30th European Communications Policy Research Conference
“New intermediaries in the hyperconnected society”
23-24 March 2015
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Place du Congrés 1, Brussels (Belgium)
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
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 “reintermediation” 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 24-25, 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, the journal of policy, regulation and strategy for telecommunications, information and
media.
Practical Information:
Important dates
Call for papers: 20 September 2014
Deadline for abstract submission: 31 October 2014
Notification of selected abstracts: 30 November 20014
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.
Abstract
should
be
submitted
through
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eurocpr2015
the
online
submission
system
at
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. 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 [email protected].
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.