EU efforts to toughen data privacy protections are being watered down by lawmakers under intense pressure from U.S. Internet companies, public interest groups said Wednesday. Their comments followed a vote in the European Parliament Industry Committee on a report responding to the European Commission proposal for a data protection regulation to replace the existing law. One issue is whether companies should be allowed to process pseudonymous data without obtaining data subjects’ consent. The proposal to require such consent has already been defeated in the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) Committee and also failed in the Industry committee (ITRE), due, some groups say, to lobbying efforts such as a Yahoo document leaked Wednesday.
There’s “huge interest” in adult content on mobile phones, SGM Media CEO Andy Wullmer told us. Earlier this month, he bought Mobile.xxx from ICM Registry for $160,000 and plans to dedicate the site to offering the first all-encompassing .xxx destination for mobile devices, the registry said. SGM (SexGoesMobile) offers only legal adult content, and owns all the rights to the material, Wullmer said. But since all the products use direct telephone billing through the phone provider, it never shows hardcore content, he said. In most European countries SGM shows only softcore video material, which falls under the Pan European Game Information rating “16” -- applied to content where the depiction of sexual activity “looks the same as would be expected in real life” (http://xrl.us/bn9dgo) -- while in most Asian and Arabic nations it shows only glamour video and images, he said. In the U.S., there’s only a dating platform which requires user registration and a credit card for age verification. The experience of SexGoesMobile.com, SGM’s best-known product, shows an enormous interest in accessing adult material on mobile, he said: Mobile phones are still very private spaces, unlike a PC at home. SGM is seeing more than 30,000 sales a day through its global affiliates, he said. In addition, a trawl through Google Mobile Search and keywords shows that sex and porn are the most often used search terms, he said. “With the newest generation of smartphones and the fast distribution worldwide the market is already big and growing very fast,” he said. Asked whether and how the registry will ensure that adult content is segregated on mobile.xxx, CEO Stuart Lawley said: “We don’t.” All the .xxx suffix does is indicate the likelihood of the kind of content to be found on an underlying website, he told us. All active .xxx sites are owned by validated members of the worldwide adult entertainment industry, he said. Sale of mobile.xxx hasn’t triggered any complaints or concerns, unlike the turmoil the .xxx top-level domain (TLD) created, he said. Asked how the TLD is doing, Lawley said, “Just fine.” Domain name registration renewals “came out in line with expectations so .xxx performance in comparison with other newly introduced TLDs compares very favorably.”
Policy and proposed legislation to boost European network and information security were unveiled Thursday by EU officials. At the heart of the policy is the protection of fundamental rights on the Internet, said EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton at a press briefing. The EU is determined to promote and defend its values online but also believes there should be norms of behavior among countries to protect against cyberattacks, she said. Hewlett-Packard and European telecom network operators cheered the initiative, but some of the proposals drew criticism from privacy advocates, an IT security firm and high-tech industries.
The European Commission is preparing human rights guidelines for the information and communication technologies sector, said Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes Monday in a lecture at Humboldt University in Berlin. Part of the EU plan to secure human rights online and offline includes allowing nongovernmental organizations to trial censorship-evading tools on Europe’s large-scale Internet testbed and mesh networks, she said. But sometimes those tools are used by repressive regimes instead of by activists, she said. Making human rights part of a telco’s corporate responsibility is common sense, Kroes said. An EU company supplying surveillance systems to a despotic government “is more than just an image problem, it is a major ethical problem,” Kroes said. The EC is working on human rights guidance for the ICT industry, she said.
The U.K. government must urgently investigate the sale of hacking software by a British company to repressive regimes, Privacy International said Thursday. In November, the privacy watchdog sent Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the department responsible for enforcing export rules and policies, extensive information showing that Gamma International’s FinSpy hacking software was being exported without a license to administrations with “dismal human rights records,” PI said. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) confirmed that such products fall within the scope of the U.K. export control regime, and notified the company, PI said. But despite that fact that FinSpy has been on the market for six years, and that businesses are legally obligated to seek export license classifications, Gamma has only submitted a control list classification inquiry asking whether it needs an export license for the software, PI said. Under the law, Gamma must apply for country-specific licenses in order to sell to customers outside the EU, but BIS confirmed it hasn’t received any applications for such licenses, PI said. Gamma is known to have sold the product to Bahrain and Turkmenistan, where it was used to target dissidents for harassment, arrest and even torture, it said. BIS’s acknowledgement that FinSpy exports should be controlled is welcome, but it’s now up to HMRC to show it can “quickly and effectively lay down the law,” PI Head of Research Eric King said. Although PI asked HMRC for a response within 14 days of its letter indicating whether it had launched or was about to launch an investigation of Gamma, there’s been nothing yet, the organization said. HMRC said it can’t comment on individual cases. Gamma didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A request by Deutsche Telekom for regulatory permission to use vectoring on its copper network to make high-speed broadband available more quickly has encountered opposition from alternative providers and from fiber-to-the-home proponents worried about its impact on local loop unbundling. DT’s application to regulator BNetzA sparked an outcry earlier this month from three German telecom organizations, apparently leading the incumbent to offer concessions Wednesday. Advocates of vectoring say the technology, although transitional, may be the best solution for Europe, which has been slow to roll out fiber networks. Fiber proponents, however, say vectoring won’t offer the high broadband speeds promised and could hamper investment in new networks.
Europe’s digital agenda is going well but “it’s not enough” because the digital economy is growing seven times faster than the rest of the economy, Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes said at a Tuesday press briefing. She set out revised priorities for 2013-2014, and warned that risk-avoidance in Brussels and national governments must stop. “I'm in a fighting spirit” about showing that Europe isn’t just about accounting and rules, but about giving people opportunities, she said. The European Commission also listed the actions it will take by the end of this legislative cycle in 2014 to modernize copyright laws for the online world.
The EU, joining many other delegations in refusing to sign the new International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), remains “100 percent committed to an open Internet,” the European Commission said Friday. The EU worked hard to make constructive updates and revisions to the treaty to bring it up to date while keeping it within appropriate boundaries, it said. There was agreement in several important areas such as price transparency for roaming, global emergency numbers and the updating of charging and accounting arrangements for international telecom traffic, it said. But the proposal to extend the ITRs to cover Internet issues “ruptured the possible fragile compromise,” it said. The final text risked jeopardizing the Internet’s future as well as economic growth, it said. European ISPs slammed some nations for using the conference to try to advance authoritarian controls.
A proposal to allow the U.K. Home Secretary to order the storage of any kind of communications data “is too sweeping, and goes further than it need or should,” the Joint Committee on the Draft Communications Data Bill said in a report published Tuesday. While there’s a case for giving law enforcement authorities some further access to communications data, the current version must be “significantly amended” to deliver only necessary data, Lords and Commons members said. Their scathing report (http://xrl.us/bn5u5q) brought cheers from ISPs and privacy advocates.
The European Commission plans to deal with troublesome online content issues starting next year, it said Wednesday after an “orientation debate” called by President José Manuel Barroso. With Europe’s digital economy predicted to grow seven times faster than its overall gross domestic product in the next few years, the EC wants to ensure that copyright rules work in the digital context, it said. Parallel tracks will deal next year with several issues where quick progress is needed, with decisions coming in 2014, it said. The EC hasn’t really tackled those matters until now, focusing instead on studies and limited topics such as collective licensing and orphan works, EC sources said. But the Digital Agenda mid-term review, due Dec. 19, is expected to name copyright reform as a top priority, and government leaders want concrete acts to spur the digital single market. There wasn’t enough work being done on the critical issues, and then the polarized focus on enforcement in the context of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) made things worse, they said.