John Mogg, Director-General of DGXV of the EC, has met with David Aaron, US under-secretary for international trade at the Department of Commerce to discuss the EU directive on the protection of personal data. The US has now accepted that an independent body should regulate disputes, but differences still remain. The EU directive empowers EU… Continue reading EU: Progress on personal data
The EP is this week expected to adopt a report on consumer guarantees. The report, by Annemarie Kuhn (D, PES), aims to ensure that wherever consumers shop in the EU they will enjoy the same minimum level of guarantees and will be able to seek redress in their home country. In particular, the report calls… Continue reading EU: Minimum Guarantees for Shoppers
The EU is keeping up its threat of an interruption in exchanges of data with the United States, following MS concerns over the latest US concessions in the protection of privacy disagreement. The EU Directive on data protection, which entered into force at the end of October 1998, enables MS authorities to interrupt data transfers… Continue reading EU: Dispute continues over private data
The EC has adopted proposals for the development of e-commerce in Europe. They include provisions for harmonised rules on the definition of the place of establishment of operators, the conclusion of contracts by electronic means, the responsibility of on-line service providers, dispute settlement and the role of national authorities. Industry has given a mixed reaction… Continue reading EU: E-commerce proposals adopted
Readership continues to drop across the national newspaper market, with only the Daily Mail and the Mirror bucking the trend. Readership figures released today by the NRS for the June-November 1998 period paint a fairly bleak picture when compared with the same time the year before.In terms of percentage loss, the Guardian fared worse during… Continue reading National Newspaper NRS – November 1998
The European Parliament’s EMAC Committee has held its second and last full debate on the follow-up to the Commission´s Green Paper on Commercial Communications in the Internal Market, before it is due to adopt its position on 8 December. Introducing her report to the Committee, Jessica Larive (ELDR, NL), informed MEPs that whilst progress had… Continue reading EU: EP Committee debates Larive Report
Legislation to prohibit Canadian advertising in certain foreign-controlled magazines has been delayed, and will not be passed until February 1999 at the earliest, if at all. Under the legislation, designed to protect advertising revenues for Canadian magazines, the government would levy fines against publishers that sell advertising in separate editions of foreign publications aimed at… Continue reading CAN: Magazine advertising law delayed
The European Commission has announced that it will pursue measures on the financing of public service broadcasting in MS, in apparent contradiction to announcements made late last month by the Commissioner for Competition, Karel van Miert that he was to drop action in this field due to MS opposition. The announcement comes after strong lobbying… Continue reading EU: Funding Transparency for Broadcasters
BSkyB is believed to have achieved its short-term digital targets by recruiting 200,000 subscribers to the Sky Digital service by the end of last year. Whilst this is an achievement in itself, it is perhaps significant that the majority are existing Sky customers who are merely converting the service to the digital platform. It has… Continue reading Christmas Developments
As is traditional at the time of year, Christmas Day TV saw BBC1 taking a decidedly larger portion of the viewing pie than its commercial rival, ITV. This year BBC1’s festive offerings drew in almost 70% of the top ten Christmas Day programmes in terms of audience size. The remaining slots in the chart went… Continue reading BBC1 Cleans Up On Christmas Day
