In the case of Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek v Facebook Ireland Ltd (Case C-18/18), the Advocate General (AG) of the Court of Justice (CJEU) was asked to clarify the scope of the obligation that may be imposed on a host provider to remove illegal information. Article 15(1) of the e-Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC (the Directive) prohibits Member States from imposing a general monitoring obligation on host providers, and the CJEU considered whether that provision precludes a court, in…

In Ryanair dac v SC Vola.ro srl [2019] IEHC 239 the Irish High Court confirmed the enforceability of a jurisdiction clause contained within a website’s Terms of Use, finding the user had agreed to it via a “click-wrap” agreement. Following previous Ryanair screen-scraping cases, the court held the click-wrap agreement met the requirements of Article 25(1) (c) of the Brussels I Recast Regulation (EU 1215/2012) (the Regulation). The court rejected the defendant’s arguments that there had been no…

On 1 May 2019, Ms Helen Dixon, the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), appeared before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.  She was invited to testify on Ireland’s implementation of the GDPR, as the US is considering introducing a federal data privacy framework. California has already passed a new data privacy law, the California Consumer Privacy Act, which is due to come into effect on 1 January 2020. This note sets out some of the highlights…

The UK Supreme Court has granted supermarket chain Morrisons permission to appeal against a landmark UK Court of Appeal ruling that found it vicariously liable for a deliberate data breach carried out by a former employee (previously discussed here).…

The EDPB has released new draft guidelines 2/2019 on the contractual necessity legal basis for processing personal data in the context of the provision of online services to data subjects. The guidelines emphasise the narrow scope of the contractual necessity legal basis. A controller must be able to demonstrate that the processing is ‘objectively necessary’ for a purpose that is ‘integral’ to the delivery of a contractual service to the data subject in order to…

On 3 April 2019, the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality met to discuss the implementation of the GDPR with Ms Anna Morgan (Deputy Commissioner), Ms Jennifer O’Sullivan (Deputy Commissioner), and Mr Cathal Ryan (Assistant Commissioner). The Commissioners discussed a range of issues, including the enforcement powers used by the Data Protection Commission (DPC) post-GDPR, the difficulties with verifying parental consent in relation to the provision of information society services to children, and the DPC’s experience of resolving…