question 1 -

Ray has recently been appointed as the Manager for BBQ and Outdoor Limited, an Irish company that sells barbeques and outdoor furniture. In his first week in the job, Ray realises that company has no data protection officer so sets about appointing one. He decides to appoint JD, a marketing assistant, as the data protection officer as JD sometimes helps Ray when his computer isn't working. Ray doesn't think that JD has any formal IT qualifications or experience, but he thinks that he's good with computers.

After two weeks in the position of DPO, JD comes to Ray with a concern that he has been revising the contract with BBQ and Outdoor Limited's external marketing company. The contract doesn't appear to deal with data protection. Ray decides not to renegotiate the contract, he thinks the marketing company will try to seek more money if the contract is renegotiated.

Identify any potential legal issues in the above scenario and briefly outline the law on that issue(s).

Question 2

Jim works in the marketing department of TVGAMEBOX.com which is a company that provides a television box that adds games to a user's existing tv subscription and is based in Cork. Jim has been missing his sales targets for the past few months and is coming under pressure from his boss.

The tv game box needs to connect remotely to the customer's existing tv box with their existing tv provider. However, a lot of tv boxes aren't compatible with the game box but there is an expensive adaptor that can be bought from another company that will make it compatible with all tv provider boxes.

Jim is behind again this month on his sales targets again. He decides that he needs to do something to boost his sales figures, so he begins telling customers that the game box is compatible with all existing tv boxes in the hope that when they find out that their tv box is not compatible, they will just buy the adaptor.

Identify any potential legal issues in the above scenario and briefly outline the law on that issue(s).

Question 3

Laptops4college is a shop that provides laptops specifically marketed at students in Ireland. In order to get a better idea of the demographic of students in college in Ireland, they decide to run a survey. The survey asks the participants of the survey to check several boxes identifying their age range, college course they are taking and whether or not they currently own a laptop. At the end of the survey there is a line for participants to enter their email address as each participant is being entered into a draw to win a 50 voucher for Laptops4college.

Sophie, who is the Marketing Manager of the company, is not concerned with any data protection issues and decides not to check in with the legal team as the information being collected in the survey questions are anonymised i.e. a student cannot be identified from their age range.

Identify any potential legal issues in the above scenario and briefly outline the law on that issue(s).