Protection of Privacy Committee News May 2015

Protection of Privacy Committee News May 2015

In its first two years of activity, the ILA Committee on the Protection of Privacy in Private International and Procedural Law established in 2013 to create a forum on the protection of privacy in the context of private international and procedural law, and chaired by Professor Burkhard Hess has proven to be dynamic and particularly successful in (inter alia) attracting, as members and participants, renowned scholars from all over the world, and namely from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Spain, Australia, Brazil, China, Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In September 2014 the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg hosted, in the context of the Committee, a conference on ‘The Protection of Privacy in the Aftermath of the Recent Judgments of the CJEU – eDate Advertising, Digital Rights Ireland and Google Spain'. The Conference explored the status quo and possible developments of issues that are undergoing significant changes and reforms such as the extent of people’s right to control their data, the implications of the ‘right to be forgotten’, the impact on national systems of the CJEU’s decisions on jurisdiction over personality rights, and recent legislation on libel tourism. The Conference proceedings will be published in the volume Protecting Privacy in Private International and Procedural Law and by Data Protection. European and American Developments, Burkhard Hess and Cristina M. Mariottini (eds), 2015 (in printing). On the same occasion, the Committee held its first meeting addressing its goals, and examining and discussing the answers provided by some national branches to the questionnaire ‘The Concept of Privacy in the National Systems’. In February 2015, the Committee held its second meeting discussing its past work, future actions and methodological approach, determining that its scope shall encompass privacy also as extended to data protection and to the social media context. A new questionnaire will be sent out in summer 2015, inquiring how the national courts of the Committee members address or would address from both a substantive and private international law perspective the relationship between users, non-users and data providers in social media, namely as concerns the possible different characterization of the relationships, i.e. contractual and non-contractual, and the potential liabilities stemming therefrom. The next Committee meeting is scheduled for January 18, 2016: on that occasion, and from that moment on, the Committee will focus on data and privacy protection from a private international and procedural law perspective. These questions will also be at the core of the 2016 ILA meeting in Durban, South Africa. The Committee work is scheduled to be completed in or around 2020.