Collective Redress – Lessons from Around the Globe
DFF’s fifth Speaker Series will highlight and discuss collective redress mechanisms and case studies from Europe and around the world. The series aims to explore opportunities to harness both collective power and strategic litigation to protect digital rights, in the wake of the EU Representative Actions Directive’s recent entry into force.
Collective Redress Lessons from Around the Globe
Wednesday 18 October 2023 - Wednesday 22 November 2023
With the EU Representative Actions Directive recently entering into force, we believe that collective action will become a crucial legal avenue to harness collective power before national courts to unlock meaningful digital rights protection and enforcement. Our fifth Speaker Series focused on lessons from EU Member States and around the globe on the topic of collective redress.
During the just concluded Speaker Series, we highlighted and discussed collective redress mechanisms and cases from the EU and around the world. It was co-organised with the digiRISE project, and overlapped with our fourth DFF Speaker Series, titled Digital Rights are Charter Rights.
Intersection with the Digital Services Package and other EU regulatory instruments
Wednesday 13 December 2023, 17:00 – 18:20 CET
During this session, we focused on the intersection of the Representative Actions Directive with other EU regulatory instruments such as the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, as well as the upcoming Artificial Intelligence Act.
The conversation was guided by the following questions:
1. What are the main EU regulatory instruments which intersect and are included in the annex of the RAD concerning digital rights?
2. What are the main pathways and opportunities to engage in collective actions to protect and enforce digital rights leveraging these instruments?
3. What are the main challenges to effectively bring collective actions to protect and enforce digital rights leveraging these legal instruments?
4. What is the most important work being done, or that still needs to be done, by courts, governments, civil society organisations and/or social movements in order to seize these opportunities and overcome these challenges?
Rachel Griffin
PhD Candidate and Researcher, Sciences Po
Fernando Hortal Foronda
Digital Policy Officer, BEUC
Case Studies from EU Member States
Wednesday 8 November 2023, 17:00 – 18:20 CET
During this session, we focused on lessons learnt from digital rights cases brought in EU Member States which already had established procedural frameworks and legal cultures around collective redress prior to the entry into force of the Representative Actions Directive. Among these, the case led by The Privacy Collective against Oracle and Salesforce for unlawfully collecting and processing the personal data of internet users in the Netherlands, and the Facebook data breach class action case in Ireland led by Digital Rights Ireland (DRI).
The conversation was guided by the following questions:
1. What collective redress mechanisms and legal frameworks exist in the jurisdictions where these cases were brought?
2. What is the origin story of these litigations?
3. Why was it so important to engage the courts on these issues?
4. What has the litigation achieved so far?
5. What work is still to be done by courts, governments, civil society organisations and social movements around these issues?
Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm
Tech & media law litigator, partner at bureau Brandeis
Antoin O Lachtnain
Director of Digital Rights Ireland (DRI)
Maria José Azar-Baud
International collective redress expert, Associate Professor at University of Paris-Saclay
Lessons Learnt from Southern and East Africa
Thursday 16 November 2023, 17:00 – 18:20 CET
During this session, we focused on lessons learnt from collective actions such as the Facebook Content Moderators v. Meta case in Kenya, as well as environmental class actions in South Africa.
The conversation was guided by the following questions:
1. What collective redress mechanisms and legal frameworks exist in the jurisdictions where these cases were brought?
2. What is the origin story of these litigations?
3. Why was it so important to engage the courts on these issues?
4. What has the litigation achieved so far?
5. What work is still to be done by courts, governments, civil society organisations and social movements around these issues?
Mercy Mutemi
Managing Partner at Nzili and Sumbi Advocates
Lubega Edward
Content moderator and claimant in the case against Meta in Kenya
Nilesthra Padayachee
Director, Richard Spoor Inc. Attorneys
Wednesday 1 November 2023, 17:00 – 18:20 CET
This session focused on the lessons learned from the collective action led by Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, with the support of Victim Advocates International (VAI), against Meta. The case, filed in Ireland, seeks to hold the company accountable for Facebook’s role in spreading the hate speech which fueled the forced displacement and genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar.
