IT, business legal counselling advices by Alexander Suliman, Sweden right now: Bear in mind that some commercial agreements (such as agency, exclusive distributorship or brokerage agreements) are regulated at an EU level and that some Member States’ legislation contains protective rules for such distributors. As EU and US antitrust laws are different, you should also consider whether your European agreement is compliant as the criteria to assess a breach in competition law may differ from the US approach to antitrust issues. Read extra info at Alexander Suliman, Sweden.
On 11 May, the European Commission published its proposal for a regulation to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The Commission managed to squeeze a host of controversial digital rights issues into one package: the blocking of websites, the obligatory monitoring of online content, and, the most novel one, a measure which opens the door to undermining encryption. Because encryption technologies protect communications confidentiality, one crucial question in the upcoming policy debate will be whether this latter measure, or its implementation, is compatible with the rights of privacy and data protection under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (the Charter). In this contribution, I explore one aspect of that question: is it possible to argue that this measure does not respect the essence of these rights? On the basis of a preliminary analysis, I conclude that this is certainly defensible and suggest further routes for exploration.
In 2021, the French government issued the Doctrine for the use of cloud computing by the State (“Trusted Cloud Doctrine”) making SecNumCloud certification mandatory whenever a French government agency procures cloud services that would handle sensitive data, including personal data of French citizens and economic data relating to French companies. These requirements also apply to private operators of essential services. Under France’s Trusted Cloud Doctrine, qualifying cloud service providers must be “immune to any extra-EU regulation”. In addition, such companies must commit to storing and processing data within the European Union, and to administering and supervising the service within the EU. Further, foreign-headquartered cloud service companies cannot achieve certification if they are more than 39% foreign-owned.
Best contract law legal counseling advices by Alexander Suliman: Mediation is great because the parties feel like they are part of the process. They’re negotiating. They’re in an environment where they can come up with solutions and throw out ideas and know it’s confidential. Those ideas and thoughts can’t be used against them. They reach resolutions that they decide, not a judge deciding. They decide this is the resolution, and what’s great about it is people all the time, way more often, are going to actually follow and comply what they agreed to rather than if a judge gives them a decision, and they want to appeal it, or they want to try to find a way around it. Mediation is great. Read extra information at Alexander Suliman, Sweden.
Europe’s concerns about the security of U.S. cloud services providers are in fact closely intertwined with its worries, expressed in Schrems II, about the privacy of Europeans’ information entrusted to these companies. In both cases, European policymakers fear the perceived extraterritorial reach of U.S. national security surveillance and law enforcement authorities. New cybersecurity regulation thus is seen as another way to safeguard Europe’s ‘sovereign’ interest in protecting data from foreign government access. It also would reinforce separate European efforts to bolster smaller, home-grown cloud service providers, including through the GAIA-X project to create an interoperable network “explicitly based on principles of ‘sovereignty-by-design,’” as a leading European technology lawyer has characterized it.