ReadWriteWeb

There were two big expectations from this morning's release of the initial draft of data protection regulations from the European Commission, both of which were built up through quite a bit of fanfare from EC Vice President Viviane Reding's office last November. One was that the Commission would "stick it to" the U.S. Patriot Act, the law that enables American law enforcement agencies access to private data elsewhere in the world, under controlled conditions. Another was that citizens of E.U. member states would be granted a "right to be forgotten," to order online firms collecting personal data about them to purge their records.

The initial draft of these new Data Protection regulations shows moderation on both counts.

Sticking with her original deadline announced last year, European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes told a European interoperability standards forum yesterday that a public portal for access to government and public data from across the continent is on track to go online in Spring 2012. Following that, the next stage in Comm. Kroes' agenda includes an ambitious project to launch a community-built, crowd-sourced public data platform for all of Europe.

Kroes told the OpenData Forum in Brussels she expects for a pan-European forum for public data mining to go live no later than 2013. "Will she really be able to pull off all that?" the commissioner asked rhetorically, referring to herself.

A new study commissioned by the European Union has finally proven what many have suspected all along: internet users don't want to pay for content. Period. And nothing is going to change their minds. The report finds, in a surprising contradiction to what industry executives have been spouting for ages, consumers' behavior has nothing to do with the peer-to-peer technology (P2P) that has given rise to all-you-can-eat systems for free downloads of copyrighted content. In fact, many people claim that they wouldn't pay for online content even if all other free options were taken away. This finding has dramatic implications for the future of business, and not just in the entertainment industry, either. If people won't pay for content, how will companies survive?