6 1 January 2004

News:

Data Protection Law & Policy is launched this month by Cecile Park Publishing Ltd, the publishers of e-commercelaw&policy.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has delayed plans to release new guidance on the complex issues involved in the regulation of emoney and premium SMS billing. The FSA had been planning to issue new guidance by the end of January.

Data Protection managers and their advisors are concerned that the December 8 Court of Appeal decision in the case of Durant v The Financial Services Authority and the subsequent Guidance from the Information Commissioner (‘IC’) on Subject Access has confused rather than clarified company and public sector obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998.

Features:

Data Protection has become a hot subject. Once viewed as the preserve of the anorak, data protection has become a matter of main stream concern for businesses and public sector organisations alike. The dangers of making mistakes, whether real or perceived, have been dramatically illustrated by recent headlines in the national press.

Ofcom’s day dawns

The Ofcom Strategic Review of Telecommunications

“Code of Conduct for Wireless Campaigns” published

VAT Invoicing Directive to become law by 1 January 2004

Commission consultation on Single Payment Area in the EU

UK Online Annual Report

Investigatory Powers Act 2000

Communications Data

Investigatory powers

Investigatory powers

All businesses involved in the supply of electrical goods - from manufacturers, importers, retailers and those re-selling equipment under their own brand name - face major new cost obligations from August 2005 with the implementation of new EU rules. In particular UK retailers - including Internet businesses - are between them being asked to find £10m per year to help fund the recycling of used equipment under DTI plans announced in November. Business have until 1 March 2004 to respond to the DTI on a range of proposals which include the creation and funding of a clearing house for the collection and recycling of waste, a mandatory register, a retailer compliance scheme and options for guaranteeing businesses’ new financial commitments. All those in the supply chain should start preparing for their new obligations as soon as possible - especially as the DTI is hinting at incentives for suppliers who register early.

On 3 February the Office of the Information Commissioner published revised guidance which goes to the heart of businesses’ data protection obligations. This follows a landmark ruling last December in which the Court of Appeal took a restrictive approach to the scope of ‘personal data’ under the Data Protection Act (“DPA”). This article looks at the implications of the guidance. The most immediate impact of the new guidance will be on the way businesses deal with requests by individuals for access to information held about them (‘subject access requests’), particularly where manual records are involved. However, the new guidance also sets out a new approach to the scope of ‘personal data’ and will therefore impact more widely on businesses’ data protection obligations.

Despite the growing press and public awareness of “image rights”, there is still no single defined concept of such a right under UK law. Any celebrity seeking to protect their image has to rely on a matrix of rights. Those rights include the law of passing off (as featured in the Eddie Irvine, Ian Botham and David Beckham examples), copyright, privacy, defamation, data protection, trade descriptions and advertising codes of practice and, of course, basic contractual rights. This article look at how have those rights have developed over the last year and what the situations is now

The current debate about digital rights management (DRM) has all the best and worst features of modern politics. It is confused. There is no shared understanding of DRM but everyone seems certain that it is either a very good, or a very bad, thing.

Although DRM is concerned with technical standards and technical protection measures, it is part of a wider, web-driven re-thinking of how copyright could and should work in a networked world. This article examines the issues.

The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations came into force in the UK on 11 December 2003. These Regulations represent a complete u-turn in the law applicable to direct marketing by electronic means and regulate the use of cookies and location-based services for the first time.

The Department of Trade & Industry is consulting over changes to the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000/2334 which implement in the UK the Distance Selling Directive (97/7/EC). The changes focus on cancellation notice.