Γαλλόφωνη βάση δεδομένων στο Διαδίκτυο

Η Ένωση ανώτατων γαλλόφωνων δικαστηρίων ανακοίνωσε την επαναλειτουργία της βάσης δεδομένων Juricaf, η οποία δημοσιεύει αποφάσεις ανώτατων γαλλόφωνων δικαστηρίων. Η εν λόγω βάση δεδομένων δημοσιεύει τις σχετικές πληροφορίες σε ελεύθερη πρόσβαση, στο Διαδίκτυο. Βλ. την ιστοσελίδα http://www.juricaf.org/

Η βάση δεδομένων περιέχει πάνω από 700.000 αποφάσεις σε πλήρες κείμενο από 46 κράτη. Στατιστικά για την κάλυψη και για τον αριθμό των αποφάσεων κάθε δικαστηρίου εδώ. Δεν είναι ωστόσο σαφές αν οι αποφάσεις υπόκεινται σε πνευματικά δικαιώματα.

Η λειτουργία της βάσης δεδομένων σε ελεύθερη πρόσβαση, που στο παρελθόν ήταν περιορισμένης πρόσβασης, προσδίδει νέα δυναμική σε αυτήν, καθώς την εντάσσει στο ρεύμα της ελεύθερης πρόσβασης στη νομική πληροφόρηση. Στο νέο σύστημα της Juriscaf οι αποφάσεις είναι σε μορφή HTML. Στο κείμενο της ενσωματώνονται μεταδεδομένα Dublin Core metadata, τα οποία έχουν την ένδειξη URN:LEX. Επίσης χρησιμοποιούνται RSS feeds για ειδοποιήσεις σε σχέση με νέες αποφάσεις δικαστηρίων (σε κάθε δικαστήριο και δικαιοδοσία).

On-line survey on privacy‏

What does it mean to ‘give consent’ when you sign up for an online service such as Facebook or YouTube or give your details to a company selling you goods online. It is not clear just what web site users think they are doing when they give consent, nor whether they know what the company intends to do with any personal information. The EU funded CONSENT project is a Europe-wide team from a number of universities investigating these issues and will be reporting to the European Commission who are considering whether they should legislate on what it means when a web site user ‘gives consent’ and what may be done with that data.

As first part of the project the team are collecting responses to an online survey. This takes around 10-15 minutes maximum and seeks to find out what users actually do – do you read privacy statements, do you know how the system settings can be changed, etc. This is obviously important and your input will help build a picture of what is happening across Europe and whether there is a real problem which needs addressing.

If you have a few spare minutes, please complete the anonymous survey at:

http://bit.ly/Survey-CONSENT

If you have any queries about the project, you can contact one of the members of the team from the UK, Philip Leith of Queen’s University of Belfast at p.leith@qub.ac.uk The web site for the CONSENT project is at http://consent.law.muni.cz/

5th International Conference on Information Law and Ethics 2012

5th International Conference on Information Law and Ethics 2012

Equity, Integrity and Beauty in Information Law and Ethics

Corfu, Greece June 29-30, 2012
Ionian Academy

Organizers: Ionian University-International Society for Ethics and Technology

See call for papers at http://conferences.ionio.gr/icil2012

Keynote speakers: Luciano Floridi, Professor, Unesco Chair for Information Ethics-Oxford University
Herman Tavani, Professor, Rivier College, US
Guest speakers: Professor Dimitris Gritzalis, Professor Karsten Weber, Professor Kenneth Einar Himma

Special sessions:

1. Arts and Ethics

2. Women in Academia

Guest speakers: Professor Kia Nobre, University of Oxford
Dr. Apsasia Tsaoussis, Lecturer, Aristotle University

Contributions to all sessions are open. Contact botti@otenet.gr.

ICIL 2012

Digital Agenda: public consultations on access to telecoms networks

The European Commission has launched two public consultations related to access for alternative operators to the fixed telephone and broadband networks of established operators. The consultations are part of Commission efforts to boost the Single Market for telecoms services by ensuring consistent and coherent approaches to regulating telephone and broadband networks in all Member States.

The first consultation concerns non-discriminatory access for alternative operators to the infrastructure and services of dominant telecom operators. The second concerns the way national regulators calculate prices that operators have to pay for this wholesale access (cost-orientation remedies). The results will help the Commission to draft Recommendations for a consistent, investment-friendly application of non-discrimination and price control remedies.

Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda said "We need regulatory consistency in all Member States to ensure a level playing field for telecoms across the whole EU, in which competition and investment can thrive. This will reassure markets that putting money into fibre networks is a safe and profitable investment."

