Jef Ausloos

• PhD
• PhD Student at KU Leuven

Alongside the recent regulations addressing platforms and digital markets – the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) – the European Union’s (EU) European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) aims to safeguard media freedom and pluralism, two essential pillars of democracy. The EMFA introduces several provisions, including rules specific...

Research into digital platforms has become increasingly difficult. One way to overcome these difficulties is to build on data access rights in EU data protection law, which requires platforms to offer users a copy of their data. In data donation studies, researchers ask study participants to exercise this right and donate their data to science. How...

Introduction The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became applicable on 25 May 2018.¹ Rarely has discourse on an EU legal instrument reached beyond law firms, legal departments, and academia. The GDPR, however, directly affected everyone. People were confronted with mushrooming cookie-consent banners across the web, uncertainties at work or...

The concentration and privatization of data infrastructures has a deep impact on independent research. This article positions data rights as a useful tool in researchers’ toolbox to obtain access to enclosed datasets. It does so by providing an overview of relevant data rights in the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, and describing different...

The digitisation and datafication of European society necessitate a robust ecology of transparency to enable scrutinising and challenging digital infrastructures that govern our lives. The GDPR – and its transparency provisions in particular – play a vital role in this pursuit. Crucially, in light of the strong informational power asymmetries in th...

Automated news recommender systems (NRS), i.e. systems designed to deliver users only the most relevant news pieces, curate the modern media landscape. The societal challenges NRS raise, and the impact they have upon users’ fundamental rights to privacy and data protection, call for more transparency and accountability. Contributing to the debate...

We are a group of academics active in research and practice around data rights. We believe that the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) guidance on data rights currently under construction is an important point to resolve a variety of tensions and grey areas which, if left unaddressed, may significantly undermine the fundamental right to data pro...

The GDPR has a significant impact on the way users interact with technologies, especially the everyday platforms used to personalize news and related forms of information. This paper presents the initial results from a study whose primary objective is to empirically test those platforms' level of compliance with the so-called 'right to explanation'...

• Data Protection by Design (DPbD), a holistic approach to embedding principles in technical and organisational measures undertaken by data controllers, building on the notion of Privacy by Design, is now a qualified duty in the GDPR. • Practitioners have seen DPbD less holistically, instead framing it through the confidentiality-focussed lens of P...

Cite as: Michael Veale, Reuben Binns and Jef Ausloos (2018) When Data Protection by Design and Data Subject Rights Clash. International Data Privacy Law (2018) doi:10.1093/idpl/ipy002. [Note: An earlier draft was entitled "We Can't Find Your Data, But A Hacker Could: How 'Privacy by Design' Trades-Off Data Protection Rights"]Abstract➔Data Protectio...

The emergence and rapid development of ICT-centred research methodologies, and data-driven research and innovation in particular, fundamentally challenge ethical values, human rights and security in the EU and beyond. This is especially—though not exclusively—the result of fragmented legal, ethical and terminological frameworks; a mismatch between...

The purpose of this article is to examine the principle of fairness as it appears in EU data protection law. Despite the fact that this principle is often referred to as a key tenet of the data protection framework, a precise understanding of its role remains elusive. As such, this article aims to provide the first steps towards a more thorough und...

Three weeks after the CJEU handed down its judgment in Google Spain, the search engine provider launched a web form to comply with the Court’s ruling. In July, Google announced the establishment of the so-called “Advisory Council on the Right to be Forgotten”. This Council, comprised of external experts, was to develop guidance on how search engine...

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2436436 The so-called "Right to Be Forgotten or Erasure" (RTBF), article 17 of the proposed General Data Protection Regulation, provides individuals with a means to oppose the often persistent digital memory of the Web. Because digital information technologies affect the accessibility of informatio...

The publishing and broadcasting sectors are characterized by a different historical evolution. Whereas the publishing sector was organized as a realm of the market in the 19th century, broadcasting was almost immediately captured as a government monopoly in the 1920s–1930s (Noam, 1992; HOffmann-Riem, 1996). As a result, there is a large consensus o...

The so-called "Right to Be Forgotten or Erasure" (RTBF), article 17 of the proposed General Data Protection Regulation, provides individuals with a means to oppose the often persistent digital memory of the Web. Because digital information technologies affect the accessibility of information over time and time plays a fundamental role in biological...

This working paper has been prepared in the context of the FP7 project Experimedia, the IWT-SBO-EMSOC project and iMinds-MiX projects. The objective was to carry out a legal analysis of the notion 'audiovisual media service' – being a building block in, and defining the scope of, the current EU regulatory framework for the audiovisual sector – in o...

Search engines can be portrayed both as champions of freedom and as agents of surveillance. By facilitating the retrieval of online data, they enable a global public to seek, receive and impart information. Where information about individuals is concerned, however, search engine services can also pose a risk to the privacy of data subjects. Due to...

The exponential growth of social media, and the Internet in general, has lead to a massive increase in the amount of personal data that can be found online. While disclosure of personal information is a logical byproduct of social activity, the extended longevity and broad accessibility of this information has given rise to specific reputational co...

The debates regarding privacy on social networks often relate to the amount of control an individual has - or should have - over his/her personal data. This has resulted in many social networks gearing up their privacy settings panes, offering more fine-grained control to their users. Paradoxically, it seems as if these controls do not contribute (...

Are you unclear about the European Commission's 2012 draft Data Protection Regulation proposing a qualified “right to be forgotten?” That's not surprising, say Meg Ambrose and Jef Ausloos. Their in-depth analysis finds a bifurcated social and legal history, divergent conceptions of the “right,” and alternative options for implementation. They contr...

Are you unclear about the European Commission's 2012 draft Data Protection Regulation proposing a qualified “right to be forgotten?” That's not surprising, say Meg Ambrose and Jef Ausloos. Their in-depth analysis finds a bifurcated social and legal history, divergent conceptions of the “right,” and alternative options for implementation. They contr...

Especially after its appearance in the European Commission's recent proposal for a new Data Protection Regulation, the 'right to be forgotten' has provoked quite some criticism. Much of the opponents, however, seem uninformed on the actual scope and meaning of the proposed provision. Additionally, the concept is often confused with the much older '...

The ‘right to be forgotten’ has gained increasing traction and significant debate on both sides of the Atlantic since the popularization of Viktor Mayer-Schonberger’s 2009 book, Delete. The term has caused a great deal of media speculation since the European Commission’s proposal for a new Data Protection Regulation in January 2012. The United Stat...

In the last few years there has been a lot of buzz around a so-called ‘right to be forgotten’. Especially in Europe, this catchphrase is heavily debated in the media, in court and by regulators. Since a clear definition has not emerged (yet), the following article will try to raise the veil on this vague concept. The first part will weigh the right...