Devotedly Eclectic Pirate

Curious about new technologies and their legal implications

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Internet of Things: How can we tackle the problems it poses?

Internet of Things (IoT) is on its way to becoming deeply integrated into our lives and we need to be aware of the issues we will be facing in the near future.

The adoption of the IoT in modern life has many advantages. It will make our lives easier, more convenient and comfortable. Smart homes, smart cars, smart cities…. The benefits these technologies provide are countless, and what we know and are able to imagine so far is only the tip of the iceberg which is the true potential of the IoT. It is almost certain that we will continue to discover new benefits that can be derived from the IoT technologies.

The speed at which the IoT technologies are evolving daily and adapting to our needs is one of the reasons why we cannot yet fully imagine the new applications of the IoT and the benefits we will obtain from them. The same reason plays an important role in the difficulty we are having in trying to predict the problems that will arise because of the IoT and related technologies such as cloud services and Big Data applications.

As explained by Lilian Edwards in her article titled Privacy, Security and Data Protection in Smart Cities: A Critical EU Law Perspective (which is available here), some of the problems we are having or will be having in the near future will be due to security deficits. Especially connected health-care devices and smart cars will be problematic, due to the fact that we are embedding internet into the devices that can easily kill us. That would not constitute a problem as long as we can effectively secure these devices. That is why technology designers have a very important role when it comes to IoT and related technologies.

In this situation where we are unable to see a clear vision of the future, public authorities/legislators need to be very careful when trying to devise efficient regulations that could solve the problems we are having today and prevent the ones we will encounter in the future. Moreover, too much regulation can slow down or stop the progress of technology, and that is an issue we have to avoid at all costs. A good approach towards the privacy and security related problems raised by IoT could be returning to design solutions. 

We don’t have an ultimate solution for the problems presented by the Internet of Things and related technologies. However, it is certain that these problems cannot be solved by the experts from one single field, and effective collaboration is key.

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Online Privacy and “Nothing to Hide”

The online environment presents countless privacy challenges. Every time we go online, we give away an excessive amount of information about our personal lives, our habits in the online environment, our interests, likes and dislikes. This information is also collected by third parties through third-party cookies placed on our devices.

All the traces we leave on the web can easily be combined to create “a digital copy” of our personalities and used for profit, in other words, our data can be “farmed”, as stated by Aral Balkan in this podcast episode by the Guardian (at 00:04:58 and at 00:22:00). (1) We are constantly followed across the internet, and especially through social media, which could nowadays be defined as “private space that masquerades as public space” (the phrase was coined also by Aral Balkan, at 00:11:49 here). (2) 

As a result, some companies out there know us better than we do. Why is this a bad thing? Well, third parties, such as advertisers or government agencies could easily acquire our online profiles. In the case of online advertisers, the results would not be irreversible, so it would somehow be ok. However, there are so many other unwanted places our data could end up. It could be used against us by potential employers, insurance companies or governments. Cambridge Analytica was a very recent example of this, and it should not be taken anything less than a wake-up call, evidencing the dangers of online profiling practices.

The most interesting thing is here: Although some people know about online profiling, they still don’t care. One argument that is brought forward by many people is that they have “nothing to hide”, as explained in this Ted talk by Glenn Greenwald. (3) That argument is not valid though, we have so much to hide. We sometimes tend to think it won’t be a problem because we just don’t know when or if ever we may be in a conflict with authority figures in the future. The dialogue between Edward Snowden (ES) and Chris Anderson (CA) from this Ted talk (4) considers this point: 

“CA: Ed, one response to this whole debate is this: Why should we care about all this surveillance, honestly? I mean, look, if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about. What's wrong with that point of view? 

ES: Well, so the first thing is, you're giving up your rights. You're saying hey, you know, I don't think I'm going to need them, so I'm just going to trust that, you know, let's get rid of them […]. Your rights matter because you never know when you're going to need them.”

If we want the internet to remain a free space where we can express ourselves without fear of future surveillance, prosecution and other possible negative outcomes, we need to be aware how dangerous online tracking and profiling can be. And more importantly, we should be ready to stand up to it.

References:

(1)  Presented by Jordan Erica Webber and produced by Iain Chambers with Max Sanderson, ‘Digital Dystopia: Tech Slavery and the Death of Privacy – Podcast’ <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2018/jan/12/digital-dystopia-end-of-privacy-tech-podcast> accessed 18 November 2018.

(2) ibid.

(3)  Glenn Greenwald, Why Privacy Matters (2014) <https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters> accessed 18 November 2018.

(4) Edward Snowden, Here’s How We Take Back the Internet (2014) <https://www.ted.com/talks/edward_snowden_here_s_how_we_take_back_the_internet> accessed 18 November 2018.

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House of Lords Communications Committee Inquiry “The Internet: to regulate or not to regulate?”. An overview of the evidence, Part 1

Oscar Davies is a media lawyer who will start pupillage at One Brick Court in October 2019. In this blog, he provides a summary of some of the evidence that has been submitted to the House of Lords…

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Internet piracy falls to record lows amid rise of Spotify and Netflix

Internet streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix have resulted in online piracy falling to its lowest rate in years, an official report claims.

Internet streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix have resulted in online piracy falling to its lowest rate in years, an official report claims.

Research commissioned by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), which is tasked with fighting copyright infringement, found that 15pc of internet users illegally accessed films, music and other material between March and May.

This is down from 18pc a year ago and was the lowest recorded rate in the five years the study has been carried out.

Meanwhile, 44pc of internet users are using exclusively legal means, up from 39pc at the end of 2015. The remaining 31pc did not download or stream any online content in the three-month period. The Minister for Intellectual Property, Baroness Neville Rolfe, said “consumers appear to be turning towards legitimate streaming en masse”.

The Telegraph article emphasizes how internet streaming services work in combating online piracy. It is interesting to see how effective these services really seem to be, especially in light of the statistics given therein.

The statistics are pretty convincing and the general opinion nowadays is that we are in the right direction in the war against piracy. But it never hurts to also consider the opposing arguments, so here is another article, which, although superficially, highlights the views of the Pirate-Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

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European Parliament webplayer dedicated to Live events

European Parliament webplayer dedicated to Live events

This is a video recording of the press conference of 12 September 2018 regarding the adoption of the new Copyright Directive. The conference was presented by a panel consisting of Axel VOSS, Virginie ROZIÈRE and Helga TRÜPEL. It’s an interesting conference as it shows the other side of the coin, the European Parliament’s viewpoint in adopting the new Copyright Directive. However, I must admit that I wasn’t convinced with the panel’s explanations since they didn’t respond to most of the challenges posed by the new directive. In this post, I’ll be sharing my opinions on the press conference and the challenges of the new Copyright Directive.

To begin with, one of the most significant challenges of the new Copyright Directive is censorship. As explained in this post by Cory Doctorow and in this letter sent to the European Parliament by some of the most influential names in the history of the internet, the directive flips the liability principle under the E-Commerce Directive and makes the “online content sharing service providers” liable for copyright infringement. The panel could have adopted a clearer stance in responding to this problem, but instead mainly focused on criticising the lobbying activities that they had to endure during the process.

It almost sounds like the Parliament’s decision was made in a vindictive manner, as a mere reaction towards the lobbying conducted by the US-based internet giants. It is true that the US lobbying in this matter was criticised (see this article). Still, I believe it would be a better approach if the panellists detailed the rationale of their decision, rather than focusing on the difficulty of working under lobbying stress or labelling everyone that sent emails to the parliament as mere spammers.

For example, at some point, Ms Trüpel mentions that “The European Union won’t have to sue little kids anymore” since under the new Copyright Directive Youtube will be responsible in case of a copyright infringement instead of individual uploaders. However, although the kids won’t be sued anymore, platforms like Youtube will have to adopt stricter filtering systems that will have results akin to censorship. If the “online content sharing service providers” are held liable for the content they make available, it is highly probable that they would choose not to take any risks and basically remove any content that could potentially cause liability for them. This kind of an attitude would restrict the internet culture we have and are very fond of today.

Finally, the panel suggests that the Copyright Directive aims to protect creators by ensuring that they are compensated for their work. However, I believe such a problematic directive should not be the best option that the European Union comes up with to compensate creators. I believe that, somehow, they could do much better than that.

Let’s hope that they will change their minds in the future.

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Copyright Week: Our Lost Culture: What We Lose From Having Killed The Public Domain

Yesterday, for Copyright Week, we wrote about transparency (and the lack of it in making copyright law). Today's issue is the public domain. While we just wrote about the lack of new works going into the public domain this year (as happens...

In this article, Mike Masnick of Techdirt makes a case for the importance of the public domain for the human culture, and argues how the stricter copyright laws are killing the public domain. This article ties well into the discussion the internet is having nowadays about the new Copyright Directive and the infamous Article 13. The creators have a significant importance in our culture, and they should be properly compensated for their efforts. However, I agree with Mike Masnick that stricter laws may not always be the best answer for doing that. * As a side note, one particular comment in the comments section of the article was asking where Disney would be today if they hadn’t been able to take ideas from the public domain. This is a significant example showing the importance of the “remix culture”. Disney have thrived on taking and developing ideas that existed in the public domain. Therefore, it is ironic how their lobbying efforts to extend the duration of copyright contribute to the limitation of the public domain. 

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The IPKat blog reports on copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech and privacy/confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective.

“Can you resell the books, CDs, and DVDs that you are no longer interested in having? The answer to this question is easy: usually, yes.

But what about the case of ebooks, music tracks, and films downloaded from the internet? Well, here, the question is more difficult and - at least at the EU level - does not have a clear answer yet. The issue is particularly complex due to both practical and legal reasons.”