Information Technology Law

There has been much discussion of the “right to explanation” in the EU General Data Protection Regulation, and its existence, merits, and disadvantages. Implementing a right to explanation that opens the ‘black box’ of algorithmic decision-making faces major legal and technical barriers. Explaining the functionality of complex algorithmic decision-making systems and their rationale in specific cases is a technically challenging problem. Some explanations may offer little meaningful information to data subjects, raising questions around their value. Data controllers have an interest to not disclose information about their algorithms that contains trade secrets, violates the rights and freedoms of others (e.g. privacy), or allows data subjects to game or manipulate decision-making.

Explanations of automated decisions need not hinge on the general public understanding how algorithmic systems function. Even though such interpretability is of great importance and should be pursued, explanations can, in principle, be offered without opening the black box. Looking at explanations as a means to help a data subject act rather than merely understand, one could gauge the scope and content of explanations according to the specific goal or action they are intended to support.

From the perspective of individuals affected by automated decision-making, we propose three aims for explanations:

(1) to inform and help the individual understand why a particular decision was reached,

(2) to provide grounds to contest the decision if the outcome is undesired, and

(3) to understand what would need to change in order to receive a desired result in the future, based on the current decision-making model.

We assess how each of these goals finds support in the GDPR, and the extent to which they hinge on opening the ‘black box’. We suggest data controllers should offer a particular type of explanation, ‘unconditional counterfactual explanations’, to support these three aims. These counterfactual explanations describe the smallest change to the world that can be made to obtain a desirable outcome, or to arrive at the “closest possible world.” As multiple variables or sets of variables can lead to one or more desirable outcomes, multiple counterfactual explanations can be provided, corresponding to different choices of nearby possible worlds for which the counterfactual holds. Counterfactuals describe a dependency on the external facts that lead to that decision without the need to convey the internal state or logic of an algorithm. As a result, counterfactuals serve as a minimal solution that bypasses the current technical limitations of interpretability, while striking a balance between transparency and the rights and freedoms of others (e.g. privacy, trade secrets).

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence have come concerns about how machines will make moral decisions, and the major challenge of quantifying societal expectations about the ethical principles that should guide machine behaviour. To address this challenge, we deployed the Moral Machine, an online experimental platform designed to explore the moral dilemmas faced by autonomous vehicles. This platform gathered 40 million decisions in ten languages from millions of people in 233 countries and territories. Here we describe the results of this experiment. First, we summarize global moral preferences. Second, we document individual variations in preferences, based on respondents' demographics. Third, we report cross-cultural ethical variation, and uncover three major clusters of countries. Fourth, we show that these differences correlate with modern institutions and deep cultural traits. We discuss how these preferences can contribute to developing global, socially acceptable principles for machine ethics. All data used in this article are publicly available.

Since approval of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016, it has been widely and repeatedly claimed that a 'right to explanation' of decisions made by automated or artificially intelligent algorithmic systems will be legally mandated by the GDPR. This right to explanation is viewed as an ideal mechanism to enhance the accountability and transparency of automated decision-making. However, there are several reasons to doubt both the legal existence and the feasibility of such a right. In contrast to the right to explanation of specific automated decisions claimed elsewhere, the GDPR only mandates that data subjects receive limited information (Articles 13-15) about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of automated decision-making systems, what we term a 'right to be informed'. Further, the ambiguity and limited scope of the 'right not to be subject to automated decision-making' contained in Article 22 (from which the alleged 'right to explanation' stems) raises questions over the protection actually afforded to data subjects. These problems show that the GDPR lacks precise language as well as explicit and well-defined rights and safeguards against automated decision-making, and therefore runs the risk of being toothless. We propose a number of legislative steps that, if taken, may improve the transparency and accountability of automated decision-making when the GDPR comes into force in 2018.

- Result of “the Onlife Initiative,” a one-year project funded by the European Commission to study the deployment of ICTs and its effects on the human condition
- Inspires reflection on the ways in which a hyperconnected world forces the rethinking of the conceptual frameworks on which policies are built
- Draws upon the work of a group of scholars from a wide range of disciplines including, anthropology, cognitive science, computer science, law, philosophy, political science

What is the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the human condition? In order to address this question, in 2012 the European Commission organized a research project entitled The Onlife Initiative: concept reengineering for rethinking societal concerns in the digital transition. This volume collects the work of the Onlife Initiative. It explores how the development and widespread use of ICTs have a radical impact on the human condition.

ICTs are not mere tools but rather social forces that are increasingly affecting our self-conception (who we are), our mutual interactions (how we socialise); our conception of reality (our metaphysics); and our interactions with reality (our agency). In each case, ICTs have a huge ethical, legal, and political significance, yet one with which we have begun to come to terms only recently.

