With increase in the scope, scale and sophistication of digitisation, the line between fake and real is blurred. In the recent years, digital disinformation in the form of fake news or morphed pictures/videos has become a new normal on internet. Adding to this list are the artificial intelligence generated-Deepfakes. The wide use of deepfakes in cinematography, fake pornography, political campaigns

The debate on the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) is nothing new. Researchers and commentators have highlighted the deficiencies of AI technology regarding visible minorities, women, youth, seniors and indigenous people. Currently, there are several ethical guidelines and recommendations for AI. These guidelines provide ethical principles and humancentred values to guide the creation

 This article reports the findings of a qualitative study of first instance New Zealand employment tribunal decisions concerned with employee dismissal for social media misconduct. There are two main findings. The first relates to the legal approach to employee dismissal for social media misconduct developing in New Zealand. The decisions show New Zealand decision-makers are following the approach

AbstractThis article provides an assessment of the interplay between copyright, contract freedom and antitrust law in the current digital platform economy, as it was settled by the European legal strategy for a (fair) digital single market. It primarily focuses on the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) Proposal, evaluating if competition law instruments represent

AbstractThis article explores the emergence of Automated Vehicles (AVs) in Australia. It will investigate the legal and regulatory terrain. International and domestic approaches are examined to determine potential responses. The regulatory issues emerge partly due to the varied nature of artificial intelligence systems and processes that enable AVs to function. The variations may be due to the chosen

AbstractThe article argues for a sharp analytical distinction between the realms of technology and of law. The question to what extent the law ‘can’ be digitalized relates to technology, whereas the question to what extent it ‘may’ be digitalized falls within the realm of the law. Against this backdrop, it is argued that digital technology does not challenge the law fundamentally. Instead, the crucial

India has recently been flooded with smartphones having features of biometric encryption that allows users to encrypt the data on their devices using their biometric features, such as finger impressions or iris patterns. This technology assures users of precluding impermissible intrusions into their private data. However, this idea behind biometric encryption has witnessed critical considerations in

AbstractThe question of who should own the copyright of a creative work by an artificial intelligence (Al) is as yet largely unanswered. Due to the author’s increased distance from the works being created, the granting of copyright protection to AI has not been forthcoming. This article assesses the prevalence of AI- and computer-generated works in which, beyond the initial input, the works produced

With the ubiquity of cloud computing, criminal investigations today—including exclusively domestic ones—often require access to data across borders. However, the traditional system of cross-border legal cooperation—the Mutual Legal Assistance system—is ill-suited to this development. There is a growing consensus that this system is unsustainable and needs to be reformed or replaced with new alternatives

Several sector-specific studies on EU data protection and cybersecurity frameworks can be found in the literature, but their differing legal domains has hindered the development of a common analysis of the different sets of provisions from a business perspective. This article sets out to bridge this gap, providing a systematic review and a cross-cutting operational analysis of the main legal instruments

This article explores the challenges associated with creative work in the digital economy at both a conceptual and practical level, through the conjoined lenses of labour law and copyright law. We begin by developing a conception of the capitalist work relation and the distinct struggles intrinsic to it. This allows us to better understand the functions of creative work in contemporary ‘digital’ capitalism

AbstractAs artificial intelligence technologies are increasingly deployed by government and commercial entitles to generate automated and semi-automated decisions, the right to an explanation for such decisions has become a critical legal issue. As the internal logic of machine learning algorithms is typically opaque, the absence of a right to explanation can weaken an individual’s ability to challenge

AbstractSmart contracts nowadays start being widely used in various areas of economic and social life. In most cases smart contracts are somehow related to legal contracts: the former may constitute part of a legal contract, an entire contract, or be used to automate a contract performance. Meanwhile, a question whether modern contract law is applicable to smart contracts is rather debatable, since

AbstractAiming to provide better, more personalized care, by harnessing the power of digitalization, the National Health Service (NHS) has employed a strategy of sharing its patients’ information with the private sector, raising questions as to whether it can be trusted as a custodian of its patients’ data. The development of the Streams application by DeepMind, a subsidiary of Google Health UK, illustrates

New Media and Freedom of Expression: Rethinking the Constitutional Foundations of the Public Sphere, by András Koltay, Hart, 2019, ISBN: 978-1-50991-648-1, xx + 260 pp, £72.90.

