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What does the Internet say about you? Data Privacy Day event in TCD

21 January, 201521 January, 2015
| 1 Comment
| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Privacy

dpdTo mark Data Protection Day on Wednesday 28 January 2015, the Information Compliance Office in Trinity College Dublin have teamed up with the Science Gallery to find out: What does the Internet say about you? They have organised a Panel Discussion hosted by Newstalk‘s Jessica Kelly, where Ireland’s leading voices on data protection will discuss

Online Privacy – What does the Internet say about you

It will be held on Wednesday 28 Jan 2015 at 6:00pm in the JM Synge Lecture Theatre, Room 2039, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin (map here). The speakers include:

Sinéad McSweeney, Director of Public Policy, Twitter;
Jeanne Kelly, Partner, Mason Hayes & Curran Solicitors;
Conor Flynn, ISAS Ltd; and
Eoin O’Dell, School of Law, Trinity College Dublin. My provisional working title is:

What the Internet knows about you, and do you have the right to make it forget?

The world wide web is now more than 25 years old; it is transforming how we live and how we think about ourselves and our identities; and the law is struggling to catch up. Vint Cerf, a pioneer of the internet and now Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, recently told a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hearing that “privacy may be an anomaly” (pdf) in the age of social media, and this poses profound challenges for our legal, philosophical and ethical conceptions of privacy.…

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Why will there be no referendum to remove the offence of blasphemy from the Irish Constitution?

20 January, 201511 March, 2015
| 2 Comments
| Blasphemy

CharlieHebdoCoverOn Sunday 10 January 2015, the Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) joined an array of world leaders and an estimated two million people at a rally in Paris against terrorism in the aftermath of the murderous attack on Charlie Hebdo. In Ireland, unfounded claims that the publication of Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed would amount to blasphemy at Irish law have led to several calls to repeal the blasphemy provisions in Article 40.6.1(i) of the Irish Constitution and section 36 of the Defamation Act, 2009.

However, despite his attendance at the Paris rally on Sunday 10 January 2015, not two days later on Tuesday 12 January 2015, the Taoiseach was insistent that a referendum on removing the offence of blasphemy from the Constitution will not be held during the lifetime of this Government. …

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The Ethics of Security and Surveillance Technologies

15 January, 201522 January, 2015
| No Comments
| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Digital Rights, Privacy

987dcd49-c69f-48b5-a808-66e89bec0087
Professor Hille Haker will deliver a public lecture on

The Ethics of Security and Surveillance Technologies

in the Trinity Long Room Hub, on Thursday 22 January 2015, at 18:30. In this public lecture, organised by the Confederal School of Religions, Peace Studies and Theology at Trinity College Dublin, and the Ethics and Privacy Working Group of the ADAPT centre at TCD, Prof Haker will outline her thoughts on the ethics of surveillance technologies. In particular, she will address the key questions:

Security and freedom: do we need both?
And can we enjoy both without the pursuit of one jeopardising the other?


Prof Haker is a member of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE), which advises the European Commission on ethical issues. On 20 May 2014, the EGE submitted to the Commission their Opinion no 28 on “Ethics of Information and Communication Technologies”. In an era where rapid advances in telecommunications and computing have enabled the data of billions of citizens around the globe to be tracked and scrutinized on an unprecedented scale, the Opinion aims to provide a reference point for the Commission regarding the ethics of security and surveillance measures.

Building upon the Opinion, in this lecture, Prof Haker considers the tensions between security and freedom.…

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Any Attempt to Prosecute Irish Publication of Charlie Hebdo Mohammed Cartoons is Doomed to Fail

9 January, 201511 March, 2015
| 4 Comments
| Blasphemy

I wrote the following as an OpEd for the University Times:

Charia Hedbo via Charlie HebdoThe attack on Charlie Hebdo, and the murders of ten journalists and two policemen, are not only a tragedy for the victims, their families, and their colleagues, but also an assault upon freedom of expression and the fabric of western democracy. The only appropriate response is to refuse to give in to such an outrage, and instead to support and exercise the fundamental freedoms for which the victims gave their lives.

It is therefore troubling that Dr Ali Selim – admittedly in response to a line of leading questions from a radio journalist – should threaten legal action against any Irish media outlet which chooses to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed which had been published by Charlie Hebdo. I assume that he has in mind the offence of blasphemy contained in section 36 of the Defamation Act, 2009. It was included in that Act to give effect to the constitutional requirement that the publication of “blasphemous … matter” should be a criminal offence. However, section 36 is very narrowly drawn, and its terms would not be satisfied by the publication of a Charlie Hebdo cartoon to illustrate a story on the attack on the magazine.…

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Modernising Copyright: The Report of the Copyright Review Committee #CRC13

29 October, 201318 November, 2015
| 20 Comments
| CRC12 / CRC13

CRC_Report_Cover_ThumbnailToday in the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Minister Bruton and Minister Sherlock launched Modernising Copyright, the Report of the Copyright Review Committee (pdfs: via this site; via the DJEI site [link updated 18 November 2015]) (see barnold law | Business & Leadership | Damien Mulley| DJEI Press Release here and here | Irish Times | infojustice.org | Irish Independent | Technology.ie | The 1709 Blog | TheJournal.ie).

