Introduction to Technology Law Lecture Notes - Law and Technology
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Course
RGPSP50105
Institution
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RuG)
Introduction to Technology Law Lecture Notes - Law and Technology (introduction to the understanding of the interaction between law and technology) (first year, LLB at the University of Groningen).
Technology around us and Law
- Technologies while working at home or on the move.
- Technologies making our lives easier.
- Robots, liability? Do they have a legal personality? Not yet.
- Technology in public spaces.
- Technology helps us make decisions.
What does it mean to have all this technology around us (not just individual things like robots)?
Three functions of Law
1. Relations between the state and individuals.
+ Examples:
- Week 3: Cyber-speech (what can we say)(fundamental rights, the main
body responsible for human rights is the state. They have an obligation to
protect them for individuals and set parameters) and social networking.
- Week 4: Privacy and data protection in the information society (right to
self-determination, right to be forgotten).
- Week 6: Criminal activity in the digital society (the state on behalf of the
community, decides what type of behavior should be considered legal and
which type of punishment should come with that).
2. Relations between states (how do states relate to each other and how do we govern the
internet of these technologies, what are the best means to do this?) Is it only about
states? There are more actors.
- Week 2: Governance in the Digital Environment
3. Relations between people (legal persons, when we buy something online, for example)
- Week 3: Cyber-speech and social networking
- Week 4: Privacy and data protection in the information society
- Week 5: Intellectual Property and the information society: What is property in an
online context?
- Week 7: e-Commerce
- B2B
- C2B
What is technology Law? Is it new?
Two lines of argument:
1. No need for new law… use old principles for new realities. Technology law is nonsense.
It’s like calling the law of the horse only because there are horses in the street. What we
need with respect to technology is to make sure that the principles of law that we know
work well and are able to adapt and be flexible.
2. Today's technologies are so different that we need new laws and new legal principles.
Technologies that we have is everywhere. We cannot communicate with the government
if we do not go to some complex computer system, etc. The complexity means that we
cannot just have the principles that we have and hope that they are flexible enough and
, courts would be able to interpret them. This would not be enough because it would lead
to uncertainty. Furthermore, there are areas where we have gone beyond what we know
until now (for example, AI, what time of law do we need?).
What’s in a name? ‘Technology Law’
Do we need to call the law(s) applying to technology, technology law?
- Law of the horse? => “the best way to learn the law applicable to specialized endeavors
is to study general rules.
Lost of cases deal with sales of horses; others deal with people kicked by horses; still,
more deal with the licensing and racing of horses, or with the care veterinarians give to
horses, or with prizes at horse shows. Any effort to collect these strands into a course on
‘The Law of the Horse0 is doomed to be shallow and to miss unifying principles.” (F.H.
Easterbrook, 1996).
1996 => Beginning of the opening up of the internet for more commercial life.
Cyber-law? Easterbrook said no.
VS
- The regulation of technology is becoming gradually more complex… it is not just an
application of long-standing principles, nor is it just a collection of new laws. The
‘disruptive’ effect of technology law is a separate area of law.
Proposal of the EP to the EU Commission: AI act (new regulation on how to regulate AI).
We need a law that regulates AI or the instruments that AI is using. It is not a law yet but
it is a proposal that the EP made to the EU Commission.
Is it only about ‘law’?
The group that said that it is complex also started to see different arguments coming up: Which
technologies have been one step forward that we will probably be regulating the behaviour of
people. Not only is true laws, such as legislation but also the way the design of the technology
itself is (this would determine also how we regulate it).
- Example of the design rule:
+ Sleeping app? It is designed to put you first into a stage where you can calm
down and then it calculates every heartbeat, etc. By doing this it starts
determining and leading you into different directions.
+ Email: The data limits what we can do and what we cannot.
How to Think about Law, Regulation, and Technology: Book Code and other laws of cyberspace
by Lyria Bennett Moses.
- The way programs and our network are designed determines also our behavior.
What technologies are we talking about? (Information Technologies: Technologies based
on Data)
Shift into the digital world - So what does this mean from a legal perspective?
- Shift from rivalrous to nonrivalrous goods.
- From single ownership to more users at once: If I have borrowed the umbrella from
someone, while I am using it that person cannot use it. However, the case of the
enjoyment of Netflix does not preclude the enjoyment of Netflix by other people.
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