What will new General Data Protection Regulation laws mean for websites that use sneaky web trackers such as browser fingerprinting to profile visitors ? Privacy experts say the practice is likely illegal under the newly-enacted GDPR regulation. But they also say don’t expect the method of tracking users to disappear anytime soon, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a report issued Tuesday.

Using the HTML5 framework, websites are able to identify users (or a browser image) not by cookies, but the unique characteristics of a browser such as fonts, SVG widgets and WebGL—for starters. The technique is called browser fingerprinting or canvas fingerprinting. Websites harvest the browser data to produce a single, unique identifier to track users across multiple websites without any actual identifier persistence on the user’s machine. [...]

“ Looking at how web fingerprinting techniques have been used so far, it is very difficult to imagine companies moving from deliberate obscurity to full transparency and open communication with users, ” he said in a post, written along with Katarzyna Szymielewicz, co-founder and president of the Panoptykon Foundation. “ Fingerprinting companies will have to do what their predecessors in the cookie world did before now : face greater detection and exposure by coming clean about their practices, or slink even further behind the curtain, and hope to dodge European law. ” [...]

https://threatpost.com/sneaky-web-tracking-technique-under-heavy-scrutin...

Representatives of Europe’s BEREC (Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications) and India’s TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) met up yesterday to sign a joint statement to promote an open internet.

This short document describes a set of rules to guarantee net neutrality. Those are some basic rules, such as equal treatment of internet traffic, a case-by-case assessment of zero-rating practices and more. [...]

Even more important than the statement itself, the timing of this announcement is interesting. The FCC officially repealed net neutrality in the U.S. on Monday. While other regulators can’t do anything about what’s happening in the U.S., they can make sure net neutrality remains intact in their own country. [...]

https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/15/european-and-indian-regulators-team-up...

Memes, remixes and other user-generated content could disappear online if the EU's proposed rules on copyright become law, warn experts.

Digital rights groups are campaigning against the Copyright Directive, which the European Parliament will vote on later this month.

The legislation aims to protect rights-holders in the internet age. [...]

Jim Killock, executive director of the UK's Open Rights Group, told the BBC: "Article 13 will create a 'Robo-copyright' regime, where machines zap anything they identify as breaking copyright rules, despite legal bans on laws that require 'general monitoring' of users to protect their privacy. [...]

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44412025