Regulatory consistency is crucial to ensuring that telecoms operators have predictability and regulatory clarity, particularly when considering the large scale investments needed to roll-out ultra-fast optical fibre-based networks (see MEMO/10/424). These "next generation" networks are essential to meet the Digital Agenda for Europe goal of giving every European access to fast and ultra-fast broadband by 2020 (see IP/10/581, MEMO/10/199 and MEMO/10/200). Consistency also helps telecoms operators to be active in several Member States. The consultation on wholesale pricing examines in particular how the relationship between copper and fibre access prices can affect the incentives to invest in new fibre-based networks.

The Commission is looking into these topics because national telecoms regulators are currently taking different approaches when they choose to regulate in these fields.

When applied by national telecoms regulators, the Commission's guidance will ensure that operators will be able to buy broadband access products, such as unbundled local loops or "Bitstream", in a similar way across the EU. This will enable operators, ultimately, to offer their own competitive retail services to consumers on equivalent conditions.

Both consultations are open to telecoms operators, consumer organisations, national regulators, Member States and other interested parties until 28 November 2011.

Brussels, 3rd October 2011

Consultation on Web Neutrality

Consultation on draft Guidelines on Net Neutrality and Transparency

As its latest contribution to the debate in Europe on Net Neutrality, BEREC today launched a consultation on draft Guidelines on Net Neutrality and Transparency:
Best practices and recommended approaches. The report underlines the responsibility of NRAs to ensure that consumers are benefitting from effective transparency and analyses some possible approaches and tools that could be put in place to help reach this goal.

The Guidelines set out:

• the type of information that should be provided - the scope of the service (e.g. typical speeds), general limitations (e.g. usage caps), and specific limitations (e.g. traffic management practices)
• which bodies should provide information – as well as the Framework requirements on ISPs, various third parties provide an important complementary source of information.
• the importance of comparability – for which common frames of references and
users involvement are needed

See in particular: http://erg.ec.europa.eu/doc/berec/consult_info.pdf
[d/line 2 Nov SO SOON]

About BEREC:
The European Regulators Group for electronic communications networks and services was set up by the Commission to provide a suitable mechanism for encouraging cooperation and coordination between national regulatory authorities and the Commission, in order to promote the development of the internal market for electronic communications networks and services. To build on this experience, the ERG will now be replaced by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). BEREC and its support Office were created within the recently approved reform of the EU Telecom rules to improve the consistency of implementation of the EU regulatory framework. The first meetings of the Board of Regulators of BEREC and the Management Committee of the Office were held in Brussels on 28 January 2010.

Workshop on Modelling Policy-making (MPM 2011)

In conjunction with the 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2011)

December 12 or 13 (TBA), 2011
Vienna, Austria

Context:

As the European Union develops, issues about governance, legitimacy, and transparency become more pressing. National governments and the EU Commission realise the need to promote widespread, deliberative democracy in the policy-making cycle, which has several phases: 1) agenda setting, 2) policy analysis, 3) lawmaking, 4) administration and implementation, and 5) monitoring. As governments must become more efficient and effective with the resources available, modern information and communications technology (ICT) are being drawn on to address problems of information processing in the phases. One of the key problems is policy content analysis and modelling, particularly the gap between on the one hand policy proposals and formulations that are expressed in quantitative and narrative forms and on the other hand formal models that can be used to systematically represent and reason with the information contained in the proposals and formulations.

Submission Focus:

The workshop invites submissions of original research about the application of ICT to the early phases of the policy cycle, namely those before the legislators fix the legislation: agenda setting, policy analysis, and lawmaking. The research should seek to address the gap noted above. The workshop focuses particularly on using and integrating a range of subcomponents – information extraction, text processing, representation, modelling, simulation, reasoning, and argument – to provide policy making tools to the public and public administrators.

Intended Audience:

Legal professionals, government administrators, political scientists, and computer scientists.

Areas of Interest:

information extraction from natural language text
policy ontologies
formal logical representations of policies
transformations from policy language to executable policy rules
argumentation about policy proposals
web-based tools that support participatory policy-making
tools for increasing public understanding of arguments behind policy decisions
visualising policies and arguments about policies
computational models of policies and arguments about policies
integration tools
multi-agent policy simulations
Workshop Schedule:

To be announced.

Workshop Location:

Vienna, Austria. Specific location to be announced.

Webpage URL:

http://wyner.info/LanguageLogicLawSoftware/?p=1157

Important Dates:

Submission: Monday, October 24
Review Notification: Monday, November 7
Final Version: Monday, November 28
Workshop date: in the week of December 12
Author Guidelines:

Submit position papers of between 2-5 pages in length in PDF format and using the IOS Press style files and authors’ guidelines at:
IOS Press Author Instructions

Submit papers to:

MPM 2011 on EasyChair

Publication:

A call for selected extended versions of the papers will be issued for a special issue of AI and Law on Modelling Policy-making.

