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Contents of today's ICOMP newsletter: 
Speaking at the one-day conference which coincided with ICOMP's first anniversary, ICOMP Director Auke Haagsma said: "Regulators should help create a level playing field on which companies can compete to continuously improve their privacy practices. Competition rules can and should be applied to companies that, by reducing European citizens' right to privacy, abuse their dominant position." Delivering the keynote address, Professor Peter Swire of the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, a former Privacy Counsel in President Bill Clinton's administration, stated: "Where mergers or dominant firm behaviour create significant effects on customers, including in their use of customer data, those effects should be considered under antitrust law." David Wood, ICOMP's Legal Counsel and Partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, commented: "Data protection and competition policy are both about protecting consumers. It is important to find ways to apply them in a joined-up way. Some of the most interesting and controversial aspects of competition policy are the ways in which it overlaps with other policies such as data protection and intellectual property. Best practices in relation to data protection require informed consumers, wise regulation and effective enforcement." Other speakers included MEP Sophie in 't Veld; Jackie Minor, European Commission Director for Consumer affairs; Philippe Renaudière, European Commission Data Protection Officer; Javier Celaya, founder of ICOMP member company dosdoce.com; Kirsten Bock, Head of European Privacy Certification at the Independent Centre for Privacy Protection in Schleswig Holstein, Germany; and Andres Font Galarza, an antitrust and competition lawyer with Mayer Brown LLP. The conference, which was open to the public, brought together more than 80 representatives from European institutions, national data protection authorities, consumer and privacy groups, and law firms specialising in competition issues.
The panel consisting of Rhoda Macdonald, Managing Director Public Affairs at Burson-Marsteller, Julian Ormerod, Head of Digital at Wunderman UK, and ICOMP Legal Adviser David Wood, examined the adaptations and challenges brands go through when protecting its properties, such as trademarks, logos, maintenance of brand value, 'personality' and reputation, in the online space. "Brand owners may have caught up with the need for corporate reputation or 'crisis management' online," said Julian Ormerod, "but the next step they ought to take is to use social networks and Twitter to track their key influencers and really understand their own customers." With lively participation from an expert audience of around 70, the panellists delved into issues from consumer engagement by brands on social networks and coming to terms with the effective "co-ownership" of any fan-site by the consumer which takes full control out of the hands of the brand owner; to why "offline" IPR and copyright is not easily enforceable online and why even EU regulations are implemented differently across EU members states. ICOMP's David Wood pointed out the importance of, but also dependence on, search advertising and search engine optmisation given the major search engines' established function as "gateways" to all web content. "This dependence is exacerbated by the fact that the search market is dominated by a few key players, e.g. Google in the UK or Baidu in China, which have the power to set the prices for search advertising as brand owners and advertisers have no choice but to use them for their ads to reach the largest possible audience."
The German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Peter Schaar, presented his 2007/2008 progress report on April 21, 2009. Schaar welcomes the increasing awareness for data protection in Germany in recent years. He says the scandals at major national companies including Deutsche Telekom, Deutsche Bahn and discount chain Lidl are only the "tip of the iceberg" and therefore sees greater need for action on the part of the German government to answer calls for better and more effective data protection. Schaar makes a number of recommendations which he urges the government to consider in its current deliberations over amendments to Germany's data protection law. He also calls on the Bundestag to bring the legislative process to a close before the end of the current electoral period in July. Schaar criticizes the carelessness with which many people reveal information on the internet. With regard to online services such as StudiVZ (a German social networking service) and Twitter, Schaar says it is up to the individual how much information he or she divulges online. But he says that such online service providers should also be responsible for offering technical solutions that allow the individual to determine a certain level of privacy. Schaar also sees potentially significant implications for data protection in Germany as a result of Google's Street View. He says the company must respect personal rights, which in the first place calls for distorting images so that persons cannot be identified. The full report in German can be found here. European Commissioner demands "code of conduct" for online advertising The first ever European Consumer Summit was organized by the European Commission in Brussels on 1 and 2 April 2009. The Summit brought together more than 250 stakeholders from all over Europe, including ICOMP, to look at the challenges and opportunities facing today's consumers, with a special focus on the digital world. Its title, "Consumer Trust in the Digital Market Place", reflects the Commission's growing awareness of the challenges posed by the online market place. Speaking at the eve of the summit, Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva pointed out that the volume of personal data collected on the internet was growing exponentially and was increasingly being used for commercial purposes by tracking surfers' browsing habits, using cookies, and making the information available for individual profiling and targeting of consumers. She criticized the online advertising industry for routinely using citizens' online data without their consent or even knowledge. The Commissioner demanded the kind of "fairness and transparency" common to commercial contracts offline, and called on the online advertising industry to come up with a voluntary code of conduct to protect consumer and privacy rights. She clearly signalled that the EU authorities would not shy away from legislation to prevent abuses. ICOMP director Auke Haagsma welcomed the ideas voiced by Commissioner Kuneva, but warned that regulatory quick-fixes, such mandatory opt-ins and opt-outs, were unlikely to effect a real change. Haagsma called for incentives for companies to compete on the quality and transparency of their privacy practices, so that European consumers can make informed choices. Potential implications for behavioural advertising of data privacy ruling in Poland Online privacy issues have attracted significant public attention in Poland following a recent ruling by the Regional Administration Court in Warsaw (Wojewodzki Sad Administracyjny w Warszawie or WSA) concerning the protection of personal data on Nasza-Klasa.pl, the most successful Polish web community portal with ca. 9 million users per month. A Nasza-Klasa.pl user had filed a lawsuit over another user having published a photo allowing his identification by anyone visiting the site. In contradiction to the Polish Inspector General for Data Protection's stance, the court announced that all data published by users on the internet is to be considered personal and must be protected. The WSA court ruling potentially has implications for the whole online industry in Poland. Up until now, Polish online advertising companies have been working based on adherence to a code of conduct on behavioural targeting; in staunch defence of the perfect legality of behavioural advertising. However, the industry's preference for self-regulation may prove difficult to maintain in the not too distant future, as technologies collecting information about users' interests online for the purpose of behaviourally-targeted advertising may also be treated as illegal given the ruling that all user data, not only personal data, needs to be treated as private and confidential. Spain debates the best way forward in the fight against online piracy The French Government's attempt in early April to create a 'three strikes' law, involving internet users receiving two warnings over illegal file-sharing activity and being cut off if these are not heeded, served to fuel the debate over measures against online piracy in Spain. Spain has one of the world's highest piracy rates, and as such is keen to demonstrate a tough stand against illegal file-sharing. Only this month, the administrator of a P2P file-sharing site was sentenced to six months in jail in addition to a cash fine of nearly 5000 Euros for copyright infringement by a regional court in Logrono. The outcome of the case initiated by the Spanish Association of Publishers and Distributors Entertainment Software (ADESE) and the Spanish Videographic Union (UVE) was expressly welcomed by Spain's recently appointed Minister of Culture, Angeles Gonzalez Sinde, who also acts as the president of the film academy in Spain. At the same time it remains questionable whether the Spanish government will want to take any action as drastic as the Sarkozy government's (eventually thwarted) proposal, which would essentially be persecuting the user rather than those making pirated material available and profiting from advertising on their sites. Meanwhile, the Spanish Association of Internet Users (AUI) has proposed another not uncontroversial way of sustaining the creative industries in the face of online piracy: Consumers should be paying a small fee when purchasing a computer, blank CDs, music players or mobile phones, and the revenue raised by this levy would be channeled towards the content creators as a means of compensation.
European Voice, "Commission seeks external advice on internet privacy", 28 April 2009 The Parliament Magazine, "US moves to dispel 'myths' over privacy issues", 28 April 2009 Aqui Europa, "E-market competitiveness works if users' privacy is respected", 28 April 2009
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