The Law of Global Digitality – University of Innsbruck
A new book examines how the law regulates our digital future – and how digital developments influence the law. Co-editor of the anthology is Prof. Matthias C. Kettemann from the Institute for Theory and Future of Law.
Global digital law is influenced by private order, embedded in the design of digital services and markets, code-based and more geographically fragmented than a global medium like the internet would suggest.
A new one co-edited by the Innsbruck Internet lawyer Prof. Kettemann open-access published anthology at Routledge shows that the digital transformation has a strong impact on the law, but also that the law can influence the digital transformation and – if the law is set cleverly – can stabilize important social values against digitization processes.
The Internet is not unexplored territory. Standards play a role on the Internet. They interact, regulate, are controversial and are legitimized by numerous actors. But are they diverse and unstructured, or are they part of a recognizable order? Is there a global law of digitality?
This anthology – the first chance attempt to describe the interplay of law and digitality across disciplines and continents – examines these key questions while offering new perspectives on the role of law in times of digital transformation. The book compares different areas of law that are affected by digital developments, namely the laws regulating consumer contracts, data protection, the media, financial markets, criminal activities and, in particular, intellectual property. By comparing how these very different areas of law have in the planned cross-border online situations, the book examines whether the law of global digitality is actually something special and, if so, what characteristics it has in the areas of law.
Digital law is made up of many private regulations. First, digital law, particularly at a cross-border, global level, is largely a product of private order, ie, the making of rules by private parties in primarily a private setting, which includes terms and conditions and domiciliary rights. Private orders are only corrected by public values in exceptional cases.
The law of digitality is embedded in the design of digital services. A second, closely related, feature of global digital law is that it IS largely standardized across jurisdictions, based on standard terms, and WILL be enforced across countries through code. This phenomenon can be observed in most of the areas examined in this book, particularly intellectual property, data protection, consumer contracts, media and financial markets. The law’s emerging response to this standardization challenge is that the legal norms are deeply integrated into the design of the relevant online service. The law is changing from an external, non-digital force to an order embedded in the digital. Code-based digital law supports global digital capitalism.
A third finding of this collection is that Private, contract and code-based law of digitality can be understood as a function of global digital capitalism.
Digital law is also more territorial than might be expected. The digital world is legally fragmented. There is no uniform global law of digitality. Many online services are still targeted to specific local markets and recipients, mainly for commercial reasons (price discrimination) and because of linguistic diversity and different consumer habits. Few, if any, legal issues are fully harmonized on a global scale. National approaches exist in particular in the areas of consumer contracts, data protection and media law, for the contributions in this book that document the differences between European and US approaches. Even in a broad and deeply harmonized area like copyright, difficult cases bordering on infringement and lawful use, such as the liability of sharing platforms, are still dealt with on a national, territorial basis.
Editors: Matthias C. Kettemann, LL.M. (Harvard) is Professor of Innovation, Theory and Legal Philosophy at the Institute for Theory and Future of Law at the University of Innsbruck. Alexander Peukert is a professor of civil and commercial law at the Faculty of Law at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Indra Spieckergen. Dohmann, LL.M. (Georgetown University) holds the chair for public law and administrative law, in particular information law, environmental law and legal theory at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.
information about the book
The law of global digitality
Matthias C. Kettemann, Alexander Peukert, Indra Spiecker called Döhmann (eds.)
ISBN 9781032073699
Edition 2022
272 pages