Stefano Dorigo
Stefano Pietropaoli
Ettore M. Lombardi
Erik Longo
Published: Dec. 17, 2020
We are experiencing a digital revolution that is changing the very nature of law. Digital code becomes a form of regulation through which private actors link their values to technological artifacts that prove capable of conditioning their operations both on a material and moral level. But technological artifacts appear to be non-neutral means, reflecting choices of different nature, among which those of a political nature stand out. The more the regulatory provisions are implemented through the use of technologies, the more the codes acquire the status of a regulatory technique, which can be used both to define and incorporate regulatory …
Aleksei Gudkov
Published: Dec. 17, 2020
Internet technology makes digital value transactions between anonymous individuals possible, but leaves unanswered the question of how to resolve disputes between unidentified parties. Blockchain dispute resolution platforms provide a response to this problem. In the social dispute resolution systems for blockchain currently in use, pseudo anonymous jurors can resolve disputes between pseudo anonymous parties. This paper presents Kleros as the most illustrative blockchain dispute resolution platform BDRP. To describe the features of the Kleros dispute resolution platform and the qualification of jurors, this research employs an online dispute resolution survey of both the jurors and stakeholders of the Kleros platform. …
Elena Ostanina
Published: Dec. 17, 2020
While the Internet promotes widespread communication, this communication is often anonymous. How to draw the line between freedom of speech and privacy? The specifics of protecting privacy and business reputation against violation by rating sites are discussed in this article. Do the activities of rating sites need special legal regulation? The author believes that the general rules on privacy and freedom of speech are sufficient for regulating these new relations. The respective court practice of Germany, the UK and the USA is analysed. The tentative conclusion is that rating sites do not contradict the law if they do not disseminate …
Liudmila Tereschenko
Published: Dec. 17, 2020
The article examines relations new to Russian practice regarding the introduction of the concept of “fake news” into the legal field, dissemination of fake news and the problems of legal enforcement of the indicated norms, including administrative and criminal liability.
Elvira Talapina
Published: May 4, 2021
Digitalization has become omnipresent today. No longer limited to the security sphere, digital technologies are actively transforming society as a whole. However, the conservative institution of law does not always respond promptly to changes, and many lawyers believe that the traditional legislation in force is sufficient to handle this new object of regulation. Yet the fact is that this object cannot be called traditional from the regulatory standpoint. Technology has a powerful impact on both law and the state and so requires new solutions. Under such circumstances, it is important to gain a legal understanding of digitalization without delay. The …
Ronny Hauck
Published: May 4, 2021
For several years, almost everyone has been talking about blockchain. The underlying distributed ledger technology has become (in)famous as the technology behind cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether. But what about blockchain and intellectual property like patents and copyright? Could this technology be used for the protection and enforcement of such rights? Which role can smart contracts play in this regard? This article focuses on questions concerning the requirements for provingthe protection of technical inventions as well as on the administration and exploitation of intellectual property rights. The latter could play an important rolefor intellectual property, which has not been …
Alexander Savelyev
Published: Nov. 4, 2020
The paper focuses on civil law remedies for violations of data subjects’ rights: claims for damages and claims for compensation of moral harm. Based on an analysis of academic literature, as well as of Russian and international case law, it is argued that, although these remedies are endorsed by the GDPR and other laws, they are inadequate and do not conform to the requirements for an “effective remedy” stipulated by major international legal documents on human rights. The main reasons are: 1) difficulties in proving the fact and the amount of a legally recognized category of damage because the typical …
Lindsey Whitlow
Published: Nov. 4, 2020
Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) systems have become vastly more sophisticated since the term was first used in the 1950s. Through the advent of machine learning and artificial neural networks, computers utilizing AI technology have become so advanced that a team of attorneys in the United Kingdom claim that their AI machine, DABUS, actually created patentable inventions. The team went so far as to file patent applications with the European Patent Office, the UK Intellectual Property Office, and the US Patent and Trademark Office. All applications named DABUS as the inventor. This sparked a heated debate within academic and legal communities that …
Roman Yankovsky
Published: July 25, 2020
For the last five years there has been a global boom of interest in cryptocurrencies, followed by the fall of their rates; at the same time, there was a wave of enthusiasm regarding the public offering of tokens (ICO) and disillusionment in them (due partly to the active counteraction by American and other influential regulators). Disputes on doctrine moved from suggestions of a new object of property rights to prohibitive initiatives. As these eventful years have shown, the global financial system is sufficiently stable to digest even such a decentralized phenomenon as cryptocurrency. In my opinion, it is now time …
Christophe S. Hutchinson
Published: July 25, 2020
Blockchain is a catch-all term for a combination of three technologies: distributed ledger, cryptology and network protocols. The first enables storing the same info in different places, the second allows secure transactions to be recorded and then encrypted on the distributed ledger. The third element governs the network and verifies transactions across the network automatically and independently. Considered by many as “the biggest technological innovation since the Internet”1, blockchain is a decentralized, more secure and transparent model for transactions that operates on an encrypted peer-to-peer basis. This model makes trust between parties superfluous by instead placing trust in the underlying …