Blog Post – information labs

September 3, 2026

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This: Three Features That Put a Child on the Bottom Line

For some background music when reading this post, we encourage you to (re)discover the Eurythmics performing “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”. The previous post in this series, You Spin Me Round, took the three features built to keep a child scrolling: the feed that never ends, the video that plays itself, and the notification built for return. The proposed fix was to switch off the harmful pattern by default, with the possibility to switch...

Blog Post, digital rights, internet policy, technology

September 1, 2026

You Spin Me Round: Three Features Built to Keep a Child in the Loop

For some background music when reading this post, we encourage you to (re)discover Dead or Alive performing "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)". The opening post in this series, Non, a Ban Is Not a Plan, described how the French Conseil constitutionnel struck down the under-15 ban because the legislator had set out to address the risks posed by certain features of social media services and then wrote a rule about the user’s age...

Blog Post, digital rights, internet policy, technology

August 27, 2026

Non, a Ban Is Not a Plan: France Struck Down the Ban, Meta Settled on Features

For some background music when reading this post, we encourage you to (re)discover Michel Polnareff’s “La poupée qui fait non”. France adopted its under-15 social media ban on 21 July 2026 but hit a major roadblock a few weeks before its prohibition was due to take effect. The Conseil constitutionnel censured the central provision of the ban on 14 August, and the reasoning for its “Non” travels far beyond France. While the court did accept...

Blog Post, digital rights, European policy, internet policy, technology

July 1, 2026

Two Megaphones and an Empty Room: The Need to Write the Copyright Reform for the Empty Seats

The EU copyright review is being argued by two blocs of private interests. The party that will live with the result, the public, was never really in the room. That was a choice by those who drafted the consultation. That is not a good thing. Two private interests are shouting at each other across the European Commission's copyright review, and the room they are shouting in is empty. On one side stand rightholders. On the...

artificial intelligence, Blog Post, copyright

June 24, 2026

Ownership 2.0: A Gamer, a Librarian, and a Random Mum Walk Into a Bar…

A video gamer, a librarian, and a random mum walk into a bar. That could be the start of a great joke. Sadly, it is not. It reflects a convergence of interests that most EU policymakers have not yet noticed: three communities, fighting separately, over the same broken promise. The European Parliament’s IMCO Committee meets today, 24 June 2026, to examine digital ownership under the heading “Ownership 2.0.” What that entails, whether the Members...

Blog Post, copyright

June 22, 2026

Brussels Revisits Copyright – Part 3: Why an Optional Research Exception Is No Exception at All

This is the third and final installment in a series analysing the European Commission's current call for evidence on EU copyright rules. Part 1 examined live content piracy and the fundamental rights implications of enforcement without safeguards. Part 2 examined the push for mandatory AI training licences and why the mechanism would harm the creators it claims to protect. This post focuses on the research exception: a provision that has been optional for twenty-five...

artificial intelligence, Blog Post, copyright

June 17, 2026

Brussels Revisits Copyright – Part 2: Why Mandatory AI Licensing Is Not a Silver Bullet And Could Ricochet

This is the second installment in a three-part series analysing the European Commission's current call for evidence on EU copyright rules. Part 1 examined live content piracy and the fundamental rights implications of enforcement without safeguards. This post focuses on text and data mining (TDM) and the push for mandatory AI training licences; the third piece will explore the research exception. The European Commission's call for evidence to support its review of the Directive on...

artificial intelligence, Blog Post, copyright

June 15, 2026

Brussels Revisits Copyright – Part 1: Why the Rush to Block Live Sports Piracy Threatens Fundamental Rights

This is the first installment in a three-part series analyzing the European Commission’s current call for evidence on EU copyright rules. This post focuses on live content piracy; subsequent pieces will explore text and data mining (TDM) and the research exception. The European Commission has launched a call for evidence, which closes on 25 June, to support two parallel workstreams: the review of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DCDSM); and, the preparatory work...

artificial intelligence, Blog Post, copyright

June 12, 2026

Did IMCO Forget That Consumer Protection Is in Its DNA?

The IMCO draft opinion on the Digital Networks Act (DNA), reported by Euractiv and circulated after a Politico leak, takes the Commission’s already-imperfect proposal and systematically worsens it on net neutrality across three dimensions simultaneously. The central move — making the conciliation mechanism mandatory — does what the Commission explicitly declined to do: it builds a structural pathway for network fees directly into EU telecoms law. In parallel, a joint statement signed by almost 40...

Blog Post, European policy, internet policy