The impact exercised by ICTs is due to at least four major transformations: the blurring of the distinction between reality and virtuality; the blurring of the distinction between human, machine and nature; the reversal from information scarcity to information abundance; and the shift from the primacy of stand-alone things, properties, and binary relations, to the primacy of interactions, processes and networks.

Such transformations are testing the foundations of our conceptual frameworks. Our current conceptual toolbox is no longer fitted to address new ICT-related challenges. This is not only a problem in itself. It is also a risk, because the lack of a clear understanding of our present time may easily lead to negative projections about the future. The goal of The Manifesto, and of the whole book that contextualises, is therefore that of contributing to the update of our philosophy. It is a constructive goal. The book is meant to be a positive contribution to rethinking the philosophy on which policies are built in a hyperconnected world, so that we may have a better chance of understanding our ICT-related problems and solving them satisfactorily.

The Manifesto launches an open debate on the impacts of ICTs on public spaces, politics and societal expectations toward policymaking in the Digital Agenda for Europe’s remit. More broadly, it helps start a reflection on the way in which a hyperconnected world calls for rethinking the referential frameworks on which policies are built.

Big Data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) draw non-intuitive and unverifiable inferences and predictions about the behaviors, preferences, and private lives of individuals. These inferences draw on highly diverse and feature-rich data of unpredictable value, and create new opportunities for discriminatory, biased, and invasive decision-making. Data protection law is meant to protect people’s privacy, identity, reputation, and autonomy, but is currently failing to protect data subjects from the novel risks of inferential analytics. The legal status of inferences is heavily disputed in legal scholarship, and marked by inconsistencies and contradictions within and between the views of the Article 29 Working Party and the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

This Article shows that individuals are granted little control and oversight over how their personal data is used to draw inferences about them. Compared to other types of personal data, inferences are effectively ‘economy class’ personal data in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Data subjects’ rights to know about (Art 13-15), rectify (Art 16), delete (Art 17), object to (Art 21), or port (Art 20) personal data are significantly curtailed for inferences. The GDPR also provides insufficient protection against sensitive inferences (Art 9) or remedies to challenge inferences or important decisions based on them (Art 22(3)).

This situation is not accidental. In standing jurisprudence the ECJ has consistently restricted the remit of data protection law to assessing the legitimacy of input personal data undergoing processing, and to rectify, block, or erase it. Critically, the ECJ has likewise made clear that data protection law is not intended to ensure the accuracy of decisions and decision-making processes involving personal data, or to make these processes fully transparent. Current policy proposals addressing privacy protection (the ePrivacy Regulation and the EU Digital Content Directive) and Europe’s new Copyright Directive and Trade Secrets Directive also fail to close the GDPR’s accountability gaps concerning inferences.

This Article argues that a new data protection right, the ‘right to reasonable inferences’, is needed to help close the accountability gap currently posed by ‘high risk inferences’ , meaning inferences drawn from Big Data analytics that damage privacy or reputation, or have low verifiability in the sense of being predictive or opinion-based while being used in important decisions. This right would require ex-ante justification to be given by the data controller to establish whether an inference is reasonable. This disclosure would address (1) why certain data form a normatively acceptable basis from which to draw inferences; (2) why these inferences are relevant and normatively acceptable for the chosen processing purpose or type of automated decision; and (3) whether the data and methods used to draw the inferences are accurate and statistically reliable. The ex-ante justification is bolstered by an additional ex-post mechanism enabling unreasonable inferences to be challenged.

Amidst rapid urban development, sustainable transportation solutions are required to meet the increasing demands for mobility whilst mitigating the potentially negative social, economic, and environmental impacts. This study analyses autonomous vehicles (AVs) as a potential transportation solution for smart and sustainable development. We identified privacy and cybersecurity risks of AVs as crucial to the development of smart and sustainable cities and examined the steps taken by governments around the world to address these risks. We highlight the literature that supports why AVs are essential for smart and sustainable development. We then identify the aspects of privacy and cybersecurity in AVs that are important for smart and sustainable development. Lastly, we review the efforts taken by the ​federal government in the US, the UK, China, Australia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Germany, France, and the EU, and by US state governments to address AV-related privacy and cybersecurity risks in-depth. Overall, the actions taken by governments to address privacy risks are mainly in the form of regulations or voluntary guidelines. To address cybersecurity risks, governments have mostly resorted to regulations that are not specific to AVs and are conducting research and fostering research collaborations with the private sector.

Recently we have witnessed the worldwide adoption of many different types of innovative technologies, such as crowdsourcing, ridesharing, open and big data, aiming at delivering public services more efficiently and effectively. Among them, ridesharing has received substantial attention from decision-makers around the world. Because of the multitude of currently understood or potentially unknown risks associated with ridesharing (unemployment, insurance, information privacy, and environmental risk), governments in different countries apply different strategies to address such risks. Some governments prohibit the adoption of ridesharing altogether, while other governments promote it. In this article, we address the question of how risks involved in ridesharing are governed over time. We present an in-depth single case study on Singapore and examine how the Singaporean government has addressed risks in ridesharing over time. The Singaporean government has a strong ambition to become an innovation hub, and many innovative technologies have been adopted and promoted to that end. At the same time, decision-makers in Singapore are reputed for their proactive style of social governance. The example of Singapore can be regarded as a revelatory case study, helping us further to explore governance practices in other countries.

