Over de vrijheid van het openbare debat en het verschil tussen de rol van de politicus en niet-politicus.

Blogpost part of a series on data portability and interoperability.

“Nepnieuws” heeft de laatste tijd veel aandacht gekregen in de media en in het politieke debat. Tegen deze achtergrond en in het licht van de potentiële bedreigingen van “nepnieuws” voor de Nederlandse samenleving is de opdracht voor deze studie gegeven door het ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap. Het doel van dit rapport is om een update te geven over de stand van zaken met betrekking tot het onderwerp “methodes om de verspreiding van nepnieuws tegen te gaan”. Het rapport beantwoordt de volgende vragen: Welke methodes zijn er internationaal bekend om nepnieuws tegen te gaan? Wat is bekend over de effectiviteit van deze methodes? Welke kwalificaties kunnen gemaakt worden over de toepasbaarheid en relevantie van deze onderzoeksresultaten voor de Nederlandse context?

Vienna, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, 2018.

The article is also available on SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3199733.

An earlier version of this paper was awarded the 1st Prize in the 2017 ATRIP Essay Competition.

This article examines the online right of communication to the public under EUlaw and its interpretation by the Court of Justice of the EU. The focus of the analysis is on the controversial application of the right to hyperlinking, and its implications for the online activities of users and intermediaries. After outlining the international and EU legal framework on the right of communication to the public, the article advances a conceptual framework for the interpretation of the exclusive right in the online environment, which is both based on, and attempts to bring coherence to, the Court's complex case law. On this basis, the article then explores and critically assesses the main areas of legal uncertainty for the online application of the right and the normative considerations at stake—especially fundamental rights and the promotion of technological development—offering interpretative and legislative solutions for their resolution. The article argues for abandoning the legislative proposals for a new right for press publishers and the so-called value gap, as both are fundamentally flawed. Instead, reform should focus on redefining the right of communication to the public and preserving safe harbors, especially for hosting providers.

Rapport met Technopolis Group over beschermingsmechanismen op het gebied van intellectueel eigendom met betrekking tot medicijnen.

De recente jurisprudentie van het Hof van Justitie van de EU over de vraag of een hyperlink kwalificeert als mededeling aan het publiek, heeft al een hoop stof doen opwaaien. De gevolgen die deze uitspraken zouden kunnen hebben voor zoekmachines zijn tot op heden echter onderbelicht gebleven. Deze bijdrage bevat een analyse van de juridische positie van zoekmachines in het licht van de recente jurisprudentie.

Opinie 14 juni 2018

Opinie

Collective management organizations (CMOs) are, first and foremost, copyright and related rights licensing bodies managing vast sums of money. That does not, however, define the entire scope of their activities. For example, the 2014 EU Directive on collective management notes that CMOS "play, and should continue to play, an important role as promoters of the diversity of cultural expression". This article explains and evaluates the cultural functions that CMOs play.

In this article, we discuss mHealth apps and their potential to influence the user’s behaviour in increasingly persuasive ways. More specifically, we call attention to the fact that mHealth apps often seek to not only influence the health behaviour of users but also their economic behaviour by merging health and commercial content in ways that are hard to detect. We argue that (1) such merging of health and commercial content raises specific questions concerning the autonomy of mHealth app users, and (2) consumer law offers a promising legal lens to address questions concerning user protection in this context. Based on an empirically informed ethical analysis of autonomy, we develop a fine-grained framework that incorporates three different requirements for autonomy that we call “independence,” “authenticity,” and “options.” This framework also differentiates between three different stages of mHealth app use, namely installing, starting to use, and continuing to use an app. As a result, user autonomy can be analysed in a nuanced and precise manner. Since the concept of autonomy plays a prominent, yet poorly understood role in unfair commercial practice law, we utilize the ethical analysis of autonomy to guide our legal analysis of the proper application of unfair commercial practice law in the mHealth app domain.