Policy Observatory

Google should not apply 'right to be forgotten' on .com domain, advisory council says

Fri 6 Feb 2015, 14:20

An advisory council put together by Google found that the search engine should only apply the so-called “right to be forgotten” to European Union search domains and not to its international .com domain, which is contrary to what EU privacy regulators want the search engine to do.

Delisting search results only on EU domains is one of the recommendations in a 44-page report released on Friday by the council, whose eight members all volunteered their time.

Google convened the council to advise it on implementing a decision made by the Court of Justice of the European Union in May last year, which gave EU citizens the right to compel search engines to remove search results in Europe for queries that include their names if the results are irrelevant or excessive.

Tags: right to be forgotten, advisory council, Google vs Spain, data protection, URL delisting, search results, CJEU decision, privacy

Exhaustion of rights - the broader implications of the CJEU's ruling in Art & Allposters

Fri 30 Jan 2015, 17:00

The principle of exhaustion is a hot topic in copyright with important commercial ramifications, particularly in relation to 'online exhaustion' and the viability of a second-hand market in digital content.

A key aspect of the CJEU’s ruling is its view that the exhaustion of the distribution right under the InfoSoc Directive covers the tangible object into which a work (or a copy of it) is incorporated. In other words, it is inherently tied to the physical medium (e.g. paper, canvas) on which the work is expressed.

Tags: CJEU decision, exhaustion principle, InfoSoc Directive, copyright

CNIL orders Google to comply to the CJEU decision on delisting personal data from searches

Mon 22 Jun 2015, 23:20

The French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) ordered Google to comply with the judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning the so called "right to be forgotten".

Following the assessment of the complaints received, the CNIL has requested Google to carry out the delisting of several results specifying that the delisting should be effective on whole search engine, irrespective of the extension used.

The President of the CNIL has put Google on notice to proceed, within a period of fifteen (15) days, to the requested delisting on the whole data processing and thus on all extensions of the search engine.

Tags: search results, Google, notice, right to be forgotten, CJEU decision, delisting, privacy, data protection, France, CNIL

German DPAs issue position paper following Safe Harbor decision

Thu 29 Oct 2015, 20:08

In the weeks since the October 6, 2015, Court of Justice of the European Union decision that invalidated the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor framework, companies have been faced with the quandary of establishing legal alternatives for transferring personal data from Europe to the U.S.

Alternative data transfer mechanisms such as standard contractual clauses (SCCs, also called model clauses) and binding corporate rules (BCRs) were implicitly endorsed by the European Commission, but not all European countries, however, have taken this position.

On Monday, October 26, a group of German data protection authorities representing the federal government and 16 German states issued a 14-point position paper (available in German here) following the CJEU Decision.

Read about the most significant findings here.

Tags: Safe Harbor, EU-US, data protection, data transfer, standard contractual clauses, binding corporate rules, CJEU decision

Safe Harbor decision and possible consequences for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

Tue 27 Oct 2015, 18:56

Following the invalidation of the Safe Harbor agreement, this article offers a detailed review of consequences for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Tags: Schrems, CJEU decision, Safe Harbor, EU-US, privacy, data transfer, data protection

EU Commissioner announces further guidance on the impact of the Safe Harbor ruling

Wed 28 Oct 2015, 19:06

On Monday, October 26, 2015, EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, Věra Jourová, gave a speech before the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs on the recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union that invalidated the European Commission’s Safe Harbor Decision. The EU Commissioner welcomed the Article 29 Working Party’s statement and, in particular, its support for a new Safe Harbor framework by January 31, 2016. However, the EU Commissioner called for more clarity in the meantime. Accordingly, she announced that the European Commission will soon issue an explanatory document on the consequences of the CJEU’s ruling to provide guidance for businesses on international data transfers.

Tags: European Commission, agreement, new framework, Safe Harbor, guidelines, statement, Article 29 Working Party, EU-US, data transfer, CJEU decision, privacy, data protection