The Article 29 data protection working party released a document providing guidance on obtaining consent for cookies or similar tracking technologies for websites that operate across all EU Member States. According to the working party they should respect four main elements to be legally compliant in each Member State:

1. “Specific information. To be valid, consent must be specific and based on appropriate information. In other words, blanket consent without specifying the exact purpose of the processing is not acceptable.”

2. “Timing. As a general rule, consent has to be given before the processing starts.”

3. “Active choice. Consent must be unambiguous. Therefore the procedure to seek and to give consent must leave no doubt as to the data subject’s intention. There are in principle no limits as to the form consent can take. However, for consent to be valid it should be an active indication of the user’s wishes. The minimum expression of an indication could be any kind of signal, sufficiently clear to be capable of indicating a data subject’s wishes, and to be understandable by the data controller (it could include a handwritten signature affixed at the bottom of a paper form, or an active behaviour from which consent can be reasonably concluded).”

4. “Freely given. Consent can only be valid if the data subject is able to exercise a real choice, and there is no risk of deception, intimidation, coercion or significant negative consequences if he/she does not consent.”

These elements are described in more detail in the original document (.pdf).

The Dutch legislator proposed a bill that will make providers of digital content that is not recorded on a physical medium subject to the provisions of the consumer sales act. In this proposition, the streaming of music and videos is aligned with the ownership of the music and videos in terms of consumer sales law. The European Directive on consumer rights does not oblige member states to implement the Directive in this way.

The implementation law of the European Directive concerning the term of protection of copyright and related rights passed the Dutch Senate on October 8th. Performers see their rights extended from 50 up to 70 years.

They often start their careers at a young age and should be assured of protection and income concerning these performances their entire life, according to the consideration of the European Directive.

Last week, on Thursday the 19th of September, bureau Brandeis represented XS4ALL in her hearing in the appeal of XS4ALL and Ziggo against the Dutch anti-piracy organization, Brein. The case concerns the question of whether internet access providers, such as XS4ALL and Ziggo, are required to block access to the Pirate Bay website through DNS and IP filtering. Funnily enough, the hearing was scheduled on “International Talk Like a Pirate Day”.

There were so many visitors that people had to sit on the ground. Journalists were doing live reports through twitter. And the attorney on both sides were making explicit that this case is about major public interests. According to our client, XS4ALL, the hearing was a legal show.

In our pleadings, we argued against DNS and IP filtering measures. There are many reasons why such measures should not be imposed on neutral access providers, the most fundamental reason being that filtering restricts the freedom of information, lacks a legal basis, and is completely inefficient to tackle online copyright infringement. For that reason, the restriction of fundamental rights cannot be deemed “necessary in a democratic society”.

The judgment of the court of appeal is expected on December 17th. We will keep you posted.

CanalDigitaal offers movies and tv-shows to her consumers, but hasn’t paid remunerations for performing artists. NORMA represents performers, and collects and distributes the renumerations. Several discussions between NORMA and CanalDigitaal have ended without any success, therefore NORMA will take the case to court.