Eoin – Page 17 – Cearta.ie

Orphan works – a small corner of copyright law that will suffer after Brexit

Posted on 25 February, 201915 January, 2021 by Eoin

From today’s Guardian:

Spare Rib digital archive faces closure in event of no-deal Brexit

EU copyright exception would no longer protect British Library scans of pioneering feminist magazine

Spare Rib, the trailblazing women’s magazine that defined generations of feminism, faces the axe from the British Library’s digital archive if there is no Brexit deal, it has emerged

The magazine ran from 1972 to 1993, and all 11,000 articles, cartoons and photographs were made digitally available in 2015 as part of the joint efforts of the British Library (BL) and the Spare Rib Collective.

The British Library’s website explains:

Spare Rib Archive – possible suspension of access

Polly Russell explains why the Spare Rib resource may be suspended in the event of a ‘no deal’ withdrawal from the EU

In 2015, as part of our commitment to making our intellectual heritage available to everyone for research, inspiration and enjoyment, the British Library digitised and made available the full run of the feminist magazine Spare Rib available via the Jisc Journals platform.

The EU orphan works directive currently allows … material [where the rights-holder cannot be identified after a diligent search] to be made available by cultural heritage institutions. Around 57% of the Spare Rib archive – some 11,000 articles and images from 2,700 contributors – benefits from this protection.

…

The further GDPR travails of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly

Posted on 28 January, 201918 February, 2019 by Eoin

Ross O’Carroll-Kelly (pictured left) is in GDPR-trouble again. Last time, he was fired from his job as an estate-agent for failing to report a data breach, when his work lap-top was stolen from his car just as the GDPR came into full effect. This time (as recounted in last Saturday’s Irish Times magazine; audio here), he learns to his great cost the power of the data subject access request under Article 15 GDPR.

The background is well explained by Jennifer O’Connell’s experiences also recounted in last Saturday’s Irish Times magazine. Her story starts with staff members in a hotel asking customers: “If you enjoyed the service, would you minding leaving a TripAdvisor review, and mentioning me by name?” As she explains

It’s not only people in the service industry whose job security now rests on the whims of the terminally irate. If you’re a writer, Goodreads and Amazon reviews are your nemesis. If you’re a driver, it’s Uber. If you rent out your house, it’s Airbnb. If you’re a journalist, it’s the below-the-line comments.

She hasn’t reviewed the hotel waiter yet (she’ll be kind); but “in a Dublin hotel a few months ago, unable to sleep due to the sound of the four-hour, vigorous, live-action porn show on the other side of the cardboard door connecting [her] room with the one next door, [she] lay there plotting [her] TripAdvisor review”.…

Navigating Privacy in a Data Centric World

Posted on 18 January, 201918 January, 2019 by Eoin

On Monday, 28 January 2019, 16.00-17.30, in Regent House (map), Trinity College Dublin, Jules Polonetsky (CEO, Future of Privacy Forum; pictured left) will give a public lecture on

Navigating Privacy in a Data Centric World

Almost every area of technical progress today is reliant on ever broader access to personal information. Companies, academic researchers, governments and philanthropists utilise ever more sensitive data about individuals movements, health, online browsing, home activity, social interactions. To collect the data, cars, drones, phones, wearables, TVs and faces are tracked. Sensors that see and hear collect new types of information and machine learning provides exponentially deeper analysis. Will European data protection reshape the leading data intensive technologies? With the backlash against tech company practices lead to regulation in the US and globally? What role for Ireland at the centre of the new generation of regulation and tech development? Can data be mined for the benefit of society without creating an Orwellian future?

Jules Polonetsky is CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum (PFP). It is a nonprofit organisation that serves as a catalyst for privacy leadership and scholarship, advancing principled data practices in support of emerging technologies. FPF brings together industry, academics, civil society and other thought leaders to explore the challenges posed by technological innovation and develops privacy protections, ethical norms and workable business practices.…

Did Christmas come early for NJ commuters who were showered with money last week?

