The Court held that the IP address on its own did not constitute being actual personal data or personal information.

IP addresses are assigned to specific devices when they connect to the internet.  These devices may be in individual’s homes or places of work.  The Paris Appeal Court stated that the IP address alone could not be used to identify an individual person and so were not capable of breaching data protection laws.

The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers (SACEM) is a French music collecting society that was undertaking some anti-piracy analysis when it located an internet user who was sharing music illegally using a peer to peer network system.

SACEM were investigating peer to peer networks when and discovered that several user’s of the file-sharing network Limewire were sharing music by Eminem.  The SACEM agent recorded the IP address of one of these users and contacted their Internet Service provider (ISP).  The SACEM agent forwarded the details on to the police who then located the individual using the IP address by ordering the ISP to disclose their details. 

The laptop that had been used to share files illegally was located by the police at the address provided by the ISP and the individual in question was subsequently arrested.  The user claimed that he was unaware file-sharing in this manner was unlawful.

Under French data protection law personal information may be processed when an activity has been authorised prior to action being taken by the National Commission for Information technologies and Civil Liberties (CNIL).  One of the fundamental issues in this case was caused by the SACEM agent as the necessary authority from CNIL had not been obtained prior to the disclosure of the individual’s IP address.

The Paris Appeal Court concluded that the information processed was not personal information and therefore was not subject to French data protection law.  The IP address itself had not identified the individual, but the complaint made by the SACEM agent to the police and their further investigations had resulted in the disclosure of the individuals details.

Each of the three employees has been given a six month suspended sentence for a video that that was hosted by Google portraying an autistic child being bullied by other children.

This shock ruling may lead to ground-breaking changes in current EU law as until now, the EU’s E-Commerce Directive protected service providers from liability for material they had not created or monitored but had instead simply stored or passed on to users of their service.

The offensive video was filmed by school pupils in Turin as they bullied an autistic schoolmate.  The video was then posted on YouTube, where Google removed the video within hours of it appearing on the site, and helped police identity the individual who uploaded the video.

Four Google employees, some of whom no longer worked for the search engine giant, were charged, with three of these subsequently being convicted.

Google does not monitor content that is uploaded to YouTube but instead uses a complaints procedure to discover any inappropriate content.  The Italian court believed that the result of this meant Google actually had insufficient staff numbers to review and monitor content on the site.  The court also established that service providers will not be exempt from liability under the Ecommerce Directive unless they were pro-active in their approach to remove all unlawful content upon becoming aware of such.

Google will appeal the ruling on the basis that the court’s decision has undermined the legal basis of scores of the internet’s most well-liked services.

Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor, oversees all data protection practices of EU bodies and advises those EU bodies on privacy policy.  Hustinx recently condemned the fact that such little information about these global negotiations had been publicised.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed agreement on copyright protection measures by the European Commission, as well as Canada, Japan, the US and others.

The controversy has been caused by a concentrated silence surrounding the ACTA since these proposals first became public knowledge two years ago.  The ACTA has been criticised by analysts who have alleged that the draft legislation has only been accessible by governments of negotiating countries as opposed to being accessible by the public.

Hustinx was not consulted by the European Commission at any point about the exact content of the ACTA.  It is believed that the ACTA will not be compatible with current EU data protection legislation, which in turn raises significant issues regarding an individual’s right to privacy.

Although intellectual property is integral to modern society and thus must be protected, it should not be placed of higher importance over an individual’s right to privacy and data protection.

Buzz is Google’s way of adapting its Google mail service, known as Gmail, into an accessible social network.  The default settings of Buzz meant that users Gmail information and data was automatically passed to their Buzz profile, resulting in users being involuntarily signed up to follow the Buzz activity of the people they communicate with the most on Gmail.

Google was not only accused of infringing users’ privacy rights, but of hiding the button to change settings in an little known part of the site’s service menus.

