Balancing Business Innovation with Data Protection? Regulating the Digital Age

http://www.fljs.org/content/balancing-business-innovation-data-protection
Haldane Room, Wolfson College
Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6UD

The proliferation of information communication technologies in the form of social networking, cloud computing and the like over the past decade represents the single largest challenge to the protection of personal data. Efforts to implement effective regulation to match the pace of technological and social change, such as the current reform of the EU data protection package, are faced with the question of how to strike a balance between the protection of personal data and the promotion of the European Union as a world leader in the digital economy.

The recent ruling of the European Court of Justice in what has become known as the ‘right to be forgotten’, for example, has raised pressing practical questions about how companies such as Google will deal with the additional regulatory burden placed on them while continuing to drive innovation in the field of information communication technologies.

This workshop, convened by the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies in association with MacQuarie University, Sydney, will investigate whether it is possible for regulators and companies to strike a balance between business innovation and data protection in the Digital Age. Academics, regulators, and practitioners will address a number of questions raised by these issues, including:

1. What are the major patterns of data use in the digital advertising economy and what are the implications of these for regulation?
2. In what ways can the so-called ‘co-regulation model’ empower and protect consumers?
3. Is ‘co-regulation’ a viable option or will it lead to regulatory capture?
4. Can privacy-enhancing technologies improve the accountability and transparency of companies’ practices in the context of self-regulation?

Confirmed speakers include Dr Christopher Kuner (Copenhagen), Prof.
Christopher Millard (QMUL), Prof. Christopher Marsden (Sussex), and Steve
Wood (UK ICO).

Workshop attendance is free, but registration is required for catering purposes, http://www.fljs.org/content/balancing-business-innovation-data-protection. The programme can be also downloaded through this link.

The organizing committee gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Macquarie University and Oxford Regulation Discussion Group for this workshop.

For further details, please email Dr Asma Vranaki at asma.vranaki@qmul.ac.uk