It is great to see James Macintyre’s (Affinity’s Technical Director)  comments on Article13 in this weeks Computer Weekly:

Apart from the privacy aspect, there are significant security concerns over the fact that all content must be filtered for any possible instances of copyright infringement. If the content recognition has been supplied as a service, that means an external party could potentially be scanning confidential or sensitive information. “Technologically, you could provide that software as a service, plug-in,” says James Macintyre, technical director of Affinity Digital. “However, I would have some severe reservations as to how that data is interrogated.”

If the filtering is provided internally, then, according to the GDPR, these companies will not just be classed as data controllers (as the hosting company will retain user data), but also as data processors, because the filtering of the files will be classified as data processing under the terms of the GDPR. “Article 13 very much muddies the water, as you would need to be declared as a processor of that data,” says Macintyre. “This adds another layer of complexity to a project and so increases costs.”

Read more at:  https://goo.gl/HH36Jm

Image credit: Computer Weekly copy by: Peter Ray Allison