Eoin – Page 29 – Cearta.ie

Copyright and the National Anthem; unravelling a tangled past, avoiding a gap of danger – I – The Soldier’s Song

Posted on 11 July, 20162 November, 2017 by Eoin

I was on the Marian Finucane show on RTE Radio 1 yesterday morning (listen here), discussing copyright in the National Anthem. The immediate context of the discussion was Senator Mark Daly‘s National Anthem (Protection of Copyright and Related Rights) (Amendment) Bill 2016 (reviving a Bill that he had introduced into the last Seanad earlier in the year). The story of the copyright in the national anthem is a fascinating one, with many legal twists and turns, which I will discuss in this post and the next (update: this post and the next were originally one post; but I have divided that post into two; in this post I discuss the copyright issues around the music and the English language version of the words of the anthem; in the next post, I will discuss the issues around the Irish language version). Once I have brought that story of these various versions of the anthem up to date, I will discuss the possible impact of Senator Daly’s Bill in a further post.

Working together in 1907, the music of the national anthem was composed by Patrick Heeney (1881-1911) and the English lyrics of “The Soldier’s Song” were composed by Peadar Kearney (1883-1942) [His first draft, written on copybook paper, sold at auction in 2006 for €760,000].…

Privacy in the Digital Age – Is it Time for a New Paradigm?

Posted on 6 July, 201622 July, 2016 by Eoin

There will be a discussion of

Privacy in the Digital Age – Is it Time for a New Paradigm?

in the Trinity Long Room Hub, next Wednesday, 13 July 2016, from 3:00pm to 5:00pm.

The speakers will be Dr Jyn Schultze-Melling (Director for Privacy Policy, Europe, Facebook) and Dr TJ McIntyre (Lecturer in Law, UCD; Chairman, Digital Rights Ireland). They will speak for no more than 30mins each; and there will be plenty of time for discussion. The event will be chaired by Joan Mulvihill (CEO, Irish Internet Association). …

How soon will the government approve copyright reform?

Posted on 5 July, 20166 July, 2016 by Eoin

A recent discussion in the Seanad suggests that a copyright reform Bill will be brought to government very soon. The discussion focussed on the need for efficient enforcement of IP rights in Irish courts, but it was placed in the broader context of copyright reform in general, and the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation promised to bring a full package of copyright reform proposals to Government “before the summer recess”. That is due at the end of this week, which means that the copyright reform Bill would have to have been considered by the Government at today’s meeting. But there is nothing on the websites of the Department of the Taoiseach or the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation to suggest that it was discussed or approved today. Nevertheless, the discussion in the Seanad is suggestive that we will see the government’s reform proposals very soon. Copyright reform is yet another step closer. I greatly look forward to its arrival.

The discussion arose from the following question posed by Senator Ivana Bacik on the Commencement of the Seanad on Wednesday, 29 June 2016:

The need for the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation to inform the House when she proposes to implement the recommendation of the Copyright Review Committee in its report Modernising Copyright, published in October 2013, concerning the extension of the small claims procedure in the District Court to include intellectual property claims up to the value of €15,000, as provided for within the draft Statutory Instrument prepared by the Committee.

…

Damages for infringement of data protection rights

Posted on 1 July, 20164 December, 2020 by Eoin

ICEL and RIA logos, via their websites At the Irish Centre for European Law’s Privacy and Data Protection Conference today (programme pdf) in the Royal Irish Academy, many interesting themes were explored. I want in this post to pick up on one of them, relating to damages for infringement of data protection rights.

At present, the matter is governed by Article 23 of the Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46/EC) [DPD], which provides

Member States shall provide that any person who has suffered damage as a result of an unlawful processing operation or of any act incompatible with the national provisions adopted pursuant to this Directive is entitled to receive compensation from the controller for the damage suffered.

On the one hand, this has been implemented in Ireland by section 7 of the Data Protection Act, 1988 [DPA] (also here), which provides that

For the purposes of the law of torts and to the extent that that law does not so provide, a person, being a data controller or a data processor, shall, so far as regards the collection by him of personal data or information intended for inclusion in such data or his dealing with such data, owe a duty of care to the data subject concerned …

In Collins v FBD Insurance plc [2013] IEHC 137 (14 March 2013) (noted here) [3.6] Feeney J held that section 7 required that plaintiffs “prove that they have, in fact, suffered damage arising from a breach”.…

Is Article 50 a one-way street; can a withdrawing State stop on it, or reverse out of it?

