août 2008

Things are moving forward on the privacy front. In April, the so-called “Group 29”, an advisory body to the European Commission on privacy and public liberties matters, issued a memo in which it analyzed the activity of data-mining internet companies. More specifically, it sought to establish whether they respected the European regulatory framework which is composed of two directives: –    the data protection directive, adopted in 1995, that ranks privacy as a fundamental right and establishes a set of general principal regarding personal data protection in the European Union; –   … Lire la suite »Regulating Privacy in the Online World

This article by Elizabeth Van Couvering, from the London School of Economics, is now four years old and thus allows to put in perspective the evolution of web search engines, which have become key players of the information society. She makes a few interesting points: The author classifies search engines as media, saying that their business model is very similar to that traditional media of mass communication such as television or newspapers. They too provide content (searches), trying to attract the widest audience – or traffic – in order to… Lire la suite »The Political Economy of Internet Search Engines

What makes MySpace unique, along with other sites based on the same concept, such as Last.fm, is their unique and revolutionary service of popular culture broadcaster (so far, mainly music) relying on the technology of the Web 2.0. They link social networking and self-representation, and the prominent place of popular culture in identity formation and social interaction. However, these new services greatly destabilize the traditional grounds on which the cultural industries are organized, especially in terms copyright and licenses. This is a phase of transition for the cultural industries and… Lire la suite »MySpace: A Revolutionary Link Between the People and the Cultural Industries (2/2)