cearta.ie – Page 2 – the Irish for rights

The demise of the UK’s current age-verification plans for online porn – and what that might mean for Ireland’s proposed Digital Safety Commissioner — updated

18 October, 201921 November, 2019

Earlier this week, in a written statement to the House of Commons, the UK’s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Rt Hon Nicky Morgan MP, announced the end of the UK’s controversial age-verification plans for online porn.

Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 ((hereafter: DEA), as given further effect by the Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations 2019 (SI No 23 of 2019)) seeks to regulate online pornography. Section 14 DEA imposes a requirement on pornography websites to prevent access to by persons under 18; section 16 DEA permits the designation of an age-verification regulator (AVR); and, pursuant to the procedure in section 17 DEA, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport announced in the House of Commons on 20 February 2018 that the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) was designated as the AVR.

Pursuant to section 25 DEA, the AVR published Guidance on Age-verification Arrangements (pdf) in October 2018, and this was approved by the House of Commons on 17 December 2018. At this point, the EU Commission should have been notified, pursuant to Articles 4 and 5 of Directive (EU) 2015/1535, which lays down a procedure for the provision of information to the Commission to ensure as much transparency as possible as regards national initiatives for the establishment of technical regulations and of rules on Information Society services.…

Another butterfly-effect banking typo, another mistaken overpayment, another example of restitution for unjust enrichment

17 October, 201931 December, 2019

| 2 Comments

| Mistaken payments, Restitution

In 2016, Fife was said to be the happiest place to live in Scotland, at least according to the Bank of Scotland Happiness Index. But it may not be quite so happy for a man who was recently overpaid nearly £300,000 by Fife Council and now has to pay it back (that’s Fife House, North Street, Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland, the seat of Fife Council, in the picture). According to Irish Legal News yesterday (also here and here):

Fife Council, in Scotland, was supposed to pay the man £59.95 a week, but accidentally paid £59,395 per week instead – and didn’t notice until around £297,000 was paid out. … Most of the cash has been recovered and a repayment plan has been put in place to recover the remaining sum, around £12,000.

It was a monumental banking blunder from an administrative worker at the council who made a “keying error“. This resulted in five massive weekly overpayments during July and August, before council officials discovered the error. This is a spectacular example of a butterfly-effect typo; and Irish Legal News has another example today: a judge calculating a half-billion dollar damages award typed $107 million rather than $107 thousand into his calculator.…

Registration is open for the Irish Supreme Court Review conference, 12 October 2019, TCD

2 October, 20192 October, 2019

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| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops

The Irish Supreme Court Review (ISCR), hosted by the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, and sponsored by Pinsent Masons, is a forum for in-depth analysis of the functions and jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Ireland.

The second annual ISCR conference will be held on Saturday 12 October 2018 in Trinity College Dublin.

All are welcome to attend; the fee (inclusive of materials, tea & coffee breaks, and light lunch) is €35.00, or €15:00 (concession for students, pensioners and the unwaged); and registration is essential (via here or here).

SCHEDULE

09:00 Registration: Edmund Burke Lecture Theatre, Room 1008, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin (map)

09:30 Keynote: Chair: Mark Bell (Regius Professor of Law, and Head of the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin)

Imelda Maher (Sutherland Professor of European Law, and Dean of Law, University College Dublin) “The Supreme Court’s Treatment of EU Law”

10:30 Tea & coffee

11:00 Panel 1: Chair: Mary Finlay Geoghegan (Judge of the Supreme Court, 2017 to 2019)

Noel McGrath (University College Dublin) ACC Loan Management v Rickard [2019] IESC 29 (09 May 2019)

Fiona de Londras (University of Birmingham) P v Minister for Justice and Equality [2019] IESC 47 (31 May 2019)

Des Ryan (Trinity College Dublin) Nano Nagle School v Daly [2019] IESC 63 (31 July 2019)

Áine Ryall (University College Cork) Data Centres, Masterplans and Environmental Assessment Obligations: Fitzpatrick v An Bord Pleanála [2018] IESC 60 (05 December 2018) and [2019] IESC 23 (11 April 2019)

12:30 Light Lunch

13:30 Panel 2: Chair: Iseult O’Malley (Judge of the Supreme Court)

Liz Heffernan (Trinity College Dublin) Statutory Presumptions Affecting the Burden of Proof: Director of Public Prosecutions v Forsey [2018] IESC 55 (08 November 2018)

Mark Coen (University College Dublin Sweeney v Ireland [2019] IESC 39 (28 May 2019)

David Prendergast (Trinity College Dublin) Director of Public Prosecutions v Brown [2018] IESC 67 (21 December 2018)

14:45 Tea & coffee

15:00 Panel 3: Chair: to be confirmed

Fergus Ryan (Maynooth University) P v Judges of the Circuit Court [2019] IESC 26 (30 April 2019)

Brian Murray SC (Law Library, Dublin) Kerins v McGuinness [2019] IESC 11 (27 February 2019), O’Brien v Clerk of Dáil Éireann [2019] IESC 12 (05 March 2019), and Kerins v McGuinness [2019] IESC 42 (29 May 2019)

The legal basis of the US$170m fine on Google for YouTube’s infringement of children’s privacy

10 September, 2019

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| GDPR, Privacy

FTC NYAG Google YouTube logos

At the end of last week, the media was full of stories that Google had been “Fined $170 Million for Violating Children’s Privacy on YouTube” (that’s a headline from the New York Times; see also, for example, NPR | BBC | RTÉ | Silicon Republic). In this post, I want to sketch the legal background to, and consequences of, this fine; and, at the end, I will say a few words about the equivalent position in Europe.

