How the Proposed 2012 EU Directive on Data Privacy Could Impact Social Media

http://ow.ly/83NT7

An article by Jo Stratmann published on the business2community.com website.

This article looks at the EU data privacy directives and discusses how they may impact the use of social media networks.

The article mentions that current EU data privacy laws in most member states were drafted prior to the creation of Facebook.  The article further states, "In essence, European politicians are seeking to simplify the EU Data Protection Directive in order to give businesses within the EU only “one law” with “one data protection authority”. Proposed changes to the data law aim to unify the existing legislation of each EU Member State, making it easier for businesses to transfer data.

According to Reuters, EU officials expect the draft legislation to be ready early next year (as early as January 2012) but it could take up to 18 months for the bill to become law, meaning that businesses will still have to comply with disparate laws and often conflicting decisions made by data protection authorities (DPAs) in each of the 27 Member States."

The article further outlines the following goals of the EU directive and provides some commentary around each of the points:

• Increased data portability 
• The ‘right to be forgotten’ 
• Compelled disclosure 
• A ‘one-stop-shop’ 
• Abolish processing