Share This Article
Audiovisual media regulations expand to new platforms, ICANN faces GDPR issues with WHOIS database and Privacy Shield shows first cracks.
Media – Updated audiovisual rules across Europe
On 13 June 2018, European institution negotiators confirmed to have reached an agreement on an updated EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive. The revised legislation changes the media landscape for broadcasters and video-on-demand platforms, redefining advertising limits and enhancing the promotion of European works, but also extends the European audiovisual rules to video-sharing platforms, also strengthening the protection of minors against harmful content and limiting profiling and behaviourally targeted advertising.
A vote in plenary to endorse the new rules is likely to take place in October.
Considering how rapidly and drastically the market has evolved this legal framework update was expected and its goal is to ensure a level playing field between the traditional broadcasters and the newcomers, the question is whether such extensions will pose an excessive burden which might in the end limit the growth of such platforms.
Intellectual Property – WHOIS database forced to early retirement by GDPR?
The first court decision applying GDPR was issued in Germany only a few days after the 25th of May 2018 and might have a critical impact on the future of ICANN’s WHOIS system, the well-known public register of contact information about people controlling domain names. According to the court, ICANN could not show credibly to comply with the data minimization principle with regards to some information required for the database. Together with the denial of the enforcement moratorium issued by the European Data Protection Board, the outcome of ICANN’s struggle to GDPR compliance could represent a critical flexion point for trademark and brand enforcement generally.
ICANN is liaising with privacy regulators and upgrading its systems to meet the privacy requirements.
This decision could serve as a lesson: addressing compliance issues on time and adopting a privacy by design approach could avoid jeopardising years of work.
Privacy – Cracks in the Privacy Shield?
The EU Parliament Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) adopted a clear position on the EU-US Privacy Shield scheme regulating the transfer of personal data between the EU and the US, calling the Commission to suspend it “until the U.S. authorities comply with its terms in full“.
The MEPs recognise that progress has been made, but point out, also following Cambridge Analytica scandal, they believe that the Privacy Shield does not provide the adequate level of protection of personal data required by EU law. Now the resolution moves to the European Parliament, which is expected to vote on it in July 2018, but it remains to be seen if it will follow LIBE’s lead.
The recent scandals involving companies that joined the Privacy Shield requires EU and US institutions to work together in order to develop a real solution to address substantially (and not just formally) the core legal discrepancies between the two legal systems of data protection law. It will be a hard balance to reach since the approach to privacy compliance is still quite different.
