holders and implementers. There have been instances where implementers have been declared as ‘unwilling licensees’. The Delhi High Court has determined and discussed ‘willingness’ of parties based on several factors without laying down a precise framework for such determination which could act as a precedent for future disputes. Aysem Diker Vanberg, University of Greenwich (with Johanna Hoekstra, University of Greenwich) “A critical analysis of the Directive for the Supply of Digital Content” In December 2015 the European Commission proposed a new Directive for the Supply of Digital Content (Digital Content Directive). This Directive was presented along with a second Directive on Online and Distant Sale of Goods. Both of these Directives form part of the European Union Digital Single Market strategy and are intended to further harmonise the law of contract across the member states. The European Commission sees differences in substantive contract law as a barrier for international trade for both consumers and for merchants, especially Small and Medium Enterprises. These two proposed Directives replace the project for a Common European Sales Law (CESL) which the Commission deemed not politically viable. Four current EU Directives are concerned with the online sales of consumer goods: the Consumer Sales Directive, the Consumer Rights Directive, the Unfair Terms Directive, and the E-commerce Directive. The two new Directives supplement the existing legislation. The proposed new legislation opts for maximum harmonisation and is intended to promote a more coherent and less fragmentised framework regarding Ecommerce and consumers. At the same time the split between physical transactions and electronic transactions also causes further fragmentation. In the same way as the split between consumer sales and commercial sales, and international sales and domestic sales does.
the right to privacy also in public spaces and in the “forum internum” (psychological domain). At the same time, as regards information privacy, it has been proposed to abandon the concept of personal data as a cornerstone of data protection altogether, and seek remedies to the ‘information-induced harms’. In other terms, privacy is more and more seen as the protection of “uncomputability” of humans. This article proposes a reconstruction of the existing legal provisions that could regulate this area, e.g. Article 3 EU Charter of Fundamental Right (right to – even mental – integrity) in combination with Article 7 and 8; secondary laws regulating mental freedom, like Unfair Commercial practice directive, and in particular the automated decision-making within data protection regulation (articles 15 and 22, GDPR). In particular, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive formally addresses freedom of choice of consumers. Recital 6 refers to practices “which directly harm consumers’ economic interests and thereby indirectly harm the economic interests of legitimate competitors”. Although it clarifies that “accepted advertising and marketing practices, such as legitimate product placement, brand differentiation or the offering of incentives which may legitimately affect consumers’ perceptions of products and influence their behaviour” can be legal, it makes clear that the key element to approve them is that advertising does not “impair the consumer’s After this analysis, what is necessary is a reconsideration of the traditional idea of privacy and of the “average” individual (consumer, data subject, user) starting from existing legal “vulnerable” groups (age, mental condition, etc.), considering the challenge of the commercial exploitation of personalized vulnerabilities. Kayleen Manwaring, University of New South Wales “Will emerging information technologies outpace consumer protection law in Australia? The case of digital consumer manipulation” Introduction