Program:

To be announced.

Contact Information:

Adam Wyner, adam@wyner.info
Neil Benn, n.j.l.benn@leeds.ac.uk

Program Committee Co-Chairs:

Adam Wyner (University of Liverpool, UK)
Neil Benn (University of Leeds, UK)

Program Committee (Preliminary):

Katie Atkinson
Trevor Bench-Capon
Bruce Edmonds
Tom van Engers
Euripidis Loukis
Tom Gordon
Ann Macintosh
Gunther Schefbeck
Maria Wimmer

Ελευθερία έκφρασης και ανωνυμία στο Διαδίκτυο: το παράδειγμα των ιστολογίων

Απόσπασμα από την εκδήλωση της παράταξης '' ΔΙΚΗΓΟΡΙΚΗ-Συνεργασία-Ανεξάρτητοι'' με θέμα τα ιστολόγια:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bx-PglZsmk&feature=player_embedded

SWIFT Agreement

Sylvia Kierkegaard

US war on terror EU SWIFT(ly) signs blank cheque on EU data

The EU and the United States signed the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (also known as SWIFT Agreement) agreement giving the US authorities access to bulk data containing the millions of records in the EU to enable the US authorities to trace financial transactions related to suspected terrorist activity (or to put it bluntly, against US interest). The SWIFT Agreement added some data protection safeguards, but the United States has been found to circumvent the agreement with the aid of the Europol. The EU Commission and the Europol have classified all documents concerning the SWIFT Agreement as secret. EU citizens confront a dark future where unelected EU bureaucrats continue to betray the trust of the people handing out bulk data to “counter terrorism” but at the same time undermining cherished values and violating human right standards and principles.

Computer Law & Security Review
Volume 27, Issue 5, September 2011, Pages 451-464

Δημόσια διαβούλευση της Ευρ. Επιτροπής για τη γνωστοποίηση παραβιάσεων προσωπικών δεδομένων

Στις 14 Ιουλίου 2011 η Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή ξεκίνησε τη δημόσια διαβούλευση για παραβιάσεις προσωπικών δεδομένων. Με βάση το πακέτο για τις τηλεπικοινωνίες και πιο συγκεκριμένα την οδηγία 2002/58, όπως τροποποιήθηκε από την οδηγία 2009/136, η Επιτροπή πρέπει να εφαρμόσει τεχνικά μέτρα για τις περιπτώσεις, τις διαδικασίες και τα πρότυπα γνωστοποιήσεων και για το σκοπό ζητά πληροφορίες από τα ενδιαφερόμενα μέρη σχετικά με την αντιμετώπιση των παρακάτω θεμάτων:

• διαδικασίες για την ενημέρωση των εθνικών αρχών ή ατόμων σχετικά με παραβιάσεις προσωπικών δεδομένων
• χρήση τεχνολογικών μέτρων που καθιστούν μη αναγνώσιμα τα προσωπικά δεδομένα
• τη σημασία του εύλογου διαστήματος για τη γνωστοποίηση
• το πρότυπο και τα μέσα της γνωστοποίησης
• το μορφότυπο των αρχείων παραβιάσεων προσωπικών δεδομένων και
• τη διαδικασία ελέγων από τις εθνικές αρχές

Βλ. το έγγραφο διαβούλευσης

Postgraduate Studies in ICT, IP and Media Law

The Postgraduate Studies in ICT, IP & Media Law programme provides a one-year comprehensive and in-depth study of European ICT, IP & Media Law. It distinguishes itself from existing programmes through its focus on interdisciplinary perspectives (ranging from technological and economic studies to socio-political, cultural, and media studies) and on problem-oriented learning and practical skills training (offering an internship as well as a specific skills course module). Its highly individualised approach, whereby students are appointed a personal tutor for preparing tasks and papers, makes this postgraduate programme unique in Europe and beyond. Participants may choose a professional stream, including a field internship, with the emphasis on acquiring up-to-date knowledge and professional legal skills. Or, those wishing to acquire fundamental insights in the field of ICT & media law research may prefer a research stream with a research-oriented internship.

Course lecturers and coordinators are Prof. Jos Dumortier and Prof. Peggy Valcke (K.U. Leuven), both leading European experts on ICT and media law. To answer the need for specialised training, the faculty is drawn from a wide array of academics, government officials, civil servants from such institutions as the European Commission and national regulatory authorities, as well as leading practitioners. In this way, the programme offers academic quality and added value both to graduate students wishing to cap their curriculum, and to practitioners in search of top-quality, cutting-edge expertise.

Students will have the opportunity to follow the introductory week on European law organized by the law faculty for its various LL.M. and advanced studies programmes.

For more information here