News

CENTR has published its Report on ICANN69, which took place virtually between 13-15 and 19–22 October 2020. This report focuses on the Country Code Names Supporting Organisation (ccNSO) and the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) sessions.

On 7 October 2020 CENTR held it’s 64th General Assembly, reducing the usual full day meeting in Brussels to a virtual morning session.

In a nutshell: Three European Parliament committees adopted their own-initiative reports on the Digital Services Act. The European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) published its Draft Report on the European strategy for data. The European Commission proposed a temporary e-Privacy Directive derogation to combat child sexual abuse, and published its first report on the status of the rule of law across the EU. The European Data Protection Board published guidelines on the concepts of “data controller” and “data processor”. The Advocate General (AG) of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) Szpunar issued a non-binding opinion in a case concerning hyperlinking.

CENTR has released an animated video on ccTLDs and their technical role in relation to online content.

On 6 October, CENTR held its annual Registrar Day online, welcoming a record number of participants. Whilst the face-to-face aspect was greatly missed, the fact that the meeting was held online made it far easier for people to join, including many new faces!

On Thursday 17 September, the Administrative Working Group met online for their autumn workshop. The event was attended by one of the highest number of attendants for a stand-alone workshop, with over 25 registries and many new faces.

In a nutshell: Germany took over the presidency of the Council of the EU starting from 1 July. The European Commission published the EU Security Union Strategy and the EU strategy for a more effective fight against child sexual abuse. It is also planning to revise the intellectual property rights protection framework in the EU and is currently consulting the public on its eIDAS Regulation revision plans. The European Parliament’s Committees have finalised a few Opinions on the numerous own-initiative reports to give more context and drive the legislative debate on the Digital Services Act. The European Court of Justice ruled that intellectual property rightholders cannot require social platforms to give out IP addresses, and invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield Decision in its ground-breaking ruling concerning Facebook. The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice issued an opinion in the case about platform liability for intellectual property rights infringements committed by end-users.

Amsterdam, Netherlands and Brussels, Belgium: The European Commission’s upcoming Digital Services Act will be a major piece of regulation that will affect online service providers across the Internet landscape and, ultimately, the Internet itself and its billions of users.

By Polina Malaja, Policy Advisor - CENTR has provided its feedback on an upcoming EU legislative reform - the Digital Services Act (DSA), as a response to the public consultation initiated by the European Commission.

By Monika Ermert, eLance Journalist - For more than half a decade, DNS developers have tried to answer the question of how to switch from a traditional DNS resolver to one that allows the client’s DNS queries and answers to be encrypted. Encrypting DNS queries and answers was in part a reaction to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the widespread interception and surveillance of the internet, including DNS traffic, by intelligence agencies. While DNS over TLS (DoT) was intended to allow for an evolution of traditional DNS operations, it was eventually DNS over HTTPS (DoH) that was first ready for release (see CENTR’s interview with European DNS-engineer Sarah Dickinson from July 2018).