Digital Platforms and Global Law focuses on digital platforms and identifies their relevant legal profiles in terms of transnational and international law. It qualifies digital platforms as private legal orders, which exercise the legislative, executive, and (para)jurisdictional power within them. Starting from this assumption, the author studies the relationship between these orders and state, transnational, and international orders and concludes that the power of states to impose rules on platforms is different in terms of their external (in relation to other platforms and states) and internal (in their own legal system) action.
The Internet is not an unchartered territory. On the Internet, norms matter. They interact, regulate, are contested and legitimated by multiple actors. But are they diverse and unstructured, or are they part of a recognizable order? And if the latter, what does this order look like? This collected volume explores these key questions while providing new perspectives on the role of law in times of digitality. The book compares six different areas of law that have been particularly exposed to global digitality, namely laws regulating consumer contracts, data protection, the media, financial markets, criminal activity and intellectual property law. By comparing how these very different areas of law have evolved with regard to cross-border online situations, the book considers whether cyberlaw is little more than "the law of the horse", or whether the law of global digitality is indeed special and, if so, what its characteristics across various areas of law are. The book brings together legal academics with expertise in how law has both reacted to and shaped cross-border, global Internet communication and their contributions consider whether it is possible to identify a particular mediality of law in the digital age. Examining whether a global law of digitality has truly emerged, this book will appeal to academics, students and practitioners of law examining the future of the law of digitality as it intersects with traditional categories of law.
"Abstract Global legal pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the twenty-first century"--
Studies in Employment and Social Policy Volume 56 Digitalization, far from being solely a technological issue, has broad implications in the social, labour, and economic spheres. It leads to dangers as well as to new chances for the workforce, and thus labour law must develop effective ways to both protect workers and allow them to profit from new technological developments. The most thorough book of its kind, this collection of expert essays provides an abundance of well-thought-out material for understanding the consequences of digitalization for the labour market and industrial relations. Recognizing that only an international perspective can make it possible to face the challenges of the present (and the future), renowned authorities from the International Labour Organization and the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law, as well as outstanding labour law professors, examine in depth such salient issues as the following: transformation of production systems; the spread of artificial intelligence; precariousness and exploitation in the gig economy; lessons learned from COVID-19; employment status of platform workers; new cross-border issues; rights to trade union association and collective bargaining; role of the State in the new digital labour market; and blurred lines between work and private life. Thanks to the international team of contributors, the issues are dealt with from a variety of overlapping perspectives and points of view, combining aspects of labour law, commercial law, corporate governance, and international law. Highlighting the need to adapt, especially through the right to training, work, and professionalism with respect to the new technological landscape, the book draws on legislative, judicial, and theoretical initiatives suggesting ways of responding positively to the requests for protection that arise in the new forms of production. A uniquely valuable tool for study and reflection for policymakers and academics, the book is also sure to be valued by entrepreneurs, managers, consultants, corporate lawyers, judges, human rights experts, and trade unionists who are interested in the issues of labour, industrial relations, and social rights in European and international contexts.
Providing a unique and clearly structured tool, this book presents an authoritative collection of carefully selected global case studies. Some of these are considered global due to their internationally relevant subject matter, whilst others demonstrate the blurring of traditional legal categories in an age of accelerated cross-border movement. The study of the selected cases in their political, cultural, social and economic contexts sheds light on the contemporary transformation of law through its encounter with conflicting forms of normativity and the multiplication of potential fora.
Across the world, regulators and policy makers are grappling with how to establish a competitive, safe and fair online environment that also safeguards users’ fundamental rights as citizens. Ahead of the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), this book “Digital markets and online platforms: new perspectives on regulation and competition law“, presents CERRE’s latest contribution to the debate with concrete policy recommendations. Together, the policy recommendations in this book present a roadmap that should be pursued for EU policy makers to safeguard competition and innovation in digital platform markets. They can be organised into three key areas for action: (i) More effective enforcement, (ii) increased transparency and switching easiness, and (iii) providing access to key innovation capabilities. “The need to safeguard fair and vibrant competition, which is also seen as an important driving factor for innovation, is nothing new for policy makers. However, the characteristics and complexities of digital markets have challenged some of the traditional approaches.” – Jan Krämer, editor of the book and CERRE Academic Co-Director The book’s recommendations highlight that platform transparency and associated data collection by authorities, as well as data sharing by platforms (initiated through consumers or authorities), are the two most important overarching policy measures for platform markets in the near future. They facilitate enforcement, consumer choice, and innovation capabilities in the digital economy. The contents of this book were presented and debated during a CERRE live debate with guest speakers Anne Yvrande-Billon (Arcep’s Director of Economic, Market and Digital Affairs), MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courtin (Vice-President of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs) and Javier Espinoza (Financial Times’ EU Correspondent covering competition and digital policy).
Controversy shrouds sharing economy platforms. It stems partially from the platforms’ economic impact, which is felt most acutely in certain sectors: Uber drivers compete with taxi drivers; Airbnb hosts compete with hotels. Other consequences lie elsewhere: Uber is associated with a trend toward low-paying, precarious work, whereas Airbnb is accused of exacerbating real estate speculation and raising the cost of long-term rental housing. While governments in some jurisdictions have attempted to rein in the platforms, technology has enabled such companies to bypass conventional regulatory categories, generating accusations of “unfair competition” as well as debates about the merits of existing regulatory regimes. Indeed, the platforms blur a number of familiar distinctions, including personal versus commercial activity; infrastructure versus content; contractual autonomy versus hierarchical control. These ambiguities can stymie legal regimes that rely on these distinctions as organizing principles, including those relating to labour, competition, tax, insurance, information, the prohibition of discrimination, as well as specialized sectoral regulation. This book is organized around five themes: technologies of regulation; regulating technology; the sites of regulation (local to global); regulating markets; and regulating labour. Together, the chapters offer a rich variety of insights on the regulation of the sharing economy, both in terms of the traditional areas of law they bring to bear, and the theoretical perspectives that inform their analysis. Published in English.
Digital Technologies and the Law of Obligations critically examines the emergence of new digital technologies and the challenges they pose to the traditional law of obligations, and discusses the extent to which existing contract and tort law rules and doctrines are equipped to meet these new challenges. This book covers various contract and tort law issues raised by emerging technologies – including distributed ledger technology, blockchain-based smart contracts, and artificial intelligence – as well as by the evolution of the internet into a participative web fuelled by user-generated content, and by the rise of the modern-day collaborative economy facilitated by digital technologies. Chapters address these topics from the perspective of both the common law and the civil law tradition. While mostly focused on the current state of affairs and recent debates and initiatives within the European Union regulatory framework, contributors also discuss the central themes from the perspective of the national law of obligations, examining the adaptability of existing legal doctrines to contemporary challenges, addressing the occasional legislative attempts to deal with the private law aspects of these challenges, and pointing to issues where legislative interventions would be most welcomed. Case studies are drawn from the United States, Singapore, and other parts of the common law world. Digital Technologies and the Law of Obligations will be of interest to legal scholars and researchers in the fields of contract law, tort law, and digital law, as well as to legal practitioners and members of law reform bodies.