The use of digital technologies in mental health initiatives is expanding, leading to calls for clearer legal and regulatory frameworks. However, gaps in knowledge about the scale and nature of change impede efforts to develop responsible public governance in the early stages of what may be the mass uptake of ‘digital mental health technologies’. This article maps established and emerging technologies in the mental health context with an eye to locating major socio-legal issues. The paper discusses various types of technology, including those designed for information sharing, communication, clinical decision support, ‘digital therapies’, patient and/or population monitoring and control, bio-informatics and personalised medicine, and service user health informatics. The discussion is organised around domains of use based on the actors who use the technologies, and those on whom they are used. These actors go beyond mental health service users and practitioners/service providers, and include health and social system or resource managers, data management services, private companies that collect personal data (such as major technology corporations and data brokers), and multiple government agencies and private sector actors across diverse fields of criminal justice, education, and so on. The mapping exercise offers a starting point to better identify cross-cutting legal, ethical and social issues at the convergence of digital technology and contemporary mental health practice.

During the last two decades, a “third wave of computing” has emerged: a move from a model of accessing the Internet and other internetworks almost exclusively via a desktop computer to alternative forms of distributed information technologies, such as smartphones, wearable computers, and sensors and microprocessors embedded in everyday objects. This paper undertakes a critical review of the literature that offers and discusses definitions of this “third wave”. Not surprisingly in an area of innovation, definitions are evolving, overlapping and inconsistent. This paper analyses and consolidates the literature in order to identify the key aspects of this new phenomenon. We have coined the term “eObjects”1 for the central element of the “third wave”. The paper presents a framework for research into the technologies and their implications, distinguishing core from common attributes, and identifying categories of inter-device interaction. A subsequent paper will apply the research framework to legal research, with the intention of understanding areas in which litigation can be anticipated, and uncovering areas where the law may not adequately deal with emergent social and business practices.

This chapter discusses normative guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence in Germany against the backdrop of international debates. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly changing our lives and our social coexistence. AI is a research question and a field of research producing an ever-increasing number of technologies. It is set of technologies that are still evolving. These are driven and influenced by guidelines in the form of laws or strategies. This chapter examines AI systems in public administration and raises the question of what guidelines already exist and what rends are emerging. After defining AI and providing some examples from government and administration, identify ethics and politics as possible points of reference for guidelines. This chapter presents the law, technology, organization, strategy and visions as possible ways to influence and govern AI along with describing current developments. The chapter concludes with a call for interdisciplinary research and moderate regulation of technology in order to enhance its positive potential.

Blockchain is a disruptive technology presented in 2008 that allows both scarcity and timestamps to be introduced to the digital world. Whereas many technological applications may benefit from this architecture, it involves direct conflict with both Privacy rights and Data Protection rules, as introduced by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
This study first provides an overview of what blockchain is, how it works, and how it can affect privacy. It describes how this technology functions, thanks to binary ledgers distributed amongst the system nodes, and what role they play in validating the succession of blocks. The work then analyses how blockchain can be applied to innovative fields and investigates related Privacy issues. Indeed, the chain can certify the time, the parties and the object included in a ‘block’ but cannot guarantee the legal validity, the veracity or correctness of the content. Furthermore, its immutability is in direct conflict with the right to be forgotten. In addition, due to the distributed nature of the system, it does not allow identification of data controllers and, consequentially, the liable (accountable) subject for the personal data processed within the digital ledger. The study is intended for both legal and non-legal audiences and provides a technical overview of the technological foundations behind blockchain to the legal audience, and the conceptual tools to understand the legal requirements that apply to the non-legal audience. The aim of the study is to highlight the characteristics of the proposed solution, i.e. supporting centralised governance of blockchain infrastructures to ensure control over the distributed nodes, as well as having the capability to intervene in modifying the chain when the law requires it. This set of interventions would also render publicly available the personal information within the blockchain with different levels of accessibility (‘Privacy by Layers’ (PbL)) and, therefore, provide  log control that can ensure compliance with the Data Protection regulatory framework. To provide a  complete analysis on the matter, the study also addresses how Intelligent Systems running on a blockchain-based infrastructure that holds pieces of personal information can clash with Article 22 of the GDPR on automated decisions when it affects the fundamental rights of individuals. Finally, the conclusions crystallise the legal remarks by stressing the essential elements of the analysis that emerged during the study and framing them within the bigger picture of how the Law addresses social or technological phenomena.