In the US, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (15 USC §§ 6501–6506; hereafter: COPPA), and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (16 CFR § 312; hereafter: the COPPA Rule) made under it, regulate unfair and deceptive acts and practices in connection with the collection and use of personal information from and about children on the internet. In particular, 15 USC §§ 6502(b)(A) COPPA, and 16 CFR § 312.3 COPPA Rule, require the operator of any website or online service directed to children that collects personal information from children, or the operator of a website or online service that has actual knowledge that it is collecting personal information from a child,

(i) to provide notice on the website of what information is collected from children by the operator, how the operator uses such information, and the operator’s disclosure practices for such information; and
(ii) to obtain verifiable parental consent for the collection, use, or disclosure of personal information from children; …

Giving further effect to the second paragraph here, 16 CFR § 312.5(b)(1)…

The legal effects of some butterfly-effect typos; including mistaken offers, and restitution of mistaken payments

21 August, 201910 September, 2019

| 3 Comments

| Contract, Mistaken offers, Mistaken payments, Restitution

The Book of Kells is one of the great treasures in the Old Library in Trinity College Dublin. It is a manuscript of the Four Gospels in Latin based on the Vulgate of St Jerome. It was written and illuminated in the ninth century, probably in part in a monastery on the island of Iona in Scotland, and in part in a monastery in Kells, Co Meath, Ireland. Though a great medieval treasure, it contains some typographical errors. For example, the Gospel of Luke has an extra ancestor in the genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:26; pictured left). It seems that the scribe read “qui fuit mathathiae” as “qui fuit mathath | iae” and thus wrote “qui fuit mathath” (the first line in the picture on the left) and “qui fuit iae” (the second line in the picture). Even Homer nods.

I was reminded of this when I recently read an article by Tom Lamont about the effects of electronic typos: an SMS misdirected to a wrong mobile phone number (leading to a marriage!); a satnav directed to Rom (in Germany) rather than Rome (in Italy); a jet from Sydney directed to 15 degrees 19.8…

Klee/Seymour; or, The digital dysaguria of The Twittering Machine

19 August, 201923 August, 2019

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| Dysaguria

Veteran Irish journalist Vincent Browne presented the late-night political talk show Tonight with Vincent Browne on what was then TV3 from 2007 to 2017 (the programme is now The Tonight Show hosted by Ivan Yates and Matt Cooper on Virgin Media One). His famously waspish and curmudgeonly demeanour permitted him to adopt a technophobic persona, dismissing the considerable (almost cult) online following as “the twitter machine” (the twitter hashtag was #vinb; from small beginnings, it grew to become a vital part of the show; and nostalgia still drives some traffic).

Those halcyon days of Irish political twitter came back to me reading a review of Richard Seymour’s The Twittering Machine (Indigo Press, 2019) by Peter Conrad in The Observer the weekend before last. Here are some extracts, which give a sense of the review and a flavour of the book, as well as an explanation both of the book’s title and of the Klee painting (above left):

The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour review – our descent into a digital dystopia

A stark polemic argues that social media may have unleashed an age of nihilism from which there is little hope of escape

Technology, as Richard Seymour says, always boasts of possessing superhuman powers, which is why it arouses our wary paranoia.

…

The Great Hack and the dysaguria of Cambridge Analytica

24 July, 201919 August, 2019

| 3 Comments

| Digital Rights, Dysaguria, Media and Communications, Privacy

The Great Hack has just dropped on Netflix (IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes | wikipedia | poster left). It is a documentary that explores “how a data company named Cambridge Analytica came to symbolize the dark side of social media in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election”. Much has already been written about the Cambridge Analytica scandal (eg ICO here and here (pdfs) | Carole Cadwalladr in The Guardian), and a great deal more will be written as the movie is reviewed in the coming days. I don’t propose to add to those torrents here. Rather, I simply want to observe that there is a word for a company that symbolizes the dark side of social media.

Reacting to Thomas More’s coinage of “utopia” as the “perfect state”, from the Greek “eu” meaning “good”, and “topos” meaning “place”, John Stuart Mill coined “dystopia” as the “frightening state”, from the Greek “dys” meaning “bad”, and (again) “topos” meaning “place”. But, whilst “dystopia” is perfect to describe a “frightening state” and its frightened society, it is not particularly apt to describe a “frightening company” and its frightened society. Indeed, we don’t really have the words for when a corporate society goes bad; “dystopia” and “dystopian” have been pressed into service (even in the context of reviewing The Great Hack: “Watching this film, you literally start to wonder if history has been warped towards a sickening dystopia”); but the warped society in that movie is very different to the warped society in classic dystopian fiction (such as, to take the obvious example, Orwell’s 1984).…