Baltic Sea (Digital) Region: Staying in the Lead

- Microsoft Corporate Blogs

Today in Stockholm, politicians, businesses and civil society are gathering to mark the 18th annual Baltic Development Forum (BDF) Summit. Since 1999, the Summit has sought to foster cross-sectorial dialogue and find common ground in a rapidly-evolving world. Nowhere is this rapid evolution more noticeable than in the ICT sphere. The Baltic Sea Region has established itself firmly as one of the world’s leading technological hubs, with the right skills, … Read more »

Coding your way to the cloud

- Sylvie Laffarge - Director Philanthropies Europe

Europe’s future lies in the cloud, which has the potential to transform almost every aspect of our lives. But ensuring everyone has the right digital skills to succeed in this new, cloud-based world is no mean feat, and it is certainly an objective far beyond the reach of any one actor. Bringing digital literacy to every European is going to take efforts from all of us, public and private stakeholders … Read more »

Building a cloud for global good

- Brad Smith - President and Chief Legal Officer

Today Satya Nadella and I are in Dublin. It’s the first stop on a trip that will also take us to Paris and Berlin, with Satya also visiting London. We’re spending this week meeting with customers, partners, developers and government leaders. We’ll talk about how the Microsoft Cloud is driving the transformation of businesses and industries across Europe and around the world. We’ll talk about how our customers have harnessed … Read more »

Pardon the “intrusion”: advancing the dialogue on export controls and “intrusion software”

- Cristin Goodwin - Assistant General Counsel, Trustworthy Computing

Since I wrote about Microsoft’s comments on the Proposed Rule under the Wassenaar Arrangement, Microsoft has been continuing to work with the Wassenaar member states and the security community to find a balance between the needs of security researchers and regulators. Today, Microsoft is furthering the conversation by publishing a whitepaper entitled “Rethinking Intrusion Software: Ideas for a more sustainable approach”. In 2013, members of an export control regime known … Read more »

Accessibility in Europe: Progress in helping organizations be inclusive and compliant

- Adina Braha-Honciuc - Government Affairs Manager – Accessibility, Sustainability and Environment Policy

Ensuring an inclusive society starts with the decisions we make. That’s why Microsoft is committed to providing organizations with the information they need to be able to select and use accessible technology. We recently published new conformance statements so that organizations have valuable details on how our products and services meet ETSI EN 301 549 (EN) – the European accessibility standard for public procurement. With 80 million people in the … Read more »

Linking and rethinking EU copyright: an academic perspective

- Prof. Dr. Bernt Hugenholtz

Readers of this blog who have not been following the latest debates in EU copyright law may be surprised to learn that the hottest topic of the day is whether or not simply posting a hyperlink counts as a protected act. The European Court of Justice’s answer to this question has been both yes and no. In a 2014 case, Nils Svensson and Others v Retriever Sverige AB, the court … Read more »

Setting the right framework for future-driven e-communications in Europe

- John Frank - Vice President for EU Government Affairs

Today the Commission announced the new European Electronic Communications Code, the long-awaited reform to the EU’s regulatory framework for electronic communications, a central pillar of the Digital Single Market. Over the past years, affordable and nearly ubiquitous connectivity has led to the emergence of innovative internet-based services, including new kinds of communications applications such as Skype, Viber, Vox.io, FaceTime, Google Voice or WhatsApp, providing greater choice for Europeans from Prague … Read more »

The role of the Legal & Compliance Community in shaping the future of technology

- Dervish Tayyip - Assistant General Counsel, Microsoft

Legal and Compliance professionals have an important role to play in helping shape the future of technology and cloud computing in particular. That was highlighted at today’s 28th Global Legal ConfEx, where I had the opportunity to deliver a keynote discussing the role of the Legal and Compliance community at a time of great uncertainty. The opportunities offered by cloud computing are big, as many of us who work with … Read more »

Our search warrant case: Microsoft’s commitment to protecting your privacy

- John Frank - Vice President for EU Government Affairs

A few weeks ago, we won a major victory for our European customers in a lawsuit we brought against the US Department of Justice. A US court of appeals ruled that US search warrants do not reach our customers’ data stored abroad. We brought this case because we believe that European citizens and organizations want their data protected by European privacy law, and they do not want their emails and … Read more »

Microsoft signs up for Privacy Shield

- John Frank - Vice President for EU Government Affairs

Today (1 August 2016), Microsoft signed up for the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. As one of the first companies, we have submitted our Privacy Shield certification to the U.S. Department of Commerce and we expect it to be approved in the coming days. Going forward, any data which we will transfer from Europe to the United States will be protected by the Privacy Shield’s safeguards. The Privacy Shield is an important … Read more »