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Today the book called "The end of privacy", written by Ajiedj Bakas is presented. As the title already suggests, trendwatcher Bakas wrote a provocative book on the future role of the internet and privacy. To get an impression of the book, please note this link to the (Dutch) video.

Considerati contributed to this book, as this subject is one the main focuses of Considerati. Bart Schermer, partner and co-founder of Considerati already wrote about the end of the traditional point of view on privacy in his thesis in 2007.

Considerati offers a variety of privacy services, such as Privacy Impact Assessments and Privacy Audits, to incorporate your privacy policy in a way that adds a competitive edge to your business. The link to our privacy page can be found here. Furthermore, we publish regularly on privacy and follow closely the legal developments in Europe in this field.

For more information or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us: schermer@considirati.com.

On Friday December 9, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will participate in the conference 'Freedom Online: Joint Action for Free Expression on the Internet’ organized by Minister Rosenthal.

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The conference’s aim is to set up an alliance of countries to promote internet freedom. The participating countries and technology businesses work together on measures to protect internet freedom, especially in countries where internet freedom is under pressure. In addition, the partnership is dedicated to help cyber-dissidents and bloggers.

Considerati is currently writing the conference papers.

The conference can be followed live via Facebook (ifreedom2011) and Twitter (@ ifreedom_2011) and you can join the discussion online.

Considerati will keep you informed on developments during the conference.

From September 27 to September 30, Considerati took part in the Internet Governance Forum of the United Nations in Nairobi, Kenya. By participating in the IGF annually, Considerati follows recent international policy developments in the digital domain closely. The pleasant and relatively informal setting of the event allowed for much contact between participants. Among those present were many international politicians and captains of industry, including European Commissioner Neelie Kroes, the British Minister of Culture, Communications and Creative Industries Ed Vaizey and Frank La Rue, the UN rapporteur for freedom of expression. "Even high level guests and keynote speakers were very approachable during the event, due to the very relaxed atmosphere. This was made possible by the excellent work of the Kenyan delegation." said Ton Wagemans, partner at Considerati.

European Commissioner Kroes hinted that trust and safety will be priority issues in the coming years with regard to exploiting the full potential of the internet and electronic services. To achieve this, an active attitude by companies is required. Neelie Kroes stressed at the conference that "What we were used to talking about as innovation is a completely different issue than what we are facing now. Productivity improvement and economic growth, yet new forces of fragmentation, repression, and disregard for fundamental rights of property, security, privacy, and human rights are challenging the future of the Internet. So the current landscape demands more than ever striking the correct balance between, on one hand, openness and security and privacy. It is a triangle that is really changing, and all of them are understood as essential factors that will help us create an environment of trust."

Participants actively engaged in discussions on a broad range of topics based on this year's main themes. Considerati had a booth at the fair, which also served as a promotional stand for Dutch best practices, such as the Digivaardig & Digibewust campaigns of ECP-EPN and CleanIT project of the Netherlands Ministry of Justice. "Together with our Kenyan hostess, who also speaks Swahili, we could easily connect with the African community. This led to very interesting discussions, insights and inspiring new thoughts," said Ton Wagemans. "The fact that Dutch companies and governments are willing to share their knowledge, is greatly appreciated and in my opinion this is something Dutch businesses should do a lot more, so that we could develop into a lead position in the international community on future issues like internet freedom. Next year we will definitely be back at IGF and we already invite all Dutch participants and other interested parties to present their best practices in our Considerati stand next year."

For more information on the Dutch contribution to the IGF, click here and here.

Future of Copyright interviewed Robert Levine, author of the book “Free ride: how the internet is destroying the culture business and how the culture business can fight back”. According to Robert Levine, a large group of consumers have grown accustomed to enjoying creative content through the internet, without paying any form of compensation to the creators of these movies, books and music. Large companies like Google and YouTube profit considerably from this free culture movement. However, they do not contribute to it either, Levine argues.

How do you think the future will look, if the free ride culture continues?

Grim. What we are moving towards these days is that people do not want to pay for music or movies at all. However, when no artist gets paid, how should we deal with that? With no return on creative works, investment budgets will start to dry up. That will have its effect on the variety and quality of new work, because it is very hard to make a movie or a book cheaply, especially when there is a lot of research involved. When the funding becomes less and less, books and movies will not display the same level of ambition, quality and diversity as before.

Nowadays, we hear people say that concepts like Creative Commons, people working for free and donations will solve the problem, but a lot of those ideas derive from the mindset of 'profiting without contributing'. Furthermore, if an artist works for free, he also drags down other peoples' salary. For instance, the band Radiohead gave away their album for free, but in that way they made it harder for other bands to charge their fans for their music and make a living. Even for consumers, I think, at some point these free offerings won't be as attractive as they are nowadays, since they will get used to the idea of content being offered for free and the 'new' element of free goods will wear.

In case this current 'free ride' situation will continue, record companies and the entertainment industry will not be able to make as many investments as they did ten years ago and this will lead to cultural impoverishment. I think there will always be people creating new things, but in the long run, many artists might lack the resources to do a good job and will not be heard, which would be a shame.

What are you're ideas about current new business models online, such as freemium models (Spotify) and pay walls (newspapers)? Are they filling the gap between the free ride culture and the culture business? Do you think they will last and succeed?

I think a version of these business models will succeed, although I don't exactly know what kind of version. The idea of paying one fee and listening to everything you want is a very powerful idea and instrument. The same thing happens with cable TV in the US: people pay one fee and get to watch hundreds of channels on cable TV in return. I think a version of this will work for music too. The question is however: does Spotify compensate creators enough to make it work? We have to see about that. So far, Spotify does not return much money in licensing fees and tends to compensate recording artists a lot better than songwriters, but this could change in the future. In case people seem to like Spotify and are willing to pay more for the streaming service, Spotify could then maybe raise licensing fees and compensate creators more.

The most important asset of 'freemium' business is the fact that it is partially a paid system. Once you have that, you can negotiate about prices, licensing fees and the partition thereof. The thing we have to be most afraid of is this idea that you don't need to pay for copyright protected content and all creative content online is free. 

If online piracy and free content are killing our culture, should authorities intervene to prevent this? And if so, how can they prevent this?

Yes, authorities have to intervene, although the legal basis for intervention varies around the world.  It's upsetting and ridiculous when people say no law exists online and the government has no authority in cyberspace. Authorities can intervene by monitoring the internet to a certain extent and by more traditional means, such as collecting taxes, for instance.

It is important to always have some kind of limit to all things in the real world, defined through laws and enforcement by authorities. I think this should also be the case online. The offline world shows very good examples. For instance, there is the freedom of speech, but every country sets limit to this. Limits should also count online and authorities should decide what these limits are and how they can optimally enforce them, without ruining the internet.

In the battle against copyright infringement of music and movies, do you see a role for ISP's?

I'd like to see that. There are different kinds of intermediaries and they should take some responsibility and some kind of action. ISP's are the most obvious intermediaries to approach. They really need to act against illegal activities online, although it is open for debate what kind of action this should be.

What do you think about graduate response systems, such as the punitive ‘Three Strikes Act’ in France and the ‘Six Strikes’ in the United States that maintains a more educational approach?

I don't really think it's relevant to make a distinction between punitive and educational approaches, as I see them both as warning processes. I think warning is good for consumers that infringe rights, to let them know that what they are doing is wrong. However, the real hard-core pirates won't get caught, because they will always find a way around these systems.

We should focus on young people. It's important to get this generation into the habit of paying for (protected) content. Parents and artists should play a lead role in creating this habit. I think disconnecting (a small amount of) people from the internet because of their illegal activities is not productive. However, commercial pirates such as Limewire should be punished and shut down, because we see this pays off in terms of reducing the number of online infringements.

The US has a different policy to battle copyright infringement compared to European countries. However, online copyright infringement happens across state borders. Should there be some sort of global approach against piracy?

Yes and no. Off course it would be great to create a global strategy where there would be one unified approach to fight piracy. However, we see that copyright enforcement can only work through treaties. Unfortunately, not every country will sign a global treaty and - more importantly - will adopt and adhere to these rules. A good example of this is ACTA.

It is not so hard for the EU to create a unified approach to fight piracy. But if countries like China and Russia are to be involved, it will be quite complicated to get these countries to abide by this treaty, as their level of law enforcement and transparency varies. Lastly, there are some security issues that go along with the fact that there are no boundaries online. Therefore, a certain level of security enforcement is necessary to regulate the internet.

On September 8th, the seminar 'Privacy: the current status' was held in The Hague and organized by ECP EPN, platform for internet society. The latest developments were discussed regarding privacy protection in the Netherlands and Europe. The main focus were the amendments to the Dutch Telecommunications Act, which included stricter regulations regarding cookies. The new telecom law prescribes - in short - that privacy law applies to the use of all cookies and that cookies may only be placed with the “unambiguous consent” of the consumer.

Bart Schermer, partner at Considerati and privacy expert, was the chairman and led the seminar during the day. Keynote speakers such as Steve Kenny eBay / Marktplaats and Anne-Wil Duthler, Senator for the Dutch liberal party VVD, shared their views on privacy and cookies with the audience. Steve Kenny mentioned the enforcement of stringent opt-in rules (such as unambiguous consent) might risk distorting the Internal Market and could lead to legal uncertainty as the stricter opt in rules apply on anyone established in the Netherlands.  Therefore, he argues for a less stringent approval for placing cookies; 'informed consent'. Anne-Wil Duthler emphasized consumers should recover their control over the personal data they store and she mentions Google's Data Liberation as a great example. Furthermore, she argues that companies in return should actively take care of sustaining their information management.

A clear privacy policy is something companies can work on. During the seminar the use of Privacy Impact Assessments was mentioned as an example thereof. With Privacy Impact Assessments, the privacy risks of products or services can be identified and companies can take specific actions to manage these risks. The consumer's confidence in privacy protection increases as a result thereof. Another option that was mentioned for the industry to prevent privacy problems is the so-called 'Privacy by Design'. In that case, already during the development of a product or service the company takes the data protection and privacy needs of consumers into account.

The seminar ended with a debate on the Dutch Telecom law, with panelists Jitty van Doodewaerd, Privacy Officer of the Dutch Dialogue Marketing Association (DDMA), Maurice Wesseling, policy advisor of the Dutch Consumers federation (Consumentenbond), Jeroen Terstegge and Milica Antic, attorney at SOLV attorneys. Bart Schermer asked the panelists to share their view on certain statements. One of the statements was: “The new cookie legislation will benefit the privacy of the consumer”. All the panelists agreed on this, but also agreed on the fact that the implementation thereof might not be consumer-friendly. Furthermore, all panelists agreed that the Dutch implementation of the cookie directive is useless in an international context.

Other discussed statements were:
-  There should be a global privacy treaty
-  A broad duty to report data breaches should be implemented as soon as possible
-  The privacy legislation is not maintainable

You can read the full program here.