Competing jurisdictions: data privacy across the borders

Borderless cloud computing technologies are exacerbating tensions between European and other existing approaches to data privacy. On the one hand, in the European Union (EU), a series of data localisation initiatives are emerging with the objective of preserving Europe’s digital sovereignty, guaranteeing the respect of EU fundamental rights and preventing foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies from accessing personal data. On the other hand, foreign countries are unilaterally adopting legislation requiring national corporations to disclose data stored in Europe, in this way bypassing jurisdictional boundaries grounded on physical data location. The chapter investigates this twofold dynamics by focusing particularly on the current friction between the EU data protection approach and the data privacy model of the United States (US) in the field of cloud computing

Metrics to evaluate research performance in academic institutions: A critique of ERA 2010 as applied in forestry and the indirect H2 index as a possible alternative

Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) is an attempt by the Australian Research Council to rate Australian universities on a 5-point scale within 180 Fields of Research using metrics and peer evaluation by an evaluation committee. Some of the bibliometric data contributing to this ranking suffer statistical issues associated with skewed distributions. Other data are standardised year-by-year, placing undue emphasis on the most recent publications which may not yet have reliable citation patterns. The bibliometric data offered to the evaluation committees is extensive, but lacks effective syntheses such as the h-index and its variants. The indirect H2 index is objective, can be computed automatically and efficiently, is resistant to manipulation, and a good indicator of impact to assist the ERA evaluation committees and to similar evaluations internationally.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, 7 tables, appendice

Digital Rights and Jurisdiction: The European Approach to Online Defamation and IPRs Infringements

The new media and communication technologies have significantly increased the number of online cross-border disputes involving the security and protection of personal identity as well as of intellectual property creations. The persistent lack of a uniform private international law approach on the matter deter- mines a substantial gap in Internet governance, which results in the application of domestic rules or, where existing, of regional ones. This legal scenario is conducive to conflicts of jurisdiction and, ultimately, to legal uncertainty and instances of forum shopping. The Chapter focuses on the allocation of adjudicative jurisdiction at European level by examining the current EU approach to cross-border online disputes resolution involving the main types of infringements of digital rights (notably, personality rights and IPRs). The absence of EU rules on jurisdiction concern- ing online tort disputes has encouraged the elaboration of a prolific and controversial case law of the CJEU over the interpretation of Article 7(2) of Brussels I-bis Regulation (i.e. eDate, BOÜ/Ilsjan, Wintergeister, Pinckney and Hejduk rulings). The Chapter provides a thorough and critical insight over the characteristics and trends of this development and comes to propose a brand-new “less is more” normative approach, aimed at reducing the range of eligible fora in light of a well-balanced system of assessment of the competing interests involved