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The number of online services is constantly growing, offering numerous and unprecedented advantages for consumers. Often, the access to these services requires the disclosure of personal information. This personal data is very valuable as it concedes significant advantages over competitors, allowing better answers to the customer's needs and therefore offering services of a better quality. For some services, analysing the customers' data is at the core of their business model. Furthermore, personal data has a monetary value as it enables the service providers to pursue targeted advertising. Usually, the first companies who provide a service will benefit from large volumes of data and might create market entrance barriers for new online providers, thus preventing users from the benefits of competition. Furthermore, by holding a grip on this personal data, they are making it more expensive or burdensome for the user to shift to a new service. Because of this value, online services tend to keep collected information and impede their users to reuse the personal data they have provided. This behaviour results in the creation of a lock-in effect. Upcoming awareness for this problem has led to the demand of a right to data portability. The aim of this paper is to analyse the different legislative systems that exist or have been recently created in this regard that would grant a right to data portability. Firstly, this article draws up the framework of data portability, explaining its origin, general aspects, advantages as well as its possible downfalls. Secondly, the core of the article is approached as the different ways of granting data portability are analysed. In this regard, the possible application of European Competition Law to prohibit restrictions to data portability is examined. Afterwards, an examination of the application of U.S. Antitrust Law is made to determine whether it could be a source of inspiration for European legislators. Finally, an analysis of the new General Data Protection Regulation is made with respect to the development of data portability throughout the European legislative procedure. This article makes a cross-examination of legislations, compares them with one another in order to offer a reflection on the future of portable data in Europe, and finally attempts to identify the best approach to attribute data portability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so called “three-step test”, that the limitations and exceptions of copyright shall be allowed in certain special cases, provided that they do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author, grants copyright flexibilities to balance the interests of all stakeholders, especially within the European system of circumscribed limitations and exceptions. This is essential for the domain of computer law, confronted by rapid and unpredictable global technological developments, and is, thus, enshrined in the most important international intellectual property (IP) treaties. Through the proposed third amendment to the Copyright Law of the PRC, the legislature intends to adopt this test while also introducing an open-ended list of limitations and exceptions that constitutes a China-specific “two-step test.” This contravenes prima facie the thesis endorsed by the WTO Panel in the case concerning Section 110(5) of the US Copyright Act in 2000. In contrast, court decisions in China frequently apply the fair use doctrine of US copyright law, neglecting to consider its peculiar context of the US common law tradition and, thus, unduly expanding the Chinese courts' discretionary power. This paper summarizes the case law in China and takes a comparative approach to address the divergence between the judicial application of cyber copyright law and the existing legislation. It suggests revising the proposed Article 43 of the Copyright Law of the PRC to capture the due interpretation of the three-step test, thereby finessing the delineation between rights protection and free use with the compensation of remuneration under the principle of proportionality. It argues that transplanting the US fair use doctrine into Chinese copyright law is feasible, but with the preconditions of endeavouring to strengthen judicial reform to integrate the IP adjudication systems, enhancing the coherence and efficiency of copyright enforcement, and facilitating consistent dialogues between scholars, practitioners, and lawmakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new E.U. proposal for a general data protection regulation has been introduced to give an answer to the challenges of the evolving digital environment. In some cases, these expectations could be disappointed, since the proposal is still based on the traditional main pillars of the last generation of data protection laws. In the field of consumer data protection, these pillars are the purpose specification principle, the use limitation principle and the "notice and consent" model. Nevertheless, the complexity of data processing, the power of modern analytics and the "transformative" use of personal information drastically limit the awareness of consumers, their capability to evaluate the various consequences of their choices and to give a free and informed consent. To respond to the above, it is necessary to clarify the rationale of the "notice and consent" paradigm, looking back to its origins and assessing its effectiveness in a world of predictive analytics. From this perspective, the paper considers the historical evolution of data protection and how the fundamental issues coming from the technological and socio-economic contexts have been addressed by regulations. On the basis of this analysis, the author suggests a revision of the "notice and consent" model focused on the optin and proposes the adoption of a different approach when, such as in Big Data collection, the data subject cannot be totally aware of the tools of analysis and their potential output. For this reason, the author sustains the provision of a subset of rules for Big Data analytics, which is based on a multiple impact assessment of data processing, on a deeper level of control by data protection authorities, and on the different optout model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern identity is valuable, multi-functional and complex. Today we typically manage multiple versions of self, made visible in digital trails distributed widely across offline and online spaces. Yet, technology-mediated identity leads us into crisis. Enduring accessibility to greater and growing personal details online, alongside increases in both computing power and data linkage techniques, fuel fears of identity exploitation. Will it be stolen? Who controls it? Are others aggregating or analysing our identities to infer new data about us without our knowledge or consent? New challenges present themselves globally around these fears, as manifested by concerns over massive online data breaches and automated identification technologies, which also highlight the conundrum faced by governments about how to safeguard individuals' interests on the Web while striking a fair balance with wider public interests. This paper reflects upon some of these problems as part of the inter-disciplinary, transatlantic 'Superldentity' project investigating links between cyber and real-world identifiers. To meet the crisis, we explore the relationship between identity and digitisation from the perspective of policy and law. We conclude that traditional models of identity protection need supplementing with new ways of thinking, including pioneering 'technical-legal' initiatives that are sensitive to the different risks that threaten our digital identity integrity. Only by re-conceiving identity dynamically to appreciate the increasing capabilities for connectivity between different aspects of our identity across the cyber and the physical domains, will policy and law be able to keep up with and address the challenges that lie ahead in our progressively networked world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]