Alexander Hanf

(Address Redacted)
Sunday, 31 May 2015
Andrus Ansip
Vice President, European Commission

Gnther Oettinger
Member of the European Commission

Robert Madelin
Director General, DG Connect

Professor Udo Helmbrecht

Executive Director of ENISA

Julia Reda,
Member of the European Parliament

Re: Annual Privacy Forum

Dear All,
I am writing to you with regards to a serious issue which has come to my
attention whilst advising organisations wishing to submit papers for the Annual
Privacy Forum in Luxembourg 7-8 October 2015. The event is being organised
by ENISA and DG Connect and I have included Ms. Julia Reda MEP in this
correspondence due to her work on Copyright reform.
One of the requirements for submitting a paper and thus have the potential
opportunity to deliver a presentation at the event, is for submitters to surrender
all intellectual property rights to Springer (a private company) as follows:
Copyright form
Each contribution must be accompanied by a Springer copyright
form, a so-called 'Consent to Publish' form. Modified forms are not
acceptable.
Authors will be asked to transfer the copyright of the paper to the
Springer. This will ensure the widest possible protection and
dissemination of information under copyright laws. 1
The contents of the copyright form state:
1 Rights Granted
Author hereby grants and assigns to Springer International
Publishing AG, Cham (hereinafter called Springer) the exclusive,
sole, permanent, world-wide, transferable, sub-licensable and
unlimited right to reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, make
available or otherwise communicate to the public, translate, publicly
perform, archive, store, lease or lend and sell the Contribution or
1 http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0 (Accessed:
31st May 2015)

parts thereof individually or together with other works in any

language, in all revisions and versions (including soft cover, book
club and collected editions, anthologies, advance printing, reprints
or print to order, microfilm editions, audiograms and videograms), in
all forms and media of expression including in electronic form
(including offline and online use, push or pull technologies, use in
databases and networks for display, print and storing on any and all
stationary or portable end-user devices, e.g. text readers, audio,
video or interactive devices, and for use in multimedia or interactive
versions as well as for the display or transmission of the
Contribution or parts thereof in data networks or seach engines), in
whole, in part or in abridged form, in each case as now known or
developed in the future, including the right to grant further timelimited or permanent rights. For the purposes of use in electronic
forms, Springer may adjust the Contribution to the respective form
of use and include links or otherwise combine it with other works.
For the avoidance of doubt, Springer has the right to permit others
to use individual illustrations and may use the Contribution or
advertising purposes.
The copyright of the Contribution will be held in the name of
Springer. Springer may take, either in its own name or in that of
copyright holder, any necessary steps to protect these rights against
infringement by third parties. It will have the copyright notice
inserted into all editions of the Contribution according to the
provisions of the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) and dutifully
take care of all formalities in this connection in the name of the
copyright holder.2
The copyright form then goes on to further restrict the author of any commercial
rights:
3 Rights Retained by Author
Author retains, in addition to uses permitted by law, the right to
communicate the content of the Contribution to other scientists, to
share the Contribution with them in manuscript form, to perform or
present the Contribution or to use the content for noncommercial internal and educational purposes, provided the
Springer publication is mentioned as the 1 28.01.2014 14:07 2
original source of publication in any printed or electronic materials.
Author retains the right to republish the Contribution in any
collection consisting solely of Authors own works without charge
subject to ensuring that the publication by Springer is properly
credited and that the relevant copyright notice is repeated
verbatim.
(emphasis added)
I have been working with a number of commercial entities who were interested in
submitting a paper for the call and presenting their privacy enhancing solutions
at the forum but due to the unusual copyright terms required have decided they
are no longer able to submit their papers as it would significantly interfere with
2 ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/LNCS-Springer_Copyright_Form.pdf
(Accessed: 31st May 2015)

their intellectual property rights in such a way as to damage their commercial

interests.
It is simply unacceptable for the European Commission and ENISA to organise an
event which requires participants to surrender their intellectual property rights to
a private company a company which can then use those properties for their
own material gain whilst at the same time preventing the original authors from
doing so. To do so creates an unfair commercial advantage to Springer.

As such, I urge all parties involved to address and resolve this situation removing
the existing copyright requirements and restrictions and returning control of
those rights to the original authors. Furthermore, given that the deadline for
submissions is today, it is only fair that the deadline be extended for a
reasonable period to allow those organisations which did not submit due to these
copyright issues, the opportunity to complete their submissions.
Finally, the event web site should be updated to include information that the
copyright requirements have been changed and any associated social media
accounts should publish this as a status update accordingly.
Sincerely,

Alexander Hanf
Privacy Consultant