With around 2.3 billion users, the Internet has become part of the daily lives of a significant percentage of the global population, including for political debate and activism. While states are responsible for protecting human rights online under international law, companies responsible for...

This the second of two working papers produced for the "New Challenges to Data Protection" study, commissioned by the European Commission.This paper discusses the difficulties that arise if one tries to apply the main EC Directive on data protection (Directive 95/46/EC) and the data protection...

What social, technical, economic and political developments played a role in constituting a field, in which the idea of ‘Internet Governance’ could thrive? What are the events, stories and ideas that preceded and made possible today’s discussions about governance on, of and through the...

This chapter first describes the standard economic analysis of privacy, data protection and surveillance, looking at the costs and benefits to different parties and the incentives each therefore has, as well as the aggregate social welfare impacts of their decisions. It then considers the market...