[ecrea] CfP EuroCPR2015

Subject: Call for Abstracts - 30th European Communications Policy 
Research Conference “New intermediaries in the hyperconnected society”  
23-24 March 2015 CEPS Brussels

Drastic changes have occurred over the last decade in the ICT sector. 
The blurring of boundaries between previously distinct sectors is 
accelerating, and even the traditional four-layer representation of the 
ecosystem is being challenged by the emergence of a variety of platforms 
and networks, which display various degrees of openness and patterns of 
interaction with end users. More specifically, the emergence of 
Over-The-Top (OTT) players, the growing importance of Content Delivery 
Networks, the “platformization” of the application layer, and upcoming 
developments in cloud computing, the Internet of Things and 
Machine-to-Machine communications suggest that the ICT ecosystem is 
quickly expanding and transforming, and will likely change again in the 
years to come, with hardly predictable effects in terms of end users’ 
experience and policy/regulatory challenges.

One very important effect of this evolution is an ongoing process of 
“dis-intermediation” and “re-intermediation” of many services and 
markets. The emergence of giant aggregators and new platform operators 
at various layers of the ecosystem leads to an ongoing process of 
transformation, which challenges policymakers in many areas of law. To 
name a few: competition policy suffers as market definition, market 
power, collection of evidence and the finding of abusive behavior become 
much more challenging in this environment than in other, more 
traditional domains, and struggles to capture the new tensions that 
arise when companies attempt to leverage their points of control over 
customer relationships to achieve prominence in digital value chains; as 
a consequence, also EU e-communications regulation, traditionally based 
on competition law concepts and focused on the infrastructure layer of 
the ecosystem, appears in great need of a thorough review; privacy and 
data protection legislation struggle with the emergence of cloud 
computing and big data, which create new trade-offs between security, 
customization and privacy; copyright law divides scholars, with some 
favouring stronger enforcement and others invoking the end of authors’ 
commercial rights. Increasingly, the ongoing transformation and 
expansion of the ecosystem conquer new territories, challenging also 
social policy, education, financial services and many other fields: this 
leads to further pressure on the “new intermediaries” in terms of 
behaviour vis-à-vis unaffiliated service providers and end users.

As the evolution of the ecosystem is faster and more international than 
the regulatory process, the effectiveness of many is challenged. The 
same can be said for enforcement. This timing problem further empowers 
new platform operators and aggregators (the “new intermediaries”), to 
the extent that they are also increasingly called to implement and 
enforce public policy through private means, as is increasingly the case 
for privacy and the right to be forgotten, cyber-security and critical 
information infrastructure protection, net neutrality, search 
neutrality, etc. To what extent this tendency will be confirmed in the 
future, and to what extent should the new intermediaries be called to 
take responsibility for rule enforcement, is matter for discussion.

The 30th EuroCPR conference will take place in Brussels on March 23-24, 
2015 and will be dedicated to this set of issues, and their consequences 
for EU policy in several domains, from e-communications regulation to 
privacy and data protection, intellectual property, industrial policy, 
the digital agenda, media pluralism, universal access, and many others.

WE INVITE PAPERS ON THE FOLLOWING SUBJECTS

Societal impacts of the emerging ICT ecosystem. Themes in this track 
might include the impact of new technologies and platforms on universal

access to information, the potential divide created by the lack of 
digital literacy, the future of welfare policies such as the provision 
of healthcare, the

future of the job market in light of emerging developments.

Direct access or new forms of intermediation? What are the respective 
business cases of direct access and forms of intermediations? What are

the relevant business models? What changes are they triggering on 
incumbent players?

The role of neutrality, interoperability and openness at all layers of 
the ICT ecosystem. To what extent neutrality, interoperability and openness

are always in the interest of the end user? Do they have an impact on 
key goals such as static and dynamic competition, data protection, 
intermediary

liability? And, would the current re-intermediation lead to the end of 
the Internet’s end-to-end architecture?

Model(s) of competition/issue of dominance: The changing nature of 
competition is evolving with the growing role of these OTT players, with 
the

growing role of Internet intermediaries. How to assess dominance in 
multisided markets?

Regulation of OTTs and other intermediaries: is there a need extending 
legacy regulation to OTT players or introducing new more comprehensive

regulation? Other regulatory issues that fall in this track include 
privacy protection, intellectual property rights, Net neutrality.

The need to revisit existing policies. In some policy domains the need 
to reach a level playing field between competing intermediaries is often

evoked. Moreover, often policies are designed to fit a specific 
territorial organization (country, region). The new players are not only 
acting outside the

former legacy silos but also located outside the territory in which a 
policy is implemented (e.g quotas and funding obligations). Are these 
policies still

valid, their goals still legitimate in a digital environment. Or are new 
policies to be designed ad hoc? Key EU legislation affected by these

developments includes the e-communications framework, the network and 
information security directive, the data protection regulation, the e

commerce directive and others.

In line with the EuroCPR philosophy, we welcome papers that reflect on 
the policy/business and policy/legal dimensions of the topics listed 
above as well as on their societal and economic implications. We welcome 
papers that compare policy trends in Europe and other regions of the 
world, and particularly encourage the submission of empirical work. 
Please note that also papers that are relevant to the overall conference 
theme, but not directly related to the suggested themes and topics, will 
be considered for participation in the conference. All papers will be 
assessed by a panel of independent reviewers.

A selection of EuroCPR papers will be published in journals such as

Communications & Strategies;

Telecommunications Policy; and

Info


IMPORTANT DATES

Call for papers: 20 September 2014

Deadline for abstract submission: 31 October 2014

Notification of selected abstracts: 30 November 2014

Deadline for submitting final papers: 1 March 2015

EuroCPR2015 Conference: 23-24 March 2015


ABSTRACTS

Abstracts should be no longer than 700 words and should address the 
research question, outline the main results, theory, methods and data 
(as appropriate) and highlight the policy relevance.

Euro-CPR is using the Easychair online submission system. To submit an 
abstract to EuroCPR 2015 please go to the EuroCPR 2015 online submission 
page at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eurocpr2015

If you do not have an account with easychair you must set one up. If you 
have used easychair as an author or reviewer for a previous conference, 
you can reuse your existing password and account. Please ensure that 
your abstract is anonymised. You will be invited to enter your personal 
invitation into a separate section.

If you have questions please contact (eurocpr2015 /at/ easychair.org)

All abstracts will be subject to a blind review procedure by the members 
of the EuroCPR Scientific Committee. The members are listed at 
http://www.eurocpr.org/scientific-committee.html

REGISTRATION

Registration will open on the 3rd of November 2014 at www.eurocpr.org

The conference fee is 390 Euro (290 Euro for PhD students).
ABOUT EuroCPR
EuroCPR is organised annually with the ambition to contribute 
constructively and critically to European Information Society Policy 
developments. The conference addresses the use of ICT throughout society 
and economy as well as the evolution of the ICT and media sectors. 
EuroCPR uniquely brings together academia, policy makers, and industry 
representatives in order to facilitate systematic interaction and 
critical analysis of both the highest academic excellence and the 
maximum policy and industrial relevance. The conference takes place most 
often in a single room, with sessions consisting of two presentations 
with discussants, and a general debate. The format of the conference is 
deliberately kept small - with a maximum of 80 participants - favouring 
quality over quantity and encouraging a high level of interaction. 
EuroCPR invites abstracts for theoretically and empirically grounded 
papers that reflect critically on the Digital Agenda as such and on 
factors contributing to progress towards EU public policy goals so far.

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