Bitcoin, also known as a decentralized virtual currency (DVC), is regulated differently in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Canada, and the United States, and represents a vastly underdeveloped area of the law. No country has currently backed Bitcoin. Launched in 2009, and founded by Satoshi Nakamoto,  Bitcoin is a “decentralized peer-to-peer virtual currency.” Other virtual currencies include Litecoin, Namecoin, Auroracoin, Peercoin, and Dogecoin – about 500 varieties in total – but research here primarily focuses on Bitcoin. A comparative analysis helps discern how these respective countries classify Bitcoin (e.g., a virtual object, currency, or potential security), and how these jurisdictions regulate, or intend to regulate, DVCs. Bitcoin is identified as a “currency,” throughout the paper, but the classification is heavily contested. Questions for analyses include: are there appropriate existing legal frameworks to regulate Bitcoin? What securities regulation challenges does Bitcoin pose? What are the consumer and investor protection concerns associated with Bitcoin compared to traditional financial exchanges? What are the cross-jurisdictional challenges of virtual currency transactions that operate over the Internet (e.g., money laundering, or fraudulent activities)? Research incorporates securities commission reports, social and political commentary from secondary sources, and relevant jurisprudence and legislation. Findings help situate the current climate of Bitcoin globally, and assess how its regulation differs relative to technological, economic, social, financial, and political forces.

The student cannot be taught what he needs to know, but he can be coached: 'He has to see on his own behalf and in his own way the relations between means and methods employed and results achieved. Nobody else can see for him, and he can't see just by being "told", although the right kind of telling may guide his seeing and thus help him see what he needs to see' ________________________________________________________2 2 In their study of student usage of hypermedia, Hutchings et al (1994) found that only 9% of students interviewed felt that a dual window set-up in their program was distracting.

The increasing ubiquity of the Internet in the everyday lives of youth has been accompanied by a whole new set of anxieties and concerns. While many have worried about how the Internet increases youth access to problematic content—including pornographic and violent content—little consideration has been paid to youth-generated problematic content. This article examines one genre of youth-generated problematic content: that which advocates self-harm practices. Countless websites and online communities are devoted to the topic of deliberate self-harm, ranging from online therapy and support groups to "pro-anorexia" and "pro-cutting" websites, and much of the content on these websites is produced by and for youth. This paper seeks to provide an overview of what is known about the spectrum of self-harm practices and how technology inflects these practices in new ways.

We begin with a brief introductory section detailing a working definition of self-harm based on the most recent published literature, outline the general prevalence and demographics, and note the correlations between self-harm practices, eating disorders, and the media. The latter half of this article summarizes various approaches to handling online self-harm content, ranging from censoring content (through Internet Service Provider (ISP) policies and governmental regulations) to providing support for those struggling with the underlying issues associated with deliberate self-harm (e.g., media literacy programs, online support groups, and grassroots social movements and campaigns). Given that censorship of such content often results in pushing it further underground, we recommend solutions that address the underlying sociocultural forces that motivate youth to engage in self-harm practices, and call for further research into these phenomena."

In this paper, we develop a transmission system, referred to as Dual Stream JPEG (DSJ), that improves the resiliency of
JPEG video streams by unying layered encoding with image scrambling techniques. Whereas layered encoding techniques
naturallyprovide resiliency to isolated loss oflowpriority image data, scrambling techniques make itpossible to distribute
burst losses throughout the image. In DSJ, this unification is instantiated by employing the discrete cosine transform (DCT)
to convert each 8x8pixel block ofan image intofrequency domain, partitioning the resultant blocks into high-priorityDC
coefficients and low-priority AC coefficients, and then scrambling the transmission of encoded blocks ofAC coefficients.
Furthermore, DSJ defines an adaptation layer that implements efficient error detection and recovery by including the
sequence number and offset (relative to the beginning ofthe ceilpayload) ofblocks carried in each cell. We have evaluated
theperfonnance ofDSJ through extensive simulations. We present and analyze our results.

Abstract In a recent decision of the Tribunal of Milan three Google executives were convicted for violating data protection law, in connection with the online posting of a video showing a disabled person being bullied and insulted. This paper, after illustrating the facts of the ...

