Fleeing the hellsite: Mastodon vs Bluesky?
Who should win? In one corner, the butterfly of Bluesky… in another, the heavyweight Mastodon… AND THE DIGITAL MARKETS ACT HAS ENTERED THE RING! SENSATIONAL!
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Category: GDPR
Digital competition law reform Down Under 🦘
With my old friend and colleague Prof. Chris Marsden, we have just responded to the Australian Treasury’s consultation on creating a Digital Markets Act-like ex ante competition regulation regime. We have focused in particular on the possibilities of interoperability mandates, and on lessons learned so far from the EU’s experience with the DMA.
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EDPB guidance on sensitive data and “legitimate interest” processing needs more clarity
This Note is an immediate response to the recent EDPB guidance relating to the processing of certain special categories of personal data that enjoy special protection under the GDPR, commonly referred to as “sensitive data”. The Note explains why the EDPB’s guidance is not clear enough.
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Operating Systems need privacy-protective friend-finding services
The NYT headline (Did Apple just kill social apps?) is over-the-top, but a reminder of the impact Big Tech firms can have on entire market sectors with their product decisions — and why the EU was right to legislate rules for fairness and contestability in the Digital Markets Act. Indeed, further interventions might be necessary, like mandating privacy-protective friend-connecting services.
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Super Mario publishes EU “competitiveness” report
Part A of Mario Draghi’s report for the EU on “competitiveness” reform was published this morning. In one sentence, he concludes: “Europe must profoundly refocus its collective efforts on closing the innovation gap with the US and China, especially in advanced technologies.”
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GDPR under-enforcement by regulators is a warning for the DMA
Prof. David Erdos has shared his latest (excellent) research showing i) little UK GDPR enforcement, ii) a worrying gap with formal law expectations & iii) limited accountability for this. I hope the European Commission is not going down the same route with the Digital Markets Act.
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Will Draghi/Letta “competitiveness” reports reshape EU tech regulation?
Forthcoming reports for the EU by two former Italian prime ministers, “Super” Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta, are likely to be very influential on the next European Commission and Parliament. Here are some potentially far-reaching tech regulation-related comments they’ve made so far.
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More on French and Belgian GDPR guidance on AI training
As well as the Belgian Data Protection Authority decision I criticised earlier this week, it appears the French DPA has issued similar guidance on the use of personal data to train AI models. My detailed analysis below shows that, in relation to purpose-specific AI systems, it makes no sense: the training of the system cannot be separated from the ultimate purpose of the system. This has a major bearing on the issue of compatibility.
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Applying the GDPR to AI-based marketing using banking data
On 15 March, the Belgian Data Protection Authority issued a decision under the GDPR on the use, by a bank, of the transaction data of its customers to build direct marketing data models. This analysis shows why that decision was fundamentally flawed.
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Notes from the Next World Order
Cristina Caffarra’s annual competition-fest today in Brussels was as speaker- and content-packed as ever. As well as much discussion of the eagerly anticipated deadline for Digital Markets Act compliance in five weeks, it was a fascinating look beyond narrow antitrust policy to competition policy linkages with industrial and trade policy (with lots of AI on the side).
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