Posted on 16 December, 2018 by Eoin

According to Wikipedia, Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no”. That is true of the question in the title to this post: no, Christmas did not come early for NJ commuters who were showered with money last week. The CBS headline tells the story: Armored truck spills cash on N.J. highway, drivers rush to grab dollars and crashes ensue. Of the more than $500,000 that spilled on to the highway, nearly $300,000 remains missing, and the bank and the police want it back. As with overactive ATMs, these flying dollars are not so many early Christmas presents, the bank is entitled to recover them, and retaining them may very well amount to theft. …

60minutes says that the GDPR is the law that lets Europeans take back their data from big tech companies

Posted on 12 November, 2018 by Eoin

From the report embedded above (with added links):

Tech companies’ reign over users’ personal data has run largely unchecked in the age of the internet. Europe is seeking to end that with a new law

… the European Union enacted the world’s most ambitious internet privacy law [the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR)], even winning support from the CEO of the biggest tech company in America, Apple’s Tim Cook. …

Max Schrems: The default under the European system is you’re not allowed to use someone else’s data unless you have a justification. …

Jeffrey Chester: Americans have no control today about the information that’s collected about them every second of their lives. …

Today, if one of the big tech companies chooses to ignore Europe’s new data protection law it could cost them 4 percent of their global revenues, which for the biggest companies would mean billions of dollars. Those decisions will likely be made here in Dublin, … Ireland’s data protection commissioner Helen Dixon says it’s not going to be business as usual.

Helen Dixon: U.S. internet companies have no doubt that this law is serious, it has serious bite. And all of them are eager to avoid any engagement with that.

…

Brown J of the Supreme Court of Canada will launch the Palles Society for Private Law in Trinity

Posted on 5 November, 201820 November, 2018 by Eoin

The Honourable Russell Brown, Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, will deliver a keynote lecture on the topic of

Indeterminacy in the Duty of Care Analysis

at 6:30pm on Thursday 22 November 2018 in Trinity College Dublin, to launch the Palles Society for Private Law. The lecture will be held in the TRiSS Seminar Room (on the 6th floor of the Arts Block in Trinity (map and directions)); and a reception will follow. The event will be chaired by His Excellency Kevin Vickers, Ambassador of Canada to Ireland. All are welcome to attend, but registration is required.

Christopher Palles (pictured above left) was an unrivalled master of the common law. He was Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland from 1874 until 1916. Professor VTH Delany described him as “the greatest of the Irish judges”.

Justice Russell Brown (pictured above right) has been a puisne justice of the Supreme Court of Canada since 2015. He was a Professor of Law at the University of Alberta before his appointment to the bench. He is the author of Pure Economic Loss in Canadian Negligence Law (LexisNexis Canada, 2011), as well as articles, chapters and essays on tort law, property law and civil justice.…

Female-majority panels in the Irish Supreme Court (updated)

Posted on 4 October, 201822 January, 2024 by Eoin

There was some chatter online yesterday about the fact that the UK Supreme Court sat for the first time with a 3-2 female-male majority. The Supreme Court of New Zealand had done so last year. Despite the complement of female justices over the last 20 years, the Supreme Court of Canada doesn’t seem to have had a female majority panel yet. And there haven’t been sufficient female justices on the High Court of Australia for it to have happened there. [For both of these Courts, see now the updates below]. Against that backdrop, I thought I’d find out if and when the Irish Supreme Court had first sat with female majority panels, and this is what I found.

The first majority female panel in the Irish Supreme Court happened more than EIGHTEEN years ago. Denham J was the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, in 1992; McGuinness J was the second, in January 2000; and a female 2-1 majority on a 3-judge panel of the Supreme Court happened almost immediately after that appointment, in February 2000. In Dalton v Governor of the Training Unit [2000] IESC 49 (29 February 2000) Denham and McGuinness JJ sat with Hardiman J (the image, above left, is of McGuinness J (left) and Denham J (right); for more portraits of these judges, and other Irish legal women trailblazers, see here).…

Digital deposit and harvesting the .ie domain

Posted on 3 October, 201816 June, 2021 by Eoin

I have written several times on this blog about the importance of digital deposit (here, here, here, here). Section 198 of the Copyright and Related Rights (also here) provides for the delivery of print publications by publishers to libraries specified in the Act. Under this copyright deposit or legal deposit obligation, several libraries are entitled to copies of books published in the State. However, in Ireland this obligation applies only to print publications. In many jurisdictions, this obligation has been extended to cover electronic publications and websites. With the rise of digital publishing, it is increasingly being recognised that print deposit is incomplete, and that a comprehensive preservation of a nation’s published heritage requires that copyright deposit should extend to online publications as well. Moreover, online material is disappearing at frightening pace. Hence, the Copyright Review Committee, in the Modernising Copyright Report, recommended adding a new section in the 2000 Act to extend the existing copyright deposit regime for print publication in section 198 to digital works, and to permit copyright deposit institutions to harvest the .ie domain.

After much to-ing and fro-ing charted in the earlier blogposts, section 27 of the Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Bill 2018 (as initiated; pdf), in a much less comprehensive provision than that recommended by the CRC, provided for a limited form of digital deposit.…