The subject of 'orphan works' and 'abandonware' is gaining legal attention lately. It concerns the status of copyrighted works which are still within the term of protection but are no longer commercially available to the public. This paper examines the question of orphan works and abandonware from a law and economics perspective. Orphan works and abandonware are classified into five types depending on their causes, characteristics and assumptions: commercial abandonment, strategic abandonment, temporary abandonment, unknown ownership, and unlocatable ownership. Economic analysis of these five types of orphanhood and abandonment suggests that the efficient solution to the problem of unavailability and unlocatability is different for each type of abandonment and orphanhood. Finally, existing legal solutions together with a proposal for reforming copyright to a renewable system are examined, and further analysis on this proposal concludes that this coupled with a threat of compulsory licensing might be an effective way of solving the orphan works and abandonware problem. Copyright law confers an exclusive right to the owner of a copyrighted work to control, inter alia, the copying and issuing of copies of his work. 4 Through this exclusive right, copyright owners 5 may earn profit by granting a license or sale of a copy subject to payment of a fee. However, copyright law does not make it a sine qua non that copies of the work are made available to the public. The copyright owner is at liberty to withhold the distribution of his copyrighted work. As a result, valuable copyrighted works may cease to see the light of the day due to discontinuation of sale of copies. This unavailability of a copyrighted work is the crux of the orphan works and abandonware problem. Orphan works and abandonware are used by both distributors and consumers. Abandonware websites distribute old software of which the copyright is no longer enforced by the owners. In turn, the users of these abandonware include retro-computing enthusiasts and people using

The rapid development of information and communication technology has made it imperative that new human rights be spelled out, to cope with an array of expected threats associated with this process. With artificial intelligence being increasingly put to practical uses, the prospect arises of Man’s becoming more and more AI-dependant in multiple walks of life. This necessitates that a constitutional and international dimension be imparted to a right that stipulates that key state-level decisions impacting human condition, life and freedom must be made by humans, not automated systems or other AI contraptions. But if artificial intelligence were to make decisions, then it should be properly equipped with value-based criteria. The culture of abdication of privacy protection may breed consent to the creation and practical use of technologies capable to penetrate an individual consciousness without his or her consent. Evidence based on such thought interference must be barred from court proceedings. Everyone’s right to intellectual identity and integrity, the right to one’s thoughts being free from technological interference, is as essential for the survival of the democratic system as the right to privacy – and it may well prove equally endangered.

The importance of ubiquitous environments has increased in recent years as it has been recognized as a paradigm that can improve the quality of life of many sectors of the population especially care of elderly people by providing automated environments that adapt and respond to its inhabitants’ needs. The aim of the work presented here is to provide a solution to the problem of recognition and detection of human behaviours inside ubiquitous environments by using a neural-network driven embedded agent working with online, real-time data from a network of unobtrusive low-level sensors. The final objective of this system was to classify a “normal” pattern of activities, and sense deviations from it, which could be employed for home care applications.

Underlying this move toward game-based learning environments is more than strategic opportunity or marketing; the shift toward games also represents an intellectual recognition among many that they represent experiential learning spaces, spaces where learners have rich, embodied, collaborative and cooperative interactions where they think with complex tools and resources in the service of complex problem-solving. Abstract Simulation is one of the major applications of the web in entertainment and training, but has so far received little attention from HE and FE. It is becoming increasingly clear that simulations can be used for educational purposes, but how can they be used most effectively with students? How do they affect other areas of the legal curriculum? Can all professions use them equally effectively, and if so under which conditions? These and other questions are at centre of a two-year funded project, Transactional Learning Environment (TLE) 2.0, which sets out to create an environment, use it within variety of disciplines and sub-areas within law, and evaluate the results. This article describes the context of the project, sets out the ambitions of the project, and analyses the challenges facing it. It also sets the project within a larger technological context, and argues that such projects are essential not only for the future of legal education but for most professional disciplines in higher education.

Using crowdsourcing for solving disputes is a subject that has not been discussed in many scientific publications. However, since Crowdsourced Online Dispute Resolution (CODR) provides a cheap, fast, and democratic dispute resolution, it has a potential that needs to be explored scientifically. How should eBay solve otherwise 60 millions disputes per year? Building a CODR platform with the convenience and attractiveness of other collective intelligence systems, such as Wikipedia, YouTube, and Google, may cause many variants of traditional forms of dispute resolution fading away. In order to shed more light on CODR, the present contribution defines this new type of dispute resolution, describes the present state of play, and builds a theoretical framework by investigating CODR building blocks. Although the paper provides only the start of a profound discussion, it shows introductory explorations of the key theoretical issues involved in CODR.

Nowadays algorithms can decide if one can get a loan, is allowed to cross a border, or must go to prison. Artificial intelligence techniques (natural language processing and machine learning in the first place) enable private and public decision-makers to analyse big data in order to build profiles, which are used to make decisions in an automated way.

This work presents ten arguments against algorithmic decision-making. These revolve around the concepts of ubiquitous discretionary interpretation, holistic intuition, algorithmic bias, the three black boxes, psychology of conformity, power of sanctions, civilising force of hypocrisy, pluralism, empathy, and technocracy.

The lack of transparency of the algorithmic decision-making process does not stem merely from the characteristics of the relevant techniques used, which can make it impossible to access the rationale of the decision. It depends also on the abuse of and overlap between intellectual property rights (the “legal black box”). In the US, nearly half a million patented inventions concern algorithms; more than 67% of the algorithm-related patents were issued over the last ten years and the trend is increasing.

To counter the increased monopolisation of algorithms by means of intellectual property rights (with trade secrets leading the way), this paper presents three legal routes that enable citizens to ‘open’ the algorithms.

