Technology Law Observation

Advanced AI technology , represented by Alpha Dog, carries both human aspirations for a technological life and implicitly human concerns about technological overdevelopment. The Google AI rules provide a good perspective on the development of the AI legal system.

This article provides an excellent solution to meet the desire to eliminate discrimination, as mentioned in Google's AI Principles.

In my opinion, introducing some of the principles of anti-unfair competition law (fairness and transparency) into the AI legal regime could help to manage better the relationship between humans and AI in the future.

Despite the fantastic products that have been produced in the field of AI, at its root, AI technology is still one of the products of human production and will not be free from human control for a long time. The European Commission's proposed Artificial Intelligence Act is pioneering. 

However, I sincerely hope that in the future, the Commission will be able to combine the provisions of a wide range of laws to achieve the same broad influence on the development of an AI legal system as the GDPR rules, which will likely give the EU a leading edge in AI and provide a significant boost to technological sovereignty.

This is the last blog for this year and I will continue to blog if I have the opportunity to explore more of the law in the area of technology during my course next year.

With the spread of 5G technology, more and more households are using smart homes to improve their quality of life, but for the time being the most suitable technology for privacy-protected and efficient data transmission has not yet been found in the IoT sector.

This blog discusses whether the legal and technical issues in the IoT space can be addressed through blockchain technology, given its good privacy protection capabilities.

In my opinion, blockchain technology can improve the efficiency and security of IoT services within the EU after being restricted by GDPR rules. IoT technology is needed, but technically it is difficult for regulatory authorities to monitor the disclosure of personal data in the blockchain and make it possible to protect the "right to be forgotten" of data subjects.

On 23 November, the Parliament's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) approved the Digital Market Act (DMA) after lengthy discussions, negotiations, and compromises. 

There is no doubt that this most stringent digital marketplace regulation will ever have far-reaching consequences for large internet companies in the EU and worldwide.

In this blog, I will explain why the Commission has chosen to oversee large internet companies and one of the focuses of the bill that has been adopted.

Firstly, the following video will provide you with some of the reasons for the Commission's strict policy.

The latest Digital Marketplace Act sets out higher and more specific conditions for 'gatekeeper' companies than the draft proposed by the EU last year.

 The company needs to offer its core platform services in at least three EU countries, with at least 45 million end-users and more than 10,000 business users per month. Secondly, it must have an annual turnover of €8 billion and a market capitalization of €80 billion within the European Economic Area (EEA). 

Although it is not surprising that most of the internet companies we know are officially included in the scope of the "gatekeeper" companies, it is helpful to define the specific conditions for the implementation of the law.

In the Digital Marketplace Act, a highly relevant article of law for online technology has received a great deal of attention: "gatekeeper" companies are not allowed to take advantage of data to target advertising to users without their express permission. In particular, the personal data of minors may not be processed for commercial purposes. While these restrictions have a positive effect in terms of promoting fair competition among internet companies across the EU and protecting the privacy of the majority of EU citizens, there are certain pitfalls behind the policy.

Blocking targeted advertising would increase the cost of using internet platforms for EU citizens. In the case of YouTube, for example, targeted advertising accounts for a large part of its revenue stream. 

If the policy is implemented, it is difficult to imagine how much the internet platforms will ask their users for, and multiple usage fees from different internet platforms may force people to reduce their expenses by giving them permission to push targeted ads to them. The right to privacy is one of the fundamental rights agreed in the EU Charter, and it is absurd to guarantee the fundamental rights of citizens by means of payment.

In my opinion, the Digital Marketplace Act is just the beginning, and it is good that the EU is putting more constraints on 'gatekeeper' companies, but we should be more cautious about the implementation of subsequent acts to ensure that EU citizens are guaranteed their fundamental rights at an affordable price.

Image source:

1.https://protonmail.com/blog/digital-markets-act-explained/

With the popularity of Bitcoin, have you tried buying and using it? This country in Central America has recently announced good news for the use of Bitcoin.

According to a resolution issued by the European Parliament on 19th May, the development of digital technology and the spread of digital content have increased sports fans' potential exposure to pirated content. The interests of licensed broadcasters have been undermined. 

Given the specificity of the value of live sports broadcasts (much of the value of live sporting events comes from the live broadcast rather than the playback afterward), the EU Parliament adopted a draft resolution this year to urge the European Commission to introduce a new bill to combat sports streaming piracy as soon as possible.

