Share This Article
LawBytes brings this week news on the EU-Japan safe data flow deal, new FAQs on prize promotions in Italy narrowing exemptions and YouTube Copyright Match tool.
Privacy – EU agrees with Japan on safe data flow deal
On 13 July 2018 the European Union and Japan successfully reached an agreement to recognise the equivalent adequacy of the reciprocal data protection systems, which will allow data to freely flow safely between the two powers. Indeed, this means that Japan will soon be considered a country providing a level of protection to personal data equivalent with the standards prescribed by EU data protection laws. Therefore for instance no consent of the relevant individual or standard contractual clauses will be necessary to enable the data transfers between the EU and Japan.
Just few weeks after threatening to suspend the Privacy Shield because of US failure to comply with European privacy requirements, the EU is arranging a new deal which will create the world’s largest area of safe transfers of data based on EU’s high standards of protection for personal data.
The agreement mandates that Japan implement a number of additional safeguards in order to fully protect EU citizens’ personal data, before the Commission formally adopts its adequacy decision, which is expected to happen in Autumn of this year.
This deal will apply to law enforcement data, but most importantly to commercial data flows, empowering the Big Data industry to benefit from uninhibited flow of data with this key commercial partner, as well as from privileged access to the 127 million Japanese consumers.
It is of great importance to notice that the European Union clearly recognizes that data is the new fuel of global economy and is pushing to harness its value shaping the data protection standards of the world and reaffirming its leadership in this key sector.
Prize Promotions – Italian Ministry narrows the exemption for low-prize promotions
In a previous blog post, Giulio had announced the new “freedom” which had been granted to the arrangement of prize promotions in Italy.
Unfortunately, the Italian Ministry of the Economic Development has recently updated its FAQs clarifying the scope of the exemption for low value prizes to the applicability of Italian prize promotions regulations, whose regime is extremely stringent and complex in Italy, lowering the threshold from € 25.82, to just the value of a pencil, a pennant or a paper calendar (more or less around € 2) as in the past.
This change of interpretation may complicate the launch of prize promotions in Italy, and therefore it is especially necessary to be able to unravel from the tangle of prize promotions regulations, as previously discussed here, in order to fully exploit the potential of the Italian market.
Copyright – YouTube launches new tool to help creators protect their content
The latest Parliament vote rejecting the negotiating mandate postponed the discussion regarding the EU Copyright reform to the plenary meeting in September 2018. However, online platforms of the media industry are now in any case starting to take enhanced actions to prevent copyright infringement.
YouTube has been leading the trend with the recent launch of Copyright Match, a new tool to help creators protect their original content which is designed to automatically find re-uploads of content on other channels.
After the previous Content ID tool, this new tool seems to follow the path of Article 13 of the EU copyright reform proposal which gets more stringent on non-licensed user generated content.
While it remains uncertain what will be the outcome of the European legislative process, without any doubt companies should move forward to develop purposeful and innovative solutions in order to stay ahead of the market.
