s region
• Bridge 5: Develop best practices for handling government access to private sector personal data
• Bridge 6: Develop best practices for de-identification of personal data
• Bridge 7: Share best practices for security breach notification
• Bridge 8: Enhancing Accountability
• Bridge 9: Greater government-to-government engagement among executive branch policymakers
• Bridge 10: Collaborating on privacy research programs

The participants

• Jean-François Abramatic, French National Institute for Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (INRIA)
• Bojana Bellamy, Centre for Information Policy Leadership at Hunton & Williams
• Mary Ellen Callahan, Jenner & Block
• Fred Cate, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
• Patrick van Eecke, University of Antwerp
• Nico van Eijk, Institute for Information Law (IViR) University of Amsterdam (UvA) [Co- chair]
• Elspeth Guild, Centre for European Policy Studies
• Paul de Hert, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VuB) and Tilburg University
• Peter Hustinx, European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) (retired)
• Christopher Kuner, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VuB)
• Deirdre Mulligan, University of California Berkeley
• Nuala O’Connor, Center for Democracy and Technology
• Joel Reidenberg, Fordham University School of Law
• Ira Rubinstein, Information Law Institute, New York University School of Law [Rapporteur]
• Peter Schaar, European Academy for Freedom of Information and Data Protection
• Nigel Shadbolt, Oxford University
• Sarah Spiekermann, Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna)
• David Vladeck, Georgetown University Law Center
• Daniel J. Weitzner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Co-chair]

The report can be found at: http://privacybridges.org/research/amsterdamreport
Contact MIT: Adam Conner-Simons, aconner@csail.mit.edu, +1 617-324-9135
Contact IViR: Nico van Eijk, n.a.n.m.vaneijk@uva.nl, +31205253931/3406

Media coverage:

• As U.S. Tech Companies Scramble, Group Sees Opportunity in Safe Harbor Decision, New York Times, 20 October 2015.

In Dutch:

• Prof. Nico van Eijk is cited in the article VS en EU naderen elkaar over privacybescherming in Trouw on 21 October 2015.
• Interview with Prof. Nico van Eijk on 21 October 2015 at NOS.nl: Experts: privacybescherming internetter kan veel beter
• BNR Radio: http://www.bnr.nl/?service=player&type=fragment&articleId=2691586&audioId=2691665 (BLT from 15.50 min).