First, copyright and patent exceptions, as well as trade secrets are discussed.

Second, the GDPR is critically assessed. In principle, data controllers are not allowed to use algorithms to take decisions that have legal effects on the data subject’s life or similarly significantly affect them. However, when they are allowed to do so, the data subject still has the right to obtain human intervention, to express their point of view, as well as to contest the decision. Additionally, the data controller shall provide meaningful information about the logic involved in the algorithmic decision.

Third, this paper critically analyses the first known case of a court using the access right under the freedom of information regime to grant an injunction to release the source code of the computer program that implements an algorithm.

Only an integrated approach – which takes into account intellectual property, data protection, and freedom of information – may provide the citizen affected by an algorithmic decision of an effective remedy as required by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Recommended citation: Guido Noto La Diega, Against the Dehumanisation of Decision-Making – Algorithmic Decisions at the Crossroads of Intellectual Property, Data Protection, and Freedom of Information, 9 (2018) JIPITEC 3 para 1

This research seeks to review whether web accessibility and disability laws lead to strong compliance among UK e-government web sites. This study samples 130 sites of the UK members of Parliament using an online accessibility testing tool and determines if the site design complies with disability laws and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Awareness is raised about issues disabled users face when attempting to use UK e-government sites. A discussion of UK and international disability law is reviewed in light of web accessibilty: the UK's Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) of 1995 and the UN Treaty on the Rights of the Disabled. Although these mandates aim to provide equality in access to web sites for people with disabilities, the results of this study show that total openness of these sites is not widespread and the mere existance of laws does not guarantee compliance.

Information and communications technology (ICT) is increasingly used in bureaucratic and regulatory processes. With the development of the 'Internet of Things', some researchers speak enthusiastically of the birth of the 'Smart State'. However, there are few theoretical or critical perspectives on the role of ICT in these routine decision-making processes and the mundane work of government regulation of economic and social activity. This article therefore makes an important contribution by putting forward a theoretical perspective on smartness in government and developing a values-based framework for the use of ICT as a tool in the internal machinery of government. It critically reviews the protection of the rule of law in digitized government. As an addition to work on e-government, a new field of study, 'e-regulation' is proposed, defined, and critiqued, with particular attention to the difficulties raised by the use of models and simulation. The increasing development of e-regulation could compromise fundamental values by embedding biases, software errors, and mistaken assumptions deeply into government procedures. The article therefore discusses the connections between the 'Internet of Things', the development of 'Ambient Law', and how the use of ICT in e-regulation can be a support for or an impediment to the operation of the rule of law. It concludes that e-government research should give more attention to the processes of regulation, and that law should be a more central discipline for those engaged in this activity.

E-commerce offers economy-wide benefits. World Trade Organization (WTO) members recognized the benefits e-commerce offers and have developed a work program to facilitate the development of e-commerce. However, WTO efforts to facilitate e-commerce have stalled, leading to a slower than anticipated progress. As fundamental differences continue to stall progress in the WTO's program on e-commerce, the United States concluded a free trade agreement with Jordan. This agreement was the first ever to incorporate explicit provisions on e-commerce. This article analyzes how existing trade agreements have dealt with e-commerce. The article gives an overview of the situation in WTO. The article then examines the e-commerce provisions in the United States-Jordan Free Trade Agreement (US-JO FTA) and how the parties have tackled the obstacles that stalled the WTO work on e-commerce. It concludes that the US-JO

""This article explores the assumption that data processing based on consent is ancillary in the greater context of data protection, being only one of the six lawful bases for data processing. Moreover, the data protection draft regulation proposed by the European Commission in 2012 meets overwhelmingly the concerns regarding consent in data protection expressed on numerous occasions in the past years. Hence, the focus in data protection law should be, instead, on the development of efficient and clear provisions for handling data, which can be deemed as “suitable safeguards”, regardless of the bases of their processing. For instance, the rights of the data subject – access, information, erasure etc., purpose requirements and accountability rules are effective in all of the situations of data processing. This article proposes a set of such suitable safeguards which match the content and the purpose of the right to data protection.

Key-words: consent, draft regulation, rights of the data subject, suitable safeguards.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2261973

In January 2010, after a troubled process, the French law for “creation and Internet”, commonly known as Hadopi 2, was finally adopted in an amended form. The enacted text was the result of corrective action undertaken by the Conseil constitutionnel (France’s highest constitutional authority), through Decision No. 2009-580 DC of the 10th of June 2009. The Conseil examined the mechanism of sanctions introduced by the regulatory measure assessing the compliance with fundamental rights and freedoms, such as the presumption of innocence, the separation of powers, the right of defense, the right to fair trial, the respect of the right to be heard and the necessary compromise between copyright and freedom of expression and communication.