Developments in data analytics, computational power, and machine learning techniques have driven all branches of the government to outsource authority to machines in performing public functions — social welfare, law enforcement, and most importantly, courts. Complex statistical algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) tools are being used to automate decision-making and are having a significant

Among our mundane and technical concepts, machine learning is currently one of the most important and widely used, but least understood. To date, legal scholars have conducted comparatively little work on its cognate concepts. This article critically examines the use of machine learning technologies to suppress or block access to al-Qaida and IS-inspired propaganda. It will: (i) demonstrate that, insofar

The purpose of this article is to analyse the rules of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Directive on Data Protection in Criminal Matters on automated decision-making and to explore how to ensure transparency of such decisions, in particular those taken with the help of algorithms. Both legal acts impose limitations on automated individual decision-making, including profiling. While

Blockchains are increasingly being used for content distribution, sometimes as an unwanted side-effect of blockchain applications that have other primary purposes, sometimes as intended content distribution. The typical characteristics of a blockchain such as its claimed immutability raise new questions as to what preventive measures can reasonably be demanded from blockchain intermediaries, and administrators

On 12 September 2018 the European Parliament approved the new version of the proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market elaborated by the European Commission in 2016. In order to address problems in protecting content and improve the bargaining position of press publishers against information society service providers, the European Commission decided to intervene on rights,

This paper explores the importance of accountability to data protection, and how it can be built into the Internet of Things (IoT). The need to build accountability into the IoT is motivated by the opaque nature of distributed data flows, inadequate consent mechanisms, and lack of interfaces enabling end-user control over the behaviours of internet-enabled devices. The lack of accountability precludes

Some of research presented in this work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/M010236/1),

This article offers a normative analysis of key blockchain technology concepts from the perspective of copyright law. Some features of blockchain technologies—scarcity, trust, transparency, decentralized public records and smart contracts—seem to make this technology compatible with the fundamentals of copyright. Authors can publish works on blockchain creating a quasi-immutable record of initial ownership

This paper suggests a new approach towards online service provider liability which relies on duty of care. It proposes a concrete compliance framework for online platforms, borrowed from risk regulation, and modelled on anti-money laundering (AML) obligations in the financial sector. First, the prohibition on obliging platforms to monitor content in a general manner under the E-Commerce Directive will

Blockchain technology allows the creation of distributed ledgers. These distribute control among the players rather than requiring a centralised database, and so can reduce costs and speed up transactions. However, when it is used for assets which exist outside the blockchain itself, an unmodified adoption of the technology would bypass legal and regulatory requirements which, for these kinds of assets

The EU Commission is eager to reform the current rules governing Internet Service Providers’ copyright liability. According to the Commission, online services providing access to copyright protected content uploaded by their users without the involvement of right holders have become main sources of access to content online. This affects right holders’ possibilities to determine whether, and under which

The link of lawful domain names to unlawful content is a phenomenon that has not been very topical until recently. Traditionally, domain registries have been off the radar of content-related debates. Enforcement efforts, public discourse and academic research have focused on other intermediaries such as Internet access service providers, hosting platforms, and websites that link to content. This article

Power has a lot to do with knowledge, access to, and utilization of data. But in the context of the debate about power, the question of data quality is hardly ever raised. This is because legal standards for data quality are lacking. The first attempts to regulate this question can be found hidden in Article 6 of the EU Data Protection Directive and in the regulation on scoring in section 28b of the

This edited collection of papers was developed from conference presentations delivered in March 2015 at the Institut d’Etudes Européen, as part of the International Association of Constitutional Law’s ‘Constitutional Responses to Terrorism’ research group. The papers have been updated and formatted in a fairly uniform four-part structure, each dealing with a particular aspect of recent dynamics in

1 This book, which is part of the Hart Studies in Competition Law series, may, at first glance, seem to fall outside the scope of the main areas of interest for many scholars in intellectual property, information technology, and e-commerce law. However, the European Commission’s issuance of a Statement of Objections to Google regarding comparative shopping services, the opening of a formal competition

If the problem of Internet jurisdiction is not solved, the risk is two-fold: national and international legal systems will continue to produce uncertainty and instability, with the burden imposed upon commercial and civil society. The Internet will continue to spiral further into fragments. This outcome will deviate far from that of its initial conception, limiting the capacity for this communications

As the definition of accessibility of cultural heritage changes under the impact of new technologies, public and private actors seek new ways to enhance digital access. The digitisation of 20th Century cultural heritage, however, is severely restricted by the potential subsistence of copyright and related rights. Different solutions have been considered to deal with this problem and, in particular:

‘The whole is more than the sum of its parts.’ This article applies lessons from the concept of ‘emergent properties’ in systems thinking to data privacy law. This concept, rooted in the Aristotelian dictum ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts’, where the ‘whole’ represents the ‘emergent property’, allows systems engineers to look beyond the properties of individual components of a system and

The book reflects a collection of papers presented at a workshop held in October 2015, at the Centre for European Private Law of the Westfälische WilhelmsUniversität Münster, edited by Reiner Schulze and Dirk Staudenmayer and published by Hart Publishing. As the title suggests, the workshop focused on the creation of the Digital Single Market, the changeover to digital economy, and the effects and

