General Data Protection Regulation: Council of the EU’s Amendments to the Commission’s Draft

Last weekend, an amended draft of the Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (General Data Protection Regulation) was published by the British organization statewatch. The proposed changes regard Articles 1-10, 80 (a), 83 and several recitals. While some of them simply clarify the first draft, others – as for example the definition of the term “personal data” in Article 4 Subsection 1 – will have great effects on data protection in Germany. Continue reading

ACTA really ad acta soon?

Last week, at the re:publica conference an illustrious crowd gathered for the sixth time and this time in Kreuzbergs’s Postbahnhof for Germanys biggest conference on blogs, social media and the digital society. Part of the crowd was Neelie Kroes, one of the Vice Presidents of the European Commission and Europan Commissioner for Digital Agenda. In her nicely titled speech about „Freedom online“ she dared to mention that “we are now likely to be in a world without SOPA” – the US’s proposed Stop Online Piracy Act – “and ACTA.” Are we really? Continue reading