In 1995, AOL still charged by the hour for dial-up Internet access, Stanford Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin were a year away from launching the research project that would become Google, and Mark Zuckerberg celebrated his 11th birthday. Fewer than 1 percent of European Union residents were Internet users.
That was the year the EU adopted its Data Protection Directive, which regulates the collection, processing and storage of personal information in Europe. Fast forward to the age of cloud computing, social networking and online behavioral advertising, and the antiquated rules were in need of a face-lift. After more than two years of consultations with industry, governments and individuals, on Jan. 25 the European Commission (EC) released its draft General Data Protection Regulation, an Internet-era revision that will replace the 1995 directive.