Google initially made the option to opt-out of the auto follow more visible but then changed it altogether so that it merely suggested people a user may wish to opt-in to follow.

Google have apologised for this violation of user’s online privacy, however Buzz will now have to face competition from Twitter and Facebook users to become one of the more popular social networking sites.

The ICO has issued the Labour Party with an enforcement notice demanding the party to not make further unauthorised telephone calls. Failure to adhere to this enforcement order will be deemed a criminal offence as Labour.

Labour obtained member’s of the public’s private contact details after purchasing lists of phone numbers to make pre-recorded calls to residents in areas with a Labour stronghold. 

The ICO stated that these unauthorised telephone calls constituted a breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations as they did not provide the receiver with any contact information such as a telephone number or address for the Labour Party.

These nuisance phone calls constituted direct marketing and the ICO has consistently upheld that the promotion of any political party is direct marketing. 

The main issue here is that the individual persons contacted were targeted after their personal contact information had been purchased by the Labour Party solely for the purpose of direct marketing.

This restrictive law was instantly classed as discriminatory to internet users who were compelled to provide their personal information and effectively destroyed the premise of freedom of speech and a right to anonymity and privacy.

This law was supported by South Australia’s Attorney General Michael Atkinson, who continued to defend the law as he believed that such anonymity by internet users was being abused by political opponents to launch political attack against him.

After a campaign was launched by bloggers of South Australia to restore the right to anonymity and to undo the restrictive laws supported by the majority of MPs and political parties in the state, Atkinson eventually caved and has promised to repeal law when the elections have finished.

The internet uprising by users has undoubtedly caused this restrictive and censoring law to be overturned.  Such a law would likely be deemed inproportionate in the UK.

Recently in the United States a court ruled that a clause contained within a website’s privacy policy could not justify revealing an anonymous commenter’s identity, as the right to anonymity could not be waived, despite the content of the commenter’s post containing defamatory content.

Many Facebook users are disappointed in the social networking site as there has been increased hype in the media in recent months on the importance of online privacy. Many of the social networking sites users feel uncomfortable using this online services as Facebooks lack of privacy controls has undermined the security of its users personal information and data.

After Stoddart undertook her first investigation into the privacy settings of the social networking site, she concluded that many users feel the changes Facebook has made to its privacy policies has rendered personal information and data even more exposed than it had been previously.

In the US Facebook is currently facing action from the Electronic Privacy Information Centre as it has filed a complaint against the privacy settings on the site to the Federal Trade Commission.

The websites privacy policy contained a clause stating that all information provided by the user could be disclosed to third parties but the US Court declared that this was not justification for revealing the users personal identity.

The website provider had argued that the user had agreed to the terms of the website privacy policy which stated that information provided by the user may be used for commercial purposes.

Both the Supreme Court and US District Court consistently upheld that the choice to remain anonymous was an extension to freedom of speech and to compel an individual to disclose their identity would be to undermine the principle of freedom of speech contained within the US Constitution.

The website’s privacy policy did not mention that a user would waive their constitutional right to anonymous free speech and so the user could not have been aware of the website provider’s intention to exclude this right.

Website privacy policies are of fundamental importance to the security and overall integrity of an individual’s personal data and information.  All website providers must ensure their privacy policy reflects their intentions explicitly toward user of their website.

By getting your customers to opt in to receive information from you regarding other products in your product portfolio you avoid any risk that the product is not sufficiently similar to fall within the permissible exception in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.

Facebook has agreed to be more forthcoming to its users by detailing why and how it collects and records their information and data.  It is thought that many of the other social networking sites are likely to follow suit and become more transparent in their explanation of their use of users information. 

Facebook has said that as well as reviewing and updating its privacy policy, it will also give users greater control over the information they provide to third parties as nearly one million third parties offer quizzes and games for the site.  This will be done by requesting the users consent to use their data with an explanation as to what the information collected would be used for.

Facebook have said that it will take approximately one year to implement all the necessary changes to their site.