The main aim of this study is to identify the short- and long-term economic and cultural effects of file sharing on music, films and games. File sharing is the catch-all term for uploading and downloading. The short-term implications examined include the direct costs and benefits to society at...

Even though we increasingly rely on HTTPS to secure Internet communications, several landmark incidents in recent years have illustrated that its security is deeply flawed. We present an extensive multi-disciplinary analysis that examines how the systemic vulnerabilities of the HTTPS...

Hyptertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) has evolved into the de facto standard for secure web browsing. Through the certificate-based authentication protocol, web services and browsers first authenticate one another (“shake hands”) using a TLS/SSL certificate, then encrypt web...

The Netherlands is among the few countries that have put specific net neutrality standards in place. It was the first country to do so in the European Union. Contrary to the original European Union approach, which lacks a material implementation of net neutrality principles, the Dutch parliament...

The European institutions are currently debating the desirability of imposing restrictions on the way in which internet service providers (ISPs) in the EU can manage their networks and develop their offerings, under the broad heading of 'network neutrality'. In our opinion, so far, the need for...

The core function of a search engine is to make content and sources of information easily accessible (although the search results themselves may actually include parts of the underlying information). In an environment with unlimited amounts of information available on open platforms such as the...

Transnational surveillance is obscured by the cloud. U.S. foreign intelligence law provides a wide and relatively unchecked possibility of access to data from Europeans and other foreigners. The amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 50 USC 1881a (section 702) are of...

Internet Governance is a very broad concept. It is widely used (and abused) to deal with at least two matters. First of all, Internet Governance is a term that reflects institutional issues (“Who controls the Internet?”); second, the notion of Internet Governance is strongly linked to...

Universal Service would appear to be a dying concept. In most European countries, Universal Service – once a cornerstone of government intervention in the communications sector – has been narrowed down dramatically over the last ten years. A major reason for this is the assumption that...

This paper presents a critical analysis of the proposal for the amended Television without Frontiers Directive (the draft Audiovisual Media Services Directive). The following is argued in the paper: a) The revision lacks consistency from a regulatory point of view by using the artificial...