Posted on 30 June, 20161 July, 2016 by Eoin

In an earlier post, I argued that there may be an Article 50 route to a second Brexit referendum and the UK remaining in the EU. It has been a small drop in the online torrent of serious analysis of the legal and political consequences of last week’s referendum. My must-reads include Mark Elliott, the UK Constitutional Law Association’s blog, the LSE’s BrexitVote blog, the Brexit Reflections on the blog of the Centre on Constitutional Change in the University of Edinburgh, and the Brexit and Article 50 streams on the always excellent Conversation. It was there that I read a great piece by Phil Syrpis entitled Once the UK triggers Article 50 to start Brexit, can it turn back?. He asks whether the UK can have second thoughts stop the Article 50 process, and he comments

It seems staggering that there is no clear answer to this key legal question.

I could not agree more. Nevertheless, even if there is no clear answer, a consensus does seem to be emerging. In my last post, I said that the House of Lords’ European Committee Paper on The process of withdrawing from the European Union (11th Report of Session 2015–16; HL Paper 138; html | pdf) is an excellent guide to the legal mechanics of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.…

The limits of judicial deference to academic judgment

Posted on 28 June, 20166 January, 2025 by Eoin

In my first post yesterday, I took certain comments of Kennedy J in the recent US Supreme Court decision in Fisher v University of Texas __ US __ (23 June 2016) as the context for an analysis of the nature of judicial deference to academic judgment. In this post, I want to look at the limits to such deference. Once those limits have been reached, substantive claims are entertained, even if they often fail (see M Davies “Challenges to ‘academic immunity’ – the beginning of a new era?” (2004) 16 Education & the Law 75).

This is true at both public and private law; and, whilst the public law analysis has dominated the cases (S Hedley “Students as Litigants: A Public Law or a Private Law Issue?” (2015) 14 Hibernian Law Journal 1 [hereafter: Hedley]), the line between these two procedures isn’t always clear. On the one hand, in Green v Master and Fellows of St Peter’s College Cambridge (The Times, 10 February 1896; cited in Hedley, 1; jpg) Wills J held that it was “obvious that the relation between an undergraduate and his college was not a contractual one”. Hence, in Jaffer v York University 2010 ONCA 654 (7 October 2010) [26], [28] (blogged here | here) Karakatsanis JA held that judicial review is the proper procedure when seeking to reverse an internal academic decision (approving Gauthier v Saint-Germain 2010 ONCA 309 (CanLII) (3 May 2010) [46] (Rouleau jca).…

There may be an Article 50 route to a second Brexit referendum and the UK remaining in the EU

Posted on 27 June, 201627 June, 2016 by Eoin

I still can’t believe the news about Brexit, and I suspect the same is true of many on both sides of the issue. Since then, there has been much talk about Article 50, and much speculation about the possibility of a second referendum to undo the first. In this brief post, I want to put those two issues together. First, Article 50 is an article of the Treaty on European Union inserted by the Treaty of Lisbon. It is the mechanism by which a Member State may leave the EU. It provides in full as follows (with added links):

Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

…

The nature of judicial deference to academic judgment

Posted on 27 June, 201617 September, 2020 by Eoin

The US Supreme Court, though depleted at present to eight Justices after the death of Antonin Scalia, can still muster majorities in controversial cases.

One of the most controversial issues regularly before the Court (up there with abortion and guns) is affirmative action, especially in college admissions. At the end of last week, in Fisher v University of Texas __ US __ (23 June 2016) the Court held that a race-conscious admissions program in use at the time of petitioner’s application was lawful under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. In the course of his judgment for the majority, Kennedy J stressed that, in the case of “an academic judgment … some, but not complete, judicial deference is proper”.

In this post and the next, I want to leave aside the (relatively narrow, but – in my view – sensible and precise) holding on the affirmative action issues, and focus instead on the issue judicial deference to academic judgment. In this post, I will consider the nature of such deference. In the next post, I will consider its limits.

In Fisher, Kennedy J held that, once “a university gives ‘a reasoned, principled explanation’ for its decision, deference must be given ‘to the University’s conclusion, based on its experience and expertise, that a diverse student body would serve its educational goals’,” (citing an earlier stage in the Fisher litigation: Fisher v University of Texas at Austin 570 US __ (24 June 2013); the earlier decision was referred to in the sequel as Fisher I, and the sequel under consideration here is being referred to as Fisher II).…