The importance of studying data privacy law with a global, comparative perspective has been highlighted quite often in recent years. To enable further research with such a holistic approach, it is essential that we have sufficient literature on how regional, national and even local data protection laws are legislated and enforced. The publication of African Data Privacy Laws, edited by Alex B. Makulilo

The technology underpinning Bitcoin—the blockchain—is acknowledged to offer security, stability and efficiency to online transactions. After a brief introduction to Bitcoin system, I touch upon the most innovative implementation of blockchain technology: the so-called smart contracts, ie programmable computer protocols that are able to self-enforce the terms therein encoded upon certain triggering

This article examines the question of whether the public lending right (PLR) as harmonized under the EU Rental and Lending Directive 2006/115/EC should equally apply to both print books and e-books. This question has been answered in the affirmative by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the recent VOB case. The article argues that extending the PLR exception to e-book lending might

The world is in the midst of a seismic re-scaling, and the electronic communications revolution of the last several decades has made it both much larger and much smaller. Just as the re-scaling that accompanied deployment of the communications and transport technologies of the 19th Century held to issue in the Age of Territoriality, the current re-scaling will have profound effects on our law and governance

Limitations on online tracking are object of a regulatory debate that has shifted to the use of default rules to enhance privacy. The European Union implemented this idea with the Cookies Directive. The Directive aims to change the default system for track­ ing and move to an opt-in system in which data subjects must agree to it beforehand. This article evaluates the Directive’s implementation across

The article responds to a growing number of demands by governmental and non-governmental organisations that call upon the EU institutions to level the legal treatment of digital and physical goods. The article stems from the established criteria for distinguishing between goods and services in the marketing domain, and analyses on the importance attributed to the tangibility and tradability of products

There is already evidence that “governmental mass surveillance emerges as a dangerous habit”. Despite the serious interests at stake, we are far from fully comprehending the ramifications of the systematic and pervasive violation of privacy online. This article underscores the reasons that policy-makers and lawyers must comprehend and value privacy not only as a human rights issue, but also as a fundamental

Law enforcement all over the world is struggling with time-critical access to evidence stored in electronic devices. At times these devices may be located in foreign territories or in cloud service providers’ servers. Considering the decentralization of the Internet and the ubiquity and complexity of cloud computing, the exact location of the data in question may not always be possible to determine

Since the highly influential ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Google Spain case was published, numerous practical issues on the way it will be enforced have arisen. Its effective enforcement makes it necessary to revisit the traditional data protection perceptions. This article first argues that the regulatory structure and the interpretation of the obligations regarding

In this paper we give an introduction to the transition in contemporary surveillance from top down traditional police surveillance to profiling and “pre-crime” methods. We then review in more detail the rise of open source (OSINT) and social media (SOCMINT) intelligence and its use by law enforcement and security authorities. Following this we consider what if any privacy protection is currently given

There has been on-going discussion regarding the alignment of cloud computing services to a range of European policy objectives. This paper provides an outline of key legal and regulatory aspects arising from recent calls for establishing a Europe-only cloud. After covering the background to such calls, it outlines the policy objectives that may underlie the Europe-only cloud proposals. It then considers

The legality of the operation of Google’s search engine, and its liability as an Internet intermediary, has been tested in various jurisdictions on various grounds. In Australia, there was an ultimately unsuccessful case against Google under the Australian Consumer Law relating to how it presents results from its search engine. Despite this failed claim, several complex issues were not adequately addressed

The development of information technology has generated several legal debates. Most of these debates are concerned with substantive rights and obligations. However, the enforcement of these substantive rights and obligations, to a large extent, depends on the effectiveness of procedural laws. This article focuses on one of the most important procedural issues—admissibility of electronic evidence. The

Many scholars and politicians believe privacy by design may turn out to be a strong contribution to improved privacy protection. However, what are the prerequisites and what guidelines should we adopt to make good privacy designs for information systems? The author of this article discusses the significance and potentials of regulatory design for implementing privacy in information systems. He also

Mass digitization projects that have been carried out by libraries and their commercial partners across the Atlantic, such as Google Books and Europeana, are celebrating their 10th birthdays. This article analyses what legal challenges they pose to the copyright law systems, and how the US and EU jurisdictions have responded to them. In particular, the article identifies certain elements in the US

In Lenz v Universal Music Corp, a decision rendered on the 14 September 2015, the Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit states that copyright holders are bound to examine fair use before trying to take down content under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. While this development might appear as a major shift in US copyright law towards a stricter tolerance of frivolous take-down attempts, this comment