Protecting the fundamental rights required to enable growth in digital art, culture, and commerce
Internet policy is a topic standing increasingly in the political spotlight: in North America, attempts to provide clauses allowing for Internet censorship and policing – most recently ACTA, TPP, CISPA, and the Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act – are just an indicator of how serious digital communications are in modern society. In Europe, the EU is struggling to agree on how to establish a forward-thinking policy protecting the Internet as a communications medium while balancing the interests of commercial, governmental, and judicial branches.
Neelie Kroes’ latest Parliament speech was an update on the progress of Digital Agenda actions, and in particular she launched a stinging criticism of attempts by Member States to cut back Commission’s latest copyright legislative proposals. This is a proposed directive on “orphan works” (copyrighted works where the copyright holder cannot be contacted for one reason or another. There are tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions of these works in Europe alone). Kroes has a particular interest because digitizing art and culture will be slowed down badly unless a solution for this issue is found. Yesterday she said:
“I regret that current amendments would drastically cut back the most progressive elements of the Commission proposal: in particular regarding the commercial use option. If this continues, it could be a big missed opportunity. The text must be quite clear that public service cultural bodies have the right to generate revenues consistent with their public service missions; including via public-private partnerships.”
Yesterday, Mrs. Kroes addressed the COSAC Conference of national parliaments in Copenhagen. She claimed: “Today no political discussion can ignore the economy. My message is simple: to think about the future economy, you must take account of the digital revolution.”
Mrs. Kroes is also worried that we – governments, business, individuals – are not taking information security seriously enough (Internet crime already costs 380 billion euros a year). And she is right.
From an economic perspective, transactions are being digitized at a frightening pace. Cash transactions over €1000 are already banned in Spain and Italy, with other countries likely to follow suite – favoring electronic transactions instead. Germany is looking to roll out NFC to enable contact-free electronic payments starting this August. And the list goes on.
From an infrastructure perspective, the current infrastructure – albeit better than the infrastructure in many other parts of the world – is reaching its limits in transporting the masses of big data generated by the boom in cloud computing and centralized digital services in both the consumer and enterprise sectors. With the coming rise of the ‘Internet of things’, bandwidth demands and the need to guarantee near real-time communications will only increase. Without sufficient infrastructure to allow such communications across the European Union, we will not be capable of reacting to meet the needs of the future digital world, and thus stagnate the booming e-business segment.
From a privacy perspective, the Internet, and in particular social networks, have opened up the door to unrestricted data passage, in particular personal profiles and other identifying information, between companies and countries, sometimes with individual awareness of the potential consequences, but often without. There is an urgent need to address how this emerging data market operates and to unify the mess of European country-specific laws to allow businesses to access more easily the European market. At the same time, there is a need to ensure that proposed privacy and security frameworks support the internet as a medium in which consumers feel comfortable interacting with: this means providing ample freedoms to communicate without infringement on privacy or fears of undesired spionage.
Speaking at a London conference on the topic, Mrs. Kroes foreshadowed a “European Strategy for Internet Security” to be delivered later in the year:
“Internet Security cannot be left to the traditional instruments of national security – as if cyberspace was just another military theatre… We need a new vision to address the particular features of security in cyberspace. This is why we need a ‘European Strategy for Internet Security’. With everyone – governments, businesses and individuals – working together and sharing responsibility.”
This sounds fine and dandy as a promise, but as we all know, working out the details and implementing them is the real challenge up ahead. What would you consider the most important cornerstones of such a strategy?
Further readings:
Orphan Works Directive: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/11/333 and http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/docs/orphan-works/proposal_en.pdf
Authors: +Sophie Wrobel +Max Huijgen