Policy Observatory

The House of Lords adopted a report on the Google/Spain case. EDRi says the report made it very clear that the nonsense around the term “the right to be forgotten” is indeed simply that… nonsense. However, EDRi observed that sadly, none of the facts of the case mattered in the way of a good story.

The EU and US are currently negotiating a Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The US negotiator, the United States Trade Representative, is reported to be soliciting support for inclusion of provisions from Article 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in TTIP and other trade agreements being negotiated by the US. So far so good – the CDA creates liability protections for internet intermediaries, thereby reducing the risk of restrictive measures being imposed by them.

The European Parliament recently voted in favour of a resolution to refer the EU-Canada agreement on PNR to the Court of Justice to deliver an opinion of its compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights. After this vote, members of the European Parliament and digital rights activists expected the legislative debate on the EU PNR directive to be postponed until the CJEU’s assessment was released. Unfortunately, Commissioner Avramopoulos decided not to wait for the opinion and signaled his desire to quickly reach an agreement on the 2011 directive. To the surprise of many Parliamentarians at the hearing, the Home Affairs Commissioner said the landmark CJEU ruling on data retention was “a different scheme than the PNR.”

The European Parliament (EP) legal services last week presented an opinion on the Court of Justice of the EU’s (CJEU) ruling on the Data Retention Directive (DRD) and its implications. The opinion, after restating the principles that are essential to permit any interference on fundamental rights (proportionality, justification and necessity), answered specific questions raised by the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.

This year, a reform of the Copyright-legislation will be started. On behalf of the European Parliament, Julia Reda is currently working on an evaluation of the current Copyright directive. The stakeholders who are loudest so far are the collective societies but creators themselves are heard much too seldom.

Do the plans of the collecting societies really reflect the interests of all artists? Are they satisfied with the legislative status quo? Do they really want to re-negotiate the rights for their works for each country or would they prefer a single European market? Are they really opposed to remixes? What would their priorities be when it comes to updating the copyright framework?

The government legislative proposal to create a national database of persons who committed terrorism crimes, foreseeing similar procedural treatment as the existing databases on sexual or violent offenders (database currently examined by the Constitutional Council and the European Court of Human Rights). CNIL opinion covered such aspects as the length of data storage, automatic inscription of certain persons and the recipient of data.

The detailed CNIL consultation input is available here.