Author: Andrea Monti

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The EU and the rhetoric of fundamental rights

Twitter’s decision to close former US President Trump’s accounts has sparked heated controversy that have confirmed the absence of a vision on the role of fundamental rights in the European political agenda. The analysis of Andrea Monti Originally published in Italian by Formiche.net

In a somewhat reductive way, the closure of the Twitter account of the (soon to be) former US President Donald Trump and, in cascade, the blocking of other network services that hosted platforms related to the American right, have raised alarms about the excessive power assumed by Big Tech. These companies have shown that they can intervene autonomously and according to their agenda in exercising political rights in a sovereign state. Continue reading “The EU and the rhetoric of fundamental rights”

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Peter Doshi and vaccines data: “trust but verify

Peter Doshi’s (denied) request for access to the raw data of the vaccine trial published in the British Medical Journal is a starting point to analyse on the delicate relationship between science and the media by Andrea Monti  – Originally published in Italian by Scienza in rete

Those who practise the scientific method have the stubborn habit (incomprehensible to most) of drawing conclusions from the analysis of data according to the criteria of a research hypothesis and applying a method that allows the inter-subjective verifiability of the results.

This mental attitude is diametrically opposed to those who base their opinions and – worse – decisions on ‘trust’ (often turned into ‘faith’) and therefore on the authority of various eminences. I do not criticise this attitude in the religious sphere, but in the secular one, that of science, yes. If a dogma exists in the practice of science, it is that of the methodical doubt, together with that of the absence of certainty. An experimentally verified theory is valid as long as it is valid. It happened to give an example of which expertise overflows outside the laboratories, with Newton’s gravitation and quantum mechanics. Continue reading “Peter Doshi and vaccines data: “trust but verify”

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Questionable business models affect the perception of the new Facebook/Whatsapp Privacy Policy

Facebook changed its data management strategies and decided to use data generated by WhatsApp. The “people of the network” are up in arms. Many threaten to switch to Telegram or Signal. Some do so. Then everything goes back to the way it was. Originally published in Italian by Infosec.News

It is not the first time that ‘alarms’ about this or that fundamental right have provoked gut reactions that, in practice, translate into little. Once again, as shown by the many data theft cases by this or that multinational company, no one is shocked.

That is how it is, everyone thinks. However, does it have to be that way? Continue reading “Questionable business models affect the perception of the new Facebook/Whatsapp Privacy Policy”

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An early reading of the Facebook v Business Competence trials

Unfair competition by feature plagiarism. The Courts of Milan issue two verdict that might pose severe problems to the software industry by Andrea Monti – originally published in Italian by Diritto di internet

The two judgments of the Tribunal  and the Court of appeal of Milan rewrite the parameters for the assessment of software duplication in the context of deceptive conduct by favouring the external appearance (interface and functionality) over the traditional approach based on the comparison of the analysis (design) and the source code (implementation/expressive method).

The opportunity missed by the judgments, based as to the an on external similarities of the two pieces of software at issue, is to indicate how Article 2(I)(8) (which excludes from copyright protection

the ideas and principles underlying any element of a program, including those underlying its interfaces. The term program also includes the preparatory material for the design of the program itself

 and Art. 45 of Legislative Decree 30/05 which, in paragraph II, excludes the legal protection of mathematical methods (i.e. algorithms).

The effects of these decisions on the software industry, historically based precisely on the replication of functionalities, and the structure of liability under industrial law are still to be assessed.