Having in mind that W3C will decide about the future of EME in the new HTML5 standard in a very short time, we decided to set up a panel debate that can help to raise awareness about this topic in general. 

Setting up the event was a great deal of work; it took pretty much the whole week and as the deadline was approaching, the more challenging it was to do everything absolutely neccessary in order to have it ready. Having deadlines in days is ok, but having deadlines in hours and minutes can be lethal. In the end we were given a very nice room inside of the PHS building (sorry for eurojargon - it is this building). 39 people made it to our panel session, mostly people from the EU institutions (both Parliament and the Commission) as well as other guests, journalists, or IT evangelists and other interested ones. We were also streaming our event online - and we had to overcome a lot of difficulties in order to do that. Various non-profit organizations and institutions as well as the Pirates in Belgium, Germany and the Czech Republic were informed. 

Amelia's article published several days ago explains the problem with EME in general. Our debate made the maint topic much broader - and brought some interesting views.

Curiosity killed the cat, as they say in English, and the medical confidentiality cat is one cat we may not want to kill too lightly.

I had the fortune of being invited to a panel discussion at European Health Forum in Gastein, Austria, on big data and medicine. This is a rapidly developing field – how can we exploit and make use of personal data to provide better medical services and get better research. In one way, the pharmaceutical industry and many medical companies are jumping on the already existing bandwagon from the advertisement industry. But it's also important to realize that the pharmaceutical sector is suffering from blockbuster patents expiring – having been able to extort the legislator for only two additional years of market exlusivity and seeing their ability to ever-green patents reduced by competition law, they need to quickly replace their existing block-buster based sales model with something else. And they have went for big data.

Because the discussion was freeform I will recount from memory the discussions.

About nine months ago my office produced model responses for the European Commission trade secret consultation which lapsed on March 8 2013. You can find our model responses in three languages on this page. The summary of the consultation responses by the European Commission are now released. 

To my great joy, the fact that we had made model responses helped a lot of citizens to be heard in the European Union! 39% of all respondents were citizens according to the Commission summary. The Commission goes on to say that "Nearly 80% of respondents that do not see a need for an EU initiative come from Germany, Belgium or Sweden." 173 of the respondents came from these countries, and they are bound mostly to be citizens.

I was invited to hold an address at the 5th edition of the European Innovation Summit in the European Parliament on the topic of helping to advance small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union. We had three case-studies of SMEs in the panel, as well as Chief Science Officer of Commission President Barroso, Ms Anne Glover, in the panel. You can see the outcome of the innovation summit in this press release, which explicitly does not cover many of my observations. That is, however, normal and it is obvious from the line-up that the press release has premiated big and important political groups in the parliament.

Address:

The good news is that small and medium-sized enterprises are neither new nor controversial in the political discussions of Europe. We have widely cited statistics on the importance of small- and medium-sized enteprises for employment, productivity and innovation. Sometimes I have heard the distinction made between start-ups, the drivers of innovation, and SMEs, that many times perform already widely known services. We have a special liking for SMEs in new industries.

I work a lot with information policy. Clearly an outstanding and exceptionally recent political field. We are accustomed to information policy as driving the world forward for only slightly longer than I have been alive, which can be contrasted with the real estate sector which then obviously has existed for much longer than that.

I had the big privilege of getting to attend the BruCon Conference in Gent on September 26 2013. It's an annual security conference which is attended by professionals, students and academics in the field. I had chosen to speak about the first eight articles of the electronic identification and trust services regulation at the conference. They cover electronic identification, and I am particularly critical of some of the Commission's policy choices in the file. As it turns out, there is also much that can be said about the articles regulating trust services (or "certification authorities" as they are more commonly known in other circles). In addition there were some questions raised by the audience that I will try to cover below. If I forget a particular question it's not out of malice. The address is as I have written it, not necessarily as I spoke it.

Address:

I'm very happy to be here and to be able to speak to you all today. I have opted for talking today about the electronic identification regulation which was proposed by the European Commission last year in July[1]. I've been working with this in the parliament for the past year and it's in many ways a good illustration of many big questions that are facing society about the internet, identity, surveillance, privacy, security and how these things relate to individuals and their socities.

Freedom not Fear. Svoboda místo strachu. Freiheit statt angst. Слобода уместо страха. La liberté pas la peur. In all languages, in many countries throughout the whole Europe a popular event was held in order to point out the importance of freedom in current digitized world.

Brussels is called the Capital of Europe (well according to Wikipedia also as a Comic city, which seems to be not very far from truth). Most of the events related to the Freedom not Fear therefore took place there.

One might say that yes - we had a conference. One might have a picture in his head: A boring conference in a center, where people do speak for hours and hours. However, this case was not the truth. Freedom not Fear is a popular event, where various movements participate. Most of them are deeply interested in the topics of our event. They did not come from Brussels or Belgium only; the participation was international. And there were not only speeches or presentation. We had several workshops as well. And what were the workshops about? Surveillance.