Copyright reform is in the air, in Australia, Canada, Germany, India (pdf), the EU (here, here, here (pdf), and here), the UK, and the US (here (pdf) and here). As part of this process, the Copyright Review Committee (the Committee) was established on 9 May 2011 by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mr Richard Bruton (TD). It consisted of Dr Eoin O’Dell (Trinity College Dublin), Patricia McGovern (DFMG Solicitors, Dublin), and Professor Steve Hedley (University College Cork), and it was tasked with proposing solutions for areas of current copyright law that create barriers to innovation.

The Committee established a website for the process, held a public meeting on 4 July 2011, received over 100 written submissions, and published a Consultation Paper on 29 February 2012.…

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Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire

21 October, 2013
| 1 Comment
| Universities

WB Yeats, by GC Beresford, via WikipediaIn an entertaining and erudite article in the Irish Times last week, Robert Strong (William Lyne Wilson Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar as Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History in the School of History and Archives at University College Dublin) searched for evidence that the quote in the title of this post should properly be attributed to William Butler Yeats (pictured left). Although regularly attributed to Yeats, he found no proof to support the attribution; and he drew the following lessons from his quest:

  • Don’t believe everything you hear from a speaker standing at a podium.
  • Don’t believe everything you read in books.
  • Always be suspicious of information you find on the internet.
  • Do your own research about something that strikes your fancy.
  • Take some joy in finding things out for yourself even if what you find is complicated and incomplete.
  • Pursue the truth wherever it takes you.
  • And don’t be afraid to challenge prominent people and published sources if you find evidence they might be wrong.

These lessons are a perfect example of the point of the quote: education really is about lighting a fire, encouraging people to think for themselves, rather than simply fill up with and repeat what they have heard.…

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A small step towards slightly more open justice in the Irish Supreme Court

8 October, 20138 October, 2013
| No Comments
| Irish Law, Irish Supreme Court

Light bulb via wikipediaAs reported by Ruadhán Mac Cormaic in yesterday’s Irish Times, the Irish Supreme Court is to make written submissions available to the public. This is an excellent development – the public’s right of access to court documents is a very important aspect of the open administration of justice. According to Ruadhán:

In a direction to lawyers, posted on the Courts Service website, Ms Justice Denham said the new practice would apply to all submissions sent to the Supreme Court Office as of yesterday. The documents will only be available once the relevant appeal hearing begins.

(Para updated 8 October 2013: updates underlined) I found it hard to track down the relevant Practice Direction: when I wrote this post it is was not yet either on the Courts Service News page or the Supreme Court Practice Directions page, though it is now available on the Practice Directions page. However, on twitter, Ruadhán pointed me to the current Legal Diary (doc | pdf), where I found the following Practice Direction:

THE SUPREME COURT

PRACTICE DIRECTION

Written Submissions

1. Subject to directions of the Supreme Court and the following paragraphs of this direction, a copy of written submissions lodged in or transmitted to the Supreme Court Office or handed in to the Supreme Court on or after the 7th October, 2013 in relation to, or in the course of, the hearing of any appeal or matter will be made available to any person requesting same, on payment of any fee chargeable for such copy.

…

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International Blasphemy Day

1 October, 20131 October, 2013
| No Comments
| Blasphemy

International Blasphemy Day twitter avatarYesterday was International Blasphemy Day (Facebook | twitter). According to a post I came across late yesterday evening on Media Law Prof Blog, the day

… was instituted after the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, came under fire in 2005 for publishing twelve cartoons that mocked the Prophet Mohammed. More here from the Campaign for Free Expression, here from the Telegraph, here from the Huffington Post.

In honour of the day (with apologies that it’s a day late), here’s an extract from a post on the Irish Philosophy blog about Ireland’s first recorded blasphemy trial:

Thomas Emlyn spent fourteen of his seventy-eight years in Dublin (1691-1705), but they were easily the most eventful of his life. He wrote his An Humble Inquiry into the Scripture Account of Jesus Christ as a result of events there. The result was his appearance as the … [defendant] in what “appears to have been the first reported blasphemy prosecution in Irish law” (UK Select Committee on Religious Offences in England and Wales First Report). …

blasphemy … was defined in the statute as … “a scornful and spiteful reproach uttered in designed contempt of God;” … The jury was pressured and despite his book not reaching the standard for blasphemy, and his authorship remaining unproven (the printer swore that he didn’t know the writing), Emlyn was found guilty.

…

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Welcome

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Hi there! Thanks for dropping by. I’m Eoin O’Dell, and this is my blog: Cearta.ie – the Irish for rights.


“Cearta” really is the Irish word for rights, so the title provides a good sense of the scope of this blog.

In general, I write here about private law, free speech, and cyber law; and, in particular, I write about Irish law and education policy.


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