This article explores the importance of accountability to data protection (DP), 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 meaningful engagement by end users with their personal data and poses a key challenge to creating user trust in the IoT and the reciprocal development of the digital economy. The European Union General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (EU GDPR) seeks to remedy this particular problem by mandating that a rapidly developing technological ecosystem be made accountable. In doing so, it foregrounds new responsibilities for data controllers, including DP by design and default, and new data subject rights such as the right to data portability. While GDPR is 'technologically neutral', it is nevertheless anticipated that realizing the vision will turn upon effective technological development. Accordingly, this article examines the notion of accountability, how it has been translated into systems design recommendations for the IoT and how the IoT Databox puts key DP principles into practice.

Privacy The Internet of Things (IoT) requires pervasive collection and linkage of user data to provide personalised experiences based on potentially invasive inferences. Consistent identification of users and devices is necessary for this functionality, which poses risks to user privacy. The forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) contains numerous provisions relevant to these risks, which may nonetheless be insufficient to ensure a fair balance between users' and developers' interests. A three-step transparency model is described based on known privacy risks of the IoT, the GDPR's governing principles, and weaknesses in its relevant provisions. Eleven ethical guidelines are proposed for IoT developers and data controllers on how information about the functionality of the IoT should be shared with users above the GDPR's legally binding requirements. Two use cases demonstrate how the guidelines apply in practice: IoT in public spaces and connected cities, and connected cars.

The aim of this paper is to recognize and discuss the inherent risks associated with Internet regulation and control over digital content. The key point of this analysis is that Internet content regulation can present human rights risks. In particular, the paper examines how restrictions over Internet content are posing regulatory issues directly related to the growing importance of an equitable access to digital information. It also considers the relevance and impact of computer-mediated communication, its potential on democratization of freedom of expression and the problem of conflicting rights. Drawing upon comparative and case study material, the paper finally discusses and investigates the potential risks and vulnerabilities related to communication technologies focusing on legislative reforms in the area of digital communications and their implications for fundamental freedoms.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of blockchain technology. It proceeds in four steps. First, the chapter traces the technical and legal evolution of blockchain applications since the early days of bitcoin, highlighting in particular the political ambitions and tensions that have marked many of these projects from the start. Second, it shows how blockchain applications have created new calculative spaces of financial markets that seek to challenge existing forms of money. Third, it discusses the core points of friction with incumbent legal systems, with a particular focus on the regulability of decentralized systems in general and data protection concerns in particular. Fourth, the chapter provides an outline to the contributions to the volume, which span a wide array of topics at the intersection of blockchain, law, and politics.

The influence of European Competition Law is global, and Competition Law and Regulation of Technology Markets takes a practical, integrated approach to competition law, which is becoming increasingly prominent in the technology sector in Europe - as demonstrated by a number of high profile cases such as Microsoft, Sony/BMG and Intel. The book focuses on the information, communication and media markets, that form the 'new economy'. It provides a coherent analysis of these various markets by considering the regulatory context, and by addressing the issues, and ensuing legal problems, that are common to them. These include; high fixed costs, the importance of intellectual property and standards, the impact of interoperability, and the prevalence of the network effect. The book considers how EU competition rules interact with regulation, intellectual property law and data protection rules, and goes on to analyze the application of competition rules in four fields; communications...

The freedom to receive and impart information, privacy and the freedom from discrimination on grounds of religious belief are universally recognised as fundamental human rights and, as such, also form part of the basic values of democratic societies. These rights have, in the main, only been adequately articulated and increasingly protected at the international level after the Second World War, relatively very late in more than seven thousand years of civilization In contrast, the values promoted by religions have often been recognised as such for millennia. Where do the values of privacy law and religions conflict and where do they converge, especially in a world where information technology is ubiquitous? The paper examines the debate over privacy from various perspectives, identifying those areas where religions appear to have confronted issues of human rights and where lawyers have been joined in the debate by philosophers within the rapidly developing field of information ethics. It concludes by listing a minimum ten areas where religions may possibly contribute to the intercultural debate on privacy in the Information Society.

• Every day, digital platforms generate, gather, store and analyze a huge amount of data, personal data included: these data can be elaborated on to cluster individuals and offer personalized prices and services. • Individuals are progressively losing control over their personal data and digital identities and, accordingly, data protection authorities are looking at the operations of these digital platforms carefully. • This paper addresses the issue of a possible commingling of data protection rules and antitrust provisions and the lively global debate between those who call for strong antitrust intervention to buffer privacy risks and those who would keep antitrust law at bay.

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 copyright law system that played an important role in encouraging the creation of innovative and value-added services in the library sector. These elements include the transformative use doctrine, the restrictive interpretation of the market harm criterion and the openness towards commercial reuse of works. It is then discussed whether, and how, these elements could be better integrated in the EU copyright law system in order to foster the European library and information technology sector.

As organizations must continually drive down costs of software-driven projects, they need to evaluate the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and other software-based design methodologies. These methodologies include looking at software-based alternatives that could save a significant amount of money by reducing the amount of proprietary software. This chapter explores the use and integration of Open Source Software (OSS) in software-driven projects to include in enterprise organizations. Additionally, the legalities of the GNU General Public License (GPL), Lesser General Public License (LGPL), Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), and Creative Commons are explored with the integration of these OSS solutions into organizations. Lastly, the chapter covers the software assurance and cyber security controls to associate with OSS to deploy a hardened product that meets the needs of today's dynamically evolving global business enterprise.

This paper is mostly an update on an article that first appeared in the Journal of Information Law and Technology (JILT) 1 regarding the relatively recent legal figure of Habeas Data, which has been implemented in some countries in Latin America. The need to update the original article arose from the fact that there have been many new developments regarding the implementation of this legal tool in Latin America, and because of some other interesting developments in the European Union that required that some of the original conclusions be revisited and amended. This paper was first presented in the 16th Annual Conference of the British and Irish Legal Education and Technology Association (BILETA) in April 2001 2 , my thanks to the attendants for their input, which helped in revising the present work. The paper has many sections that are similar to the original, with the intention of making the update a stand-alone document. A shorter two-part version of the paper appeared in the World Data Protection Report 3 .

In this paper we present some aspects of an intelligent interface for a WWWeb legal information retrieval system. Our system is able to keep the context of the user interaction in order to supply suggestions for further refinement of the user queries. The set of documents obtained from the user queries is dynamically organised in clusters labeled with keywords from a juridical thesaurus. Since, some of the texts were not previously classified, we have developed an automatic juridical classifier based on a neural network. The classifier receives as input a legal text and proposes a set of juridical terms that characterize it.

This is an electronic pre-print version of an article published in (2010) 18 International Journal of Law & Information Technology 274-300, available at http://ijlit.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/3/274 Abstract: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is assessed in this paper as having a special role in the development of the law of new media, recognising both the importance of its management of the global domain name system and how questions of institutional legitimacy have highlighted the lack of agreement on the role of law in the governance of the global Internet. In order to underline how ICANN's work relates to the regulation of the Internet and new media in particular., two particular issues are considered, both of which have been the subject of major announcements in 2009: (1) the facilitation of Internet multilingualism through internationalised domain names (IDNs) and an attempt to expand the generic top-level domain (gTLD) system including prospect of dedicated gTLDs such as .xxx. In the case of internationalisation, it is argued that the question of internationalised domain names is best understood through its relation to historical processes of engagement between law, language and technology. are very welcome.

The article critically analyses the Internet of Things (IoT) and its intersection with cloud computing, the so-called Clouds of Things (CoT).
‘Things’ are understood as any physical entity capable of connectivity that has a direct interface to the physical world (i.e. a sensing and/or actuating capability). From another perspective (especially product liability), Things can be seen as an inextricable mixture of hardware, software, and services. Alongside a clarification of the essentials, the six
factors of the CoT complexity are described and light is shed on the regulatory options (regulation, co-regulation, self-regulation, holistic approach, fragmentation). Focussing on the British legal systems, the
article reports on the state of the art of CoT deployment in the United Kingdom and deals with some of the main technical and legal issues
emerging from CoT. Particularly, the core will be data protection, privacy, and consumer law. Indeed, these themes are considered the most relevant by the regulators. By mastering the relevant legal issues and following the example of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Korea will be able to unleash its  extraordinary potential as to the IoT, thus retaining its position as the smartest country in the world.
PLEASE CITE AS: G. NOTO LA DIEGA, 'Clouds of Things. Data protection and consumer law at the intersection of cloud computing and the Internet of Things in the United Kingdom', Journal of Law & Economic Regulation, 2016, 9, I, 69-93

WiFi technology has become the preferable form for mobile users to connect to the Internet. The growing popularity of WiFi-enabled devices and the increasing number of WiFi networks guarantees that this trend will continue in the future. Since a single network provider is usually not able to ensure WiFi coverage for its own users across many geographic locations the WiFi roaming technology appears to be the promising solution. A special attention upon the practical deployment of WiFi roaming should be paid to possible threats coming from the misuse of technology. In this light we analyze various legal implications that might become relevant due to the deployment of WiFi roaming and discuss several risks and problems related to the security during the establishment of roaming connections between mobile devices and the Internet.

The famous saying that "Your freedom ends where my nose begins" 1 may, in the electronic era, be transformed to mean "Your freedom ends where my 'Network' begins". The progression into an e-literate society in which the electronic medium is used to transact all forms of business -including government (e-governance) -has greatly increased the need to protect the privacy of the individual from invasions not only by the State, but also from others who seek to profit from such intrusions. This paper probes into the latest trends in modern technology and analyses the existing legal framework in Sri Lanka and India in support of the argument that the right to privacy must be guarded as a constitutional right.