The conversation was guided by the following questions:
1. What are the main digital rights, broader human rights issues, and power dynamics at the centre of this case?
2. What is the origin story of the litigation itself? How did you get here?
3. Why was it so important to engage the courts on this issue?
4. What type of collective action did you choose to bring, what were the reasons or the strategy behind that choice, and what do you think others seeking bring collective actions can learn from your approach?
5. What do you hope to achieve with the litigation, and what work still remains to be done by governments, civil society organisations and social movements around these issues?
The conversation was moderated by César Manso- Sayao, Legal Officer at DFF, and includes an audience Q&A
Maung Sawyeddollah
Rohingya youth leader and activist, Founder and Director of the Rohingya Students Network (RSN)
Eva Buzo
Executive Director of Victim Advocates International (VAI)
Wednesday 25 October 2023, 17:00 – 18:20 CET
This session focused on the collective dimension of data protection. During this session, we discussed key data protection case law which presents a collective action dimension as well as collective redress mechanisms starting from existing opportunities in the GDPR.
The conversation was guided by the following questions:
1. How do we understand the collective dimensions of data protection?
2. What is the state of play of the implementation of art. 80 GDPR especially with regards to collective redress mechanisms?
3. Are collective redress mechanisms changing the landscape of EU data protection?
4. What can we learn from successful and/or failed collective action case law regarding both the collective potential of the GDPR and the EU Collective Redress Directive?
The conversation was moderated by Alexandra Giannopoulou, digiRISE project coordinator at DFF, and includes an audience Q&A
Prof. Dr. Gloria González Fuster
Research Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Sinan Akdag
Digital expert, Swedish Consumers' Association
Lessons Learnt from South America
Wednesday 18 October 2023, 17:00 – 18:20 CET
This session focused on lessons learnt from two landmark collective actions in Brazil and Argentina around the topic of facial recognition and biometric mass surveillance: the “ViaQuatro” case in São Paulo, and the “Fugitive Facial Recognition System” case in Buenos Aires.
The conversation was guided by the following questions:
1. What is the origin story of these litigations?
2. What were the main digital rights issues addressed in these cases, what power dynamics were at play, and what is their importance in a broader social context?
3. What collective redress mechanisms exist in the jurisdictions where the cases were brought, and how can they be leveraged to advance digital rights?
4.Why was it so important to engage the courts on this issue?
5. What has the litigation has achieved so far, and what work is still to be done by courts, governments, civil society organisations and social movements around these issues?
The conversation was moderated by César Manso-Sayao, Legal Officer at DFF, and includes an audience Q&A
Camila Leite Contri
Telecommunications and Digital Rights Specialist at the Brazilian Institute for Consumer Protection (Idec)
Luã Cruz
Telecommunications and Digital Rights Specialist at the Brazilian Institute for Consumer Protection (Idec)
Michel Roberto Oliveira de Souza
Public Policy Director at Derechos Digitales
The European Union Representative Actions Directive
Wednesday 11 October 2023, 17:00 – 18:20 CET
This session focused on the recently entered into force EU Representative Actions Directive and the importance for the European digital rights community to implement collective redress mechanisms into their strategic litigation toolboxes.
The conversation was guided by the following questions:
1. What is the objective of the EU Representative Actions Directive (RAD) and what shortcomings to the previous regime does it seek to address?
2. What is the scope of the RAD, and what is its current state of implementation across EU Member States?
3. How can the RAD improve access to justice for digital rights violations on a collective level?
4. What can we learn from collective action mechanisms and case law across different jurisdictions in order to leverage the opportunities afforded by the RAD?
The conversation was moderated by Alexandra Giannopoulou, digiRISE project coordinator at DFF, and includes an audience Q&A
Julia Suderow
Assistant Professor at the University of Deusto and President at Ius Omnibus
Rhonson Salim
Lecturer at Aston Law School, Aston University, UK