Tag: digital agenda

Editorial of October 2019

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 by Tamara Álvarez Robles, Lecturer at the University of Vigo

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On the reform of national law on data protection: the special incorporation of digital rights in Spain

The reform of the Spanish Organic Law on Data Protection (LO 3/2018), to adapt it to the General Regulation of Data Protection has introduced together with the European requirements a catalogue of digital rights. Title X “Guarantee of digital rights” has meant, undoubtedly one of the biggest novelties to data protection regulations. It is composed of a set of Articles, from 79 to 97, which present, for the first time in the Spanish national legislative sphere, the new generation of digital rights[i], inter alia, right to Internet neutrality, right to digital security, right to digital education, protection of minors on the Internet, right to rectification on the Internet, right to privacy and use of digital devices in the workplace, right to digital disconnection in the workplace, right to digital testament.

The inclusion in-extremis of the present Title X, of digital rights, through amendment of the Congress of Deputies dated April 18, 2018, responds to the fundamental importance, to the ever-present and dominating reality of the Internet, which reaches all spheres of our lives. That is why, Organic Law 3/2018 in section IV of the Preamble already points to the involvement of public authorities through the provision of public policies (Article 9.2 SC) in order to make effective the catalogue of digital rights based on the Principle of Equality (Article 14 SC), stating that: “it is the responsibility of the public authorities to promote policies that make effective the rights of citizens on the Internet, promoting the equality of citizens and the groups in which they are integrated in order to possible the full exercise of fundamental rights in the digital reality”.
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Cyber-regulatory theories: between retrospection and ideologies

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by Luana Lund, specialist in telecommunications regulation (ANATEL, Brazil)
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This article presents a brief history of some of the main theories about internet regulation to identify ideological and historical relationships among them.

In the 1980s, the open-source movement advocated the development and common use of communication networks, which strengthened the belief of the technical community in an inclusive and democratic global network [1]. This context led to the defense of full freedom on the internet and generated debates about the regulation of cyberspace in the 1990s. In the juridical area, Cyberlaw movement represents the beginning of such discussions [2]. Some of these theorists believed in the configuration of cyberspace as an independent environment, not attainable by the sovereignty of the States. At that time, John Perry Barlow was the first to use the term “cyberspace” for the “global electronic social space.” In 1996, he published the “Internet Declaration of Independence“, claiming cyberspace as a place where “Governments of the Industrial World […] have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear […] Cyberspace does not lie within your borders” [3].
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Editorial of January 2017

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by Joana Covelo de Abreu, Junior Editor
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New year’s resolutions: digital single market in 2017 – the year of interoperability

Digital Single Market is one of the major political goals for EU and its Member States since digital tools have shaped, for the past last decade, how economy behaves and how economic growth is relying on IT tools. In fact, digital economy can create growth and employment all across our continent. On the other hand, digital mechanisms cover almost every economic field, from transportation to clothes, from movies to sports since online platforms have the ability to create and shape new markets, challenging traditional ones.

The Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) is one of the initiatives under Europe 2020 Strategy and it aims to promote economic growth and social benefits by achieving the digital single market. So it is named as one of the secondary public interests that must be pursued by European administration – both national public administrations (when they apply EU law and act as European functioning administrations) and European institutions and, in that sense, especially national public administrations must feel engaged to promote this end and objective, otherwise if those are the ones to firstly resist to innovation, Internal Market adaptation to new framework standards will suffer and economic prosperity in Europe can be undermined.

Therefore, EU has created several mechanisms to foster interoperability solutions that would bring together institutions, national public administrations, companies and individuals. In this context, interoperability stands for “the ability of disparate and diverse organizations to interact towards mutually beneficial and agreed common goals, involving the sharing of information and knowledge between organizations, through the business processes they support, by means of the exchange of data between their respective ICT systems”. It demands and implies an effective interconnection between digital components where standardization has an essential role to play in increasing the interoperability of new technologies within the Digital Single Market. It aims to facilitate access to data and services in a protected and interoperable environment, promoting fair competition and data protection.

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