Study to gather evidence on the working conditions of platform workers VT/2018/032 Final Report 13 December 2019

Platform work is a type of work using an online platform to intermediate between platform workers, who provide services, and paying clients. Platform work seems to be growing in size and importance. This study explores platform work in the EU28, Norway and Iceland, with a focus on the challenges it presents to working conditions and social protection, and how countries have responded through top-down (e.g. legislation and case law) and bottom-up actions (e.g. collective agreements, actions by platform workers or platforms). This national mapping is accompanied by a comparative assessment of selected EU legal instruments, mostly in the social area. Each instrument is assessed for personal and material scope to determine how it might impact such challenges. Four broad legal domains with relevance to platform work challenges are examined in stand-alone reflection papers. Together, the national mapping and legal analysis support a gap analysis, which aims to indicate where further action on platform work would be useful, and what form such action might take

Prospect patents, data markets, and the commons in data-driven medicine : openness and the political economy of intellectual property rights

Scholars who point to political influences and the regulatory function of patent courts in the USA have long questioned the courts’ subjective interpretation of what ‘things’ can be claimed as inventions. The present article sheds light on a different but related facet: the role of the courts in regulating knowledge production. I argue that the recent cases decided by the US Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit, which made diagnostics and software very difficult to patent and which attracted criticism for a wealth of different reasons, are fine case studies of the current debate over the proper role of the state in regulating the marketplace and knowledge production in the emerging information economy. The article explains that these patents are prospect patents that may be used by a monopolist to collect data that everybody else needs in order to compete effectively. As such, they raise familiar concerns about failure of coordination emerging as a result of a monopolist controlling a resource such as datasets that others need and cannot replicate. In effect, the courts regulated the market, primarily focusing on ensuring the free flow of data in the emerging marketplace very much in the spirit of the ‘free the data’ language in various policy initiatives, yet at the same time with an eye to boost downstream innovation. In doing so, these decisions essentially endorse practices of personal information processing which constitute a new type of public domain: a source of raw materials which are there for the taking and which have become most important inputs to commercial activity. From this vantage point of view, the legal interpretation of the private and the shared legitimizes a model of data extraction from individuals, the raw material of information capitalism, that will fuel the next generation of data-intensive therapeutics in the field of data-driven medicine

La necesaria recuperación del diálogo social para abordar la regulación del impacto de las nuevas tecnologías en los derechos de los trabajadores

The European Union has urged the European Commission, Member States and social partners to establish rules for an economic sphere which is either deregulated or has significant gaps in regulation: digitilisation and the platform economy. The European Parliament has made a series of recommendations which establish the social guidelines necessary to regulate labour relations on collaborative platforms. Accepting changes in the fundamental nature of labour law requires the overcoming of untouchable axioms which survive in contemporary economic thought, such as the one which links rigid labour regulations to the delay in recovery from the economic crisis, to rising unemployment, and more recently, to a lack of adaptation of labour regulation to technological changes. Once again, changes in labour legislation are required in order to adapt correctly to the digital economy, although it is emphacised that this “new regulation” cannot be made without the social partners.La Unión Europea ha instado a la Comisión Europea, a los Estados miembros y a los interlocutores a normar un ámbito económico desregularizado o con lagunas en la regulación: la digitalización y la economía de plataforma. El Parlamento Europeo ha dirigido una serie de recomendaciones con las directrices sociales necesarias para que se regulen las relaciones laborales en las plataformas colaborativas. Es preciso superar intocables axiomas que perviven en el pensamiento económico contemporáneo, como el que vincula la rigidez de la normativa laboral al retraso en la salida de la crisis económica y al incremento del número de desempleados, a lo que ahora quiere añadirse la falta de adaptación de la regulación laboral a las nuevas tecnologías. De nuevo se exigen cambios legislativos en el orden laboral para lograr una correcta adaptación a la economía digital; si bien, es preciso subrayar que esta “nueva regulación” no podrá hacerse al margen de los interlocutores sociales

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Software\u27s Copyright Anticommons

Scholars have long assessed “anticommons” problems in creative and innovative environments. An anticommons develops when an asset has numerous rights holders, each of which has a right to prevent use of the asset, but none of which has a right to use the asset without authorization from the other rights holders. Hence, when any one of those rights holders uses its rights in ways that inhibit use of the common asset, an anticommons may result.In the software world, scholars have long argued that anticommons problems arise, if at all, because of patent rights. Copyright, on the other hand, has not been viewed as a significant source of anticommons problems. But this Article argues that copyright is an increasingly significant cause of anticommons concerns in the software context for at least two related reasons. First, the increasingly collaborative nature of much modern software innovation means that any given software resource is subject to dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of distinct copyright interests, each of which can ultimately hamper use of the software resource. While collaborative innovation licensing models help reduce the threat of any given copyright holder restricting use of the software resource, these licensing models do not altogether eliminate such risks and, in fact, actually create risks of holdup and underuse that have previously received less attention than they are due. Second, interoperability needs in the growing “Internet of Things” and “cloud” economies demand sharing and reuse of software for these ecosystems to work. Yet because these technological ecosystems implicate thousands of different parties with distinct copyright interests in their software, the threat of any one of those parties ultimately using its rights in ways that inhibit the successful development and use of the Internet of Things and cloud economies looms large. In order to illustrate some of these anticommons problems in practice, this Article examines a recent high-profile software copyright dispute between Oracle and Google.As a possible solution to these types of problems, this Article assesses the merits of more explicitly adapting copyright’s fair use defense to the collaborative and interconnected nature of modern software innovation. The Article concludes by arguing that copyright disputes in other fields of creativity characterized by collaborative, interconnected development may also merit such fair use adaptations. Otherwise, anticommons problems may increasingly affect those fields as well

What's Going on in Community Media

What's Going On in Community Media shines a spotlight on media practices that increase citizen participation in media production, governance, and policy. The report summarizes the findings of a nationwide scan of effective and emerging community media practices conducted by the Benton Foundation in collaboration with the Community Media and Technology Program of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The scan includes an analysis of trends and emerging practices; comparative research; an online survey of community media practitioners; one-on-one interviews with practitioners, funders and policy makers; and the information gleaned from a series of roundtable discussions with community media practitioners in Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Portland, Oregon

The side effects of the collaborative economy model in Europe: the self-employed workers

The fundamental right to fair working conditions has had a slow influence on the regulatory institutions and it is necessary to demand an immediate regulation on the matter with the advance of the so-called collaborative economy in Europe. The perimeter of this business model is often prone to inequality, which disproportionately affects vulnerable agents such as workers. It is necessary to analyze the effectiveness of the responses that European countries give to these threats and the recommendations given by the authors and other international institutions to seek appropriate guidance. The norm that technology evolves faster than the legal systems does not render fundamental rights violations justifiable

In the Battle for Reality: Social Documentaries in the U.S.

Provides an overview of documentaries that address social justice and democracy issues, and includes case studies of successful strategic uses of social documentaries