Julia Fioretti | Vox

EU Launches Inquiry Into Web Companies’ Online Behavior

2019-03-06T05:41:31-05:00

The European Commission on Thursday launched an inquiry into the behavior of online companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon to try to gauge whether there is a need to regulate the Web.

The public consultation seeks answers on a broad range of issues, from the contractual restrictions online firms may impose on other businesses — for example, companies seeking to display ads — to how proactive they should be in removing illegal content online.

It is not clear whether the inquiry will lead to any regulation of the Internet in the European Union, but it provides more evidence that mainly U.S. tech companies are coming under increasing scrutiny in Europe for issues ranging from their privacy practices to taxation.

“Platforms are part of a thriving digital economy but questions are also raised about their transparency and use of content,” said European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip, who is in charge of digital issues.

France and Germany have been among those pushing strongly for regulation to allow smaller European startups to compete with American tech giants. This prompted U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this year to accuse Europe of taking a protectionist stance.

In a 46-page questionnaire, the commission asks both individuals and companies whether they think platforms are transparent enough in the way they collect and use data.

It also asks app developers, businesses or rights holders if platforms include certain clauses such as “parity clauses” in their contracts with them. Parity clauses require the platform to be offered terms at least as good as those of its competitors.

In June, the commission opened an antitrust investigation into Amazon’s e-book business over allegedly anticompetitive clauses in its contracts with publishers.

But the latest inquiry is not an antitrust probe, meaning it will not result in fines.

As part of the consultation, the commission is also looking at services such as Google’s YouTube by asking holders of the rights to copyrighted works if “an online platform such as a video sharing website or a content aggregator refuses to enter into or negotiate licensing agreements with me.”

The industry itself is wary of moves toward regulating the Web.

“If there are problems someone will need to be more precise about what exactly they are and why they can’t be dealt with under existing law such as competition, consumer and privacy law,” said James Waterworth, Europe vice president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represents companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

Separately, the commission on Wednesday launched an inquiry into so-called “geo-blocking,” the practice whereby businesses restrict access to websites based on location or reroute customers to their local website, which may have different prices.

It aims to come out with a law ending unjustified geo-blocking by mid-2016.

(Reporting by Julia Fioretti. Editing by Jane Merriman)

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Google Refuses French Order to Apply ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Globally

2019-03-06T05:36:29-05:00

Google is refusing to bow to an order from the French privacy watchdog to scrub search results worldwide when users invoke their “right to be forgotten” online, it said on Thursday, exposing itself to possible fines.

The French data protection authority, the CNIL, in June ordered the search giant to delist on request search results appearing under a person’s name from all its websites, including Google.com.

That stemmed from a ruling in May last year by the European Court of Justice that European residents can ask search engines, such as Google or Microsoft’s Bing, to delete results that turn up under a search for their name when they are out of date, irrelevant or inflammatory, the so-called right to be forgotten.

Google complied with the ruling and has since received more than a quarter of a million removal requests, according to its transparency report. It has accepted about 41 percent of them.

However, it has limited removals to its European websites, such as Google.de in Germany or Google.fr in France, arguing that over 95 percent of searches made from Europe are done through local versions of Google.

In a blog post on Thursday, the U.S. company said it believed no one country should have the authority to control what content someone in a second country can access.

“As a matter of principle, therefore, we respectfully disagree with the CNIL’s assertion of global authority on this issue and we have asked the CNIL to withdraw its formal notice,” wrote Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel.

The CNIL had said the company could face fines, albeit small compared with Google’s revenue, if it refused to comply with the order.

Google warned that applying the right to be forgotten globally would trigger a “race to the bottom” where “the Internet would only be as free as the world’s least free place.”

Its stance was upheld in February by a group of experts appointed by the company to guide it on how to apply the landmark ruling.

However, European regulators and some legal experts think Google ought to apply the ruling globally as it is too easy to circumvent it by switching from one version of Google to another.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

German Regulator Orders Facebook to Allow Pseudonyms

2019-03-06T05:36:22-05:00

Facebook may not prevent its users from using fake names, a German privacy watchdog said on Tuesday, in the latest privacy setback for the U.S. company in Europe.

The Hamburg data protection authority, which is responsible for policing Facebook in Germany, said the social network firm could not unilaterally change users’ chosen usernames to their real names, nor could it ask them for official ID.

The German order comes after the Belgian privacy watchdog took Facebook to court in June over the way it tracks the activities of its users. The two authorities are working with their Spanish, Dutch and French counterparts to investigate Facebook’s new privacy policy.

A woman had complained to the Hamburg watchdog after Facebook blocked her account for using a pseudonym, requested a copy of her ID and unilaterally changed her username into her real name.

The Hamburg Data Protection Authority said the woman did not want to use her real name to avoid being contacted through it for business matters.

Forcing users to stick to their real names violated their privacy rights, it said.

Facebook said that it was disappointed with the order and that German courts had reviewed the policy on many occasions and deemed it compliant with EU law.

“The use of authentic names on Facebook protects people’s privacy and safety by ensuring people know who they’re sharing and connecting with,” said a spokesperson for the company.

Facebook has maintained that as its European headquarters are in Ireland it should only abide by Irish law in Europe and consequently has rejected the jurisdiction of other national authorities.

In an audit in December 2011 the Irish privacy watchdog concluded that Facebook’s authentic name policy did not contravene Irish law and its reasons for the policy, such as child safety and the prevention of online harassment, were justified.

However Johannes Caspar, the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection, rejected the argument that Facebook should only be subject to Irish data protection laws.

“For that matter Facebook cannot again argue that only Irish Data Protection law would be applicable … anyone who stands on our pitch also has to play our game,” he said.

(Editing by Greg Mahlich)

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

EU to Probe Big Tech Companies in Digital Market Overhaul

2019-03-06T05:22:26-05:00

The European Union will announce a wide-ranging probe on Wednesday into how big technology companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook use their market power as it considers whether to regulate them more tightly.

The inquiry, which by its nature will inevitably focus heavily on U.S. firms, follows calls from France and Germany for regulation of so-called “essential digital platforms,” encompassing everything from e-commerce sites such as eBay to social media companies.

European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip will unveil his “Digital Single Market Strategy” at noon (3:00 am PDT) in Brussels. It will aim to update copyright rules, knock down barriers to cross-border parcel deliveries and ensure that European online businesses can compete with their bigger U.S. counterparts.

The inquiry differs from an antitrust investigation of the kind launched by the EU into Google five years ago, in that it is not aimed at enforcing existing law through penalties.

Rather it will look at whether Internet platforms are transparent enough in how they display search results and if they promote their own services to the detriment of competitors, according to a draft of the strategy seen by Reuters.

Politicians and businesses across Europe have been calling for the market power of dominant U.S. tech firms to be curbed to help Europe’s fledgling Web industry compete, leading to accusations of protectionism from U.S. President Barack Obama.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association, whose members include Google, Microsoft, eBay, Facebook and Amazon, said the idea of regulating platforms was ill-conceived given that businesses from newspapers to e-commerce sites to cars were increasingly becoming digital platforms.

“Platform regulation would hit European platform companies hardest given they grow here,” it added.

As part of its strategy, the commission will also announce on Wednesday an “ambitious overhaul” of the bloc’s regulation of the telecoms sector, to take place next year. It will take into account the increased competition from services such as Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Skype, a decision that will be cheered by the telecoms industry.

The commission wants to boost economic growth in the 28-country bloc by knocking down barriers between countries in the online world as it has done in the offline one, pushing businesses to sell across borders.

It will seek to clamp down on so-called “geo-blocking,” the practice whereby businesses restrict access to websites based on location or reroute customers to their local website, which may have different prices.

“These unjustified practices should be expressly prohibited so that EU customers and businesses can take full advantage of the single market in terms of choice and lower prices,” the draft strategy states.

(Editing by Pravin Char)

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

E.U. Watchdogs Want “Right to Be Forgotten” Applied Worldwide

2019-03-06T06:03:14-05:00

European privacy regulators want Internet search engines such as Google and Microsoft’s Bing to scrub results globally, not just in Europe, when people invoke their “right to be forgotten” as ruled by an E.U. court.

The European Union’s privacy watchdogs agreed on a set of guidelines on Wednesday to help them implement a ruling from Europe’s supreme court that gives people the right to ask search engines to remove personal information that is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.”

Google, which dominates Internet searches in Europe, has been scrubbing results only from the European versions of its website, such as Google.de in Germany or Google.fr in France, meaning they still appear on Google.com.

“From the legal and technical analysis we are doing, they should include the ‘.com,’” said Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, the head of France’s privacy watchdog and the Article 29 Working Party of E.U. national data protection authorities, at a news conference.

A spokesman for Google said the company had not yet seen the guidelines but would “study them carefully” when they are published.

Pierrotin said the guidelines should be published on Thursday or Friday.

Google previously said that it believed search results should be removed only from its European versions since Google automatically redirects people to the local versions of its search engine.

The issue of how far to push the “right to be forgotten” has divided experts and privacy regulators, with some arguing that Google’s current approach waters down the effectiveness of the ruling, given how easy it is to switch between different national versions.

Wednesday’s decision was another setback for Google, which is facing multiple investigations into its privacy policy and is mired in a four-year E.U. antitrust inquiry.

The ruling has pitted privacy advocates against free speech campaigners, who say allowing people to ask search engines to remove information would lead to a whitewashing of the past.

Pierrotin also said that notifying publishers and media outlets when their stories are delisted from search results would not be mandatory, as Google has previously argued.

“There is no legal basis for routine transmission from Google or any other search engine to the editors. It may in some cases be necessary, but not as a routine and not as an obligation,” she said.

Google’s decision to notify press outlets and webmasters via email was criticized by regulators earlier this year for sometimes bringing people’s names back into the open.

(editing by Jane Baird)

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

EU Watchdogs Give Google Guidelines to Change Privacy Practices

2019-03-06T06:21:31-05:00

European data privacy regulators on Thursday handed Google a package of guidelines to help it bring the way it collects and stores user data in line with EU law after six regulators opened investigations into the internet giant.

The group of European data protection authorities, known as the Article 29 Working Party, sent Google a list of measures it could implement, such as spelling out clearly for what purposes it collects user data and what third-party entities would also be able to collect people’s information.

Regulators in six European countries — Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands — have opened investigations into Google after it consolidated its 60 privacy policies into one and started combining data collected on individual users across its services, including YouTube, Gmail and Google Maps.

It gave users no means to opt out.

In January France’s data protection authority, the CNIL, fined Google 150,000 euros ($191,100) for failing to bring its new privacy policy in line with local law.

A spokesman for the company said Google was open to the regulators’ feedback and looked forward to discussing the list of guidelines.

“We have worked with the different data protection authorities across Europe to explain our private policy changes,” said Al Verney.

The fines for privacy breaches remain small in most countries when compared with the $12.2 billion net profit Google earned in 2013.

Google has actively responded to a separate European court ruling that it must remove links from Internet search results under a person’s name if the information is inadequate or irrelevant. It is currently holding consultations in seven European capitals to debate the balance between privacy and the freedom of information.

(Additional reporting by Gwenaelle Barzic in Paris; Editing by Mark Potter)

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.