General research project on infocommunication
2005-2008

The Institute for Legal Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in cooperation with the Budapest University of Technology and Economics has elaborated an interdisciplinary research project, the main aim of which is to recover the actual legal problems with regard to the transmission of information and content connected to the information society, and to find dogmatically well-based and practically useful solutions to those problems. In order to achieve thas goal the research project principally aims at developing a new legal framework. Consequently, it is of major importance to conduct comparitive analysis on the legal situation in other member states of the European Union while keeping one eye on the special characteristics of the Hungarian markets at the same time.

This legal framework cannot be categorized exclusively by the ordinary categories of law, moreover there should be a mixture of several ’classic’ fields of law, which may in time lead to a new classification of the areas concerned. At the same time, due to the rapidly changing technical environment which is an indispensable condition to the effective research it is necessary to conduct the resarch project in an interdisciplinary manner. Therefore, the legal outcomes of the research will be born in cooperation of several different areas of sciences such as technical, economical and legal sciences, reflecting the current economic course and the actual state of technical development, while exposing the real regulatory problems.

The research program focuses to actual problems with regard to infocommunication networks, and to the content provided on. Since, with regard to networks it is a key issue to achieve sustainable competition, taking into account the special features of networks, on the other hand, according to the content it is in the centre of attention whether who will benefit and under which circumstances of the content transferred, without infringing someone else’s rights.

The main areas of the research project can be summarized in five parts:

1. Research on common problems of ICT laws
2. Electronic Communications Laws
3. Data protection and other issues related to the internet
4. Digital Copyright Law
5. Media Law

During the first year of the three years research program the following research themes were partly or fully prepared, listed according to the above main research areas:

1. Research on common problems of ICT laws
a) The future of regulation - theory of regulation
b) EC Harmonization analysis of the Hungarian legislation - Electronic Communications Law, Online Law, Media Law, Intellectual Property Law

2. Law of Electronic Communications

a) Judicial review of regulatory decisions at national and at Community level, protection of rights
b) The so called Article 7 procedure in the practice
c) Fusion control of the electronic communications market and its implications for market definition in the legal practice of the European Commission
d) Price regulation in liberalised electronic communications markets
e) Double regulatory asymmetry and leverage in the regulation of significant market power
f) Access and interconnection on the electronic communications markets

3. Data protection and other issues related to the internet
a) Analysis of data protection legislation across the European Union
b) Freedom of information and its implications to ICT laws
c) E-government regulation

4. Digital Copyright Law

a) Copyright issues common to the information society
b) Digital Rights Management and the Intellectual Property Law
c) The free utilization of Intellectual Property Law on the internet

5. Media Law

a) Regulation of digital broadcasting and other state tasks
b) Possible regulation of cable television services