"Ten of the National Reports appearing in this volume were presented or availabale at a Session of the XVIIth Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law held at Utrecht, the Netherlands on 19 July, 2006. The French Report was contributed later." --preface, p.[xiii]

The digitization of industrial processes has suddenly taken a great leap forward, with burgeoning applications in manufacturing, transportation and numerous other areas. Many stakeholders, however, are uncertain about the opportunities and risks associated with it and what it really means for businesses and national economies. Clarity of legal rules is now a pressing necessity. This book, the first to deal with legal questions related to Industrial Internet, follows a multidisciplinary approach that is instructed by law concerning intellectual property, data protection, competition, contracts and licensing, focusing on business, technology and policy-driven issues. Experts in various relevant fields of science and industry measure the legal tensions created by Industrial Internet in our global economy and propose solutions that are both theoretically valuable and concretely practical, identifying workable business models and practices based on both technical and legal knowledge. Perspectives include the following: regulating Industrial Internet via intellectual property rights (IPR); data ownership versus control over data; artificial intelligence and IPR infringement; patent owning in Industrial Internet; abuse of dominance in Industrial Internet platforms; data collaboration, pooling and hoarding; legal implications of granular versioning technologies; and misuse of information for anticompetitive purposes. The book represents a record of a major collaborative project, held between 2016 and 2019 in Finland, involving a number of universities, technology firms and law firms. As Industrial Internet technologies are already being used in several businesses, it is of paramount importance for the global economy that legal, business and policy-related challenges are promptly analyzed and discussed. This crucially important book not only reveals the legal and policy-related issues that we soon will have to deal with but also facilitates the creation of legislation and policies that promote Industrial-Internet-related technologies and new business opportunities. It will be warmly welcomed by practitioners, patent and other IPR attorneys, innovation economists and companies operating in the Industrial Internet ecosystem, as well as by competition authorities and other policymakers.

The ideal of an inclusive and participatory Internet has been undermined by the rise of misogynistic abuse on social media platforms. However, limited progress has been made at national – and to an extent European – levels in addressing this issue. In England and Wales, the tackling of underlying causes of online abuse has been overlooked because the law focuses on punishment rather than measures to prevent such abuses. Furthermore, online abuse has a significant impact on its victims that is underestimated by policymakers. This volume critically analyses the legal provisions that are currently deployed to tackle forms of online misogyny, and focuses on three aspects; firstly, the phenomenon of social media abuse; secondly, the poor and disparate legal responses to social media abuses; and thirdly, the similar failings of hate crime to tackle problems of online gender-based abuses. This book advances a compelling argument for legal changes to the existing hate crime, and communications legislation.

From the controversy surrounding Edward Snowdens security leak of classified information, to hacked email accounts of prominent political candidates, internet privacy and cyber security present major ethical issues in todays technology-centric society. Countries are challenged to find the right balance in securing personal data and how to regulate the sale and exchange of information obtained on the internet. Innovative technologies and data collection that enable novel modes of interaction and new opportunities for knowledge can also be abused to invade peoples privacy, provide new tools of discrimination, and harm individuals and communities. This title will address both sides of this complex topic.

The Internet is a world of its own, independent of any country. Its regulation encompasses a complex and frequently changing collection of international agreements, national legislation, local laws, regulations, and commercial customs affecting many areas of legal practice. This book provides a succinct, invaluable guide to the development and scope of regulation of the Internet around the world. For each of nine key market jurisdictions—the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore—the author clearly describes and analyzes how courts and regulators treat Internet activity in terms of the following: what should be available via the Internet; what should not be available; how transactions should be conducted; how disputes should be resolved; and how violations of laws and regulations should be treated. Separate chapters discuss the role of Internet regulation in matters involving intellectual property, competition, privacy and data protection, artificial intelligence, cybercurrency, cybercrime, and cyberwarfare. With its extensive review of protections available to international Internet businesses and its insights into the direction that Internet regulation is taking around the world, this up-to-date fund of practical knowledge about this rapidly developing regulatory landscape both globally and at national and local levels will be welcomed by practitioners, regulators, policymakers, Internet companies, Internet users, and academics for its information about the numerous areas of law relating to the Internet.

This research aims at determining criteria for regulation of freedom of expression exercised on the internet, allowing a "fair balance" between that freedom and other competing interests. It will hopefully benefit lawyers and courts which have to deal with an increasing number of cases involving online speech. It can also assist legislators when they consider adopting or amending legislation regulating online speech, potentially preventing the adoption of legislation contrary to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Internet service and content providers may also find interesting to see the part dealing with the distribution of liabilities amongst the participants to online communication. To that effect, the research develops methods of analysing the specific effect which the various features of the internet may have on freedom of expression and on its regulation, and provides examples of criteria identified through those methods, in selected areas such as hate speech, defamation or adult speech. The book identifies general principles of freedom of expression which are less likely to change with time and technology, and considers how they can be transposed to the online reality. For instance, the general principle that minors are to be protected from adult material has found various specific incarnations in rules such as demanding an identification document in a shop or a cinema or the late-hour broadcast rule in TV and radio, based on the presumption that unaccompanied minors are unlikely to be exposed. Neither of these is readily available on the internet (there is no "late hour" in this always-on medium), and so the principle had to find another expression aimed at age identification, such as the use of credit card numbers. The book analyses the reasons for the lack of a global, comprehensive approach to cyberspeech regulation and concludes that the main obstacle is not grounded in any features of the internet, but rather in the absence of universal agreement on the substantive rules to regulate online speech. Pending such agreement, domestic authorities and regional organizations will still deal with the issue, and the methods proposed here may be of assistance.

The regulation of pornography has always been a contentious issue, which has sparked wide-ranging debates surrounding the acceptability and place of pornography in society. The use of the internet to distribute and access pornography has magnified this debate and has presented a number of challenