Europe
Welcome to the 16th monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks. 1. Events and conferences On 29 March, from 9:00 to 10:30 CET, Global Access to the Internet for All (GAIA), a research group within the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), is having its regular gathering. Their notes will be available here as well as the video livestream of the event here. The 9th International Conference on Communities and Technologies will be held 3-7 June in Vienna and it ...
The updated EU copyright directive, which was voted on and approved in Strasbourg on Tuesday, 26 March, is considered by free speech campaigners as a “victory of the censorship machine". The vote came after large mobilisations by civil society to raise awareness of the negative impact of Article 13 (previously Article 17) of the draft directive, which involves imposing widespread censorship of content shared online. This past weekend, up to 200,000 people took to t...
Brussels, 29 January 2019 Your Excellency Deputy Ambassador, Dear European Commission Vice-President Andrus Ansip Dear MEPs Voss, Adinolfi, Boutonnet, Cavada, Dzhambazki, Geringer de Oedenberg, Joulaud, Maštálka, Reda, Stihler, We are writing you on behalf of business organisations, civil society organisations, creators, academics, universities, public libraries, research organisations and li...
Dear Members of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs The undersigned organizations and individuals are dedicated to ensuring justice for human rights abuses around the world and to upholding human rights, including the right to freedom of expression. We rely on online platforms to both find and share evidence of these abuses and to counter official misinformation from repr...
During the 16 days of Take Back the Tech, APC members from around the world raise awareness and build understanding around online gender-based violence (GBV) through various projects specific to their local contexts. We had a chance to catch up with one of these organisations, One World Platform (OWP), based in Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose campaign this year highlighted the concerns, ideas and...
Your Excellency Deputy Ambassador, We, the undersigned, are writing to you ahead of the 23 November COREPER 1 meeting, at which copyright in the Digital Single Market will be discussed by the Austrian Council Presidency. We consider that it is too early at this stage to give a renewed mandate to the Austrian Presidency. Representing human, privacy, civil rights and media freedom organisations, ...
In recent years, the scope and consequences of online disinformation and misinformation campaigns have drawn increasing attention, as concern builds about their ability to exacerbate social polarisation, undermine public trust in the media and influence political decisions. Certainly, the advent of social media platforms and other online forums have permitted dissemination of information at an ...
One of the themes that dominated this year’s Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was how to address the “connectivity gap”, with over half the world’s population still unconnected and the rate of new connectivity beginning to slow. In particular, remote, rural and indigenous communities face significant barriers to sustainable internet access due to a lack of available infrastructure and lo...
Understanding internet governance concepts and institutions is key to effective participation in debates around today’s pressing digital issues, including cybersecurity, internet architecture and online human rights. But grasping the complex and constantly changing landscape of internet governance is far from intuitive, a reality which has led to the growing development of Schools on Internet...
A lot of industries seem to be overwhelmed by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Some proponents dream of utopias, while some opponents have dystopian nightmares. There is a lack of consensus in interpretations of the current legal and regulatory environments covering the implementation of computer systems leveraging AI and the related concepts of machine learning and deep learning. Inte...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2019
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