One of the most interesting aspects of the draft resolution is that the EU Parliament asked the Commission to establish a system by way of a legislative reform proposal that would require online hosting service platforms to “clarifying the requirement for the removal of, or disabling of access to, online illegal live sports event content as fast as possible and in any event no later than within 30 minutes of the receipt of notification from rights holders or from certified trusted flaggers”.

Following the adoption of the draft resolution, under pressure from organizations such as the European Free Alliance, Patrick Breyer pushed through an amendment to the IPR Enforcement Directive that would limit the high level of protection for sporting events to the duration of live broadcasts in order to prevent excessive blocking.

The good news for consumers is that they will not be held liable for watching the illegal distribution of sporting events, and according to the EU Parliament's commentary states, "responsibility for the illegal distribution of sporting events should lie with the providers of sports video streams and not with fans or consumers."

The success of any enforcement regime cannot be achieved without efforts in the legal and technical fields. 

In my opinion, the proposal put forward by the EU Parliament to protect the live sports streaming industry is the right one. 

However, there are real challenges to the implementation of the proposal: while some EU countries, represented by the UK, have made significant contributions in the area of combating pirated live sports, it is difficult to require all EU member states to agree on the technical implementation to advance the protection of live sports.

Overall, the legal provisions in the draft outweigh the disadvantages, and it is hoped that in the future, EU countries will be successful in combating live sports piracy.

Image source:

1.https://www.sports.legal/2021/06/european-parliament-proposes-new-regime-to-combat-piracy-of-live-sports-content/#_ftn3

2.https://www.facebook.com/comcasttechnologysolutions/photos/pdk-6-was-built-from-the-ground-up-to-optimize-time-to-first-frame-across-major-/10160495374290553/

In contrast to previous blogs, I would like to reproduce a more academic blog this week.

 In  Anya Proops QC's article, she provides an overview of the CJEU's decision on intermediary liability, which has become a hot topic in IT law in light of the development of internet intermediary platforms. We can see that the CJEU has taken a conservative approach to the liability of internet intermediary platforms.

It is almost two years since the draft Copyright Directive was introduced. EU governments have put forward different proposals for implementing the Directive, but most of them are forcing online service operators to become the "copyright police." There are few winners in this copyright dispute, except for the major publishers.

If you are not familiar with the Digital Service Act(”DSA”), this video will give you the essential information.

The main focus of the dispute is Article 17 (formerly Article 13) of the DSA. In simple terms, this Directive instructs large online platforms to review, limit, and promptly remove content uploaded by users that infringes copyright by installing filters for all users. Under this Act, "secondary works," as represented by remixes, are almost entirely banned from being uploaded. DSA will be criticized from two perspectives in the following section.

To comply with this Directive, large internet platforms such as Facebook have to spend a lot of money to install filters that will serve their purpose.

On one hand, this high cost is a significant expense for internet platforms.Even if small internet platforms are exempt from installing filters under the policy(Many of its provisions apply only to platforms with more than 45 million users),  once they grow larger, they have to spend large amounts of money installing filters, which in the long run will deprive most internet businesses in the EU of the possibility to grow into platforms with strong impact like Facebook and Google. 

On the other hand, even if the platforms were capable of developing and installing filters, with current technology, combined with political factors, the author does not believe that the filters would do the job as the European Commission imagines.

1. AI technology is not mature enough to accurately determine whether there is an infringement and is unlikely to reach that level of technology soon.

2. Under the pressure of the Act, large internet platforms will minimize the freedom of users to develop in order not to infringe, transforming the internet from a symbol of freedom into a tool of "automatic monitoring and control."

In my view, the EU Copyright Directive is a conflict between internet freedom and traditional copyright management. Although the French government has made some concessions on this issue, this is not enough to address the root of the problem. I hope that the EU government will carefully consider the negative impact of such a strict policy on human rights and the economy.

Image source:

1.https://kknews.cc/world/pvm2lgz.html

Welcome to my blog! Throughout the year, I will be providing you with knowledge on hot areas of technology law in 8 reblogs or self-published blogs. Today's content is intellectual property rights in code.

Under Article 13 of the Copyright Directive, the protection of copyright holders makes it almost impossible to use and develop the Copilot feature on the GitHub code hosting platform within the EU (GitHub can't request a license from every developer). However, in my opinion, the amount of code copied by the copilot function is, in most cases, hardly the original template required for copyright protection, and I do not consider machine-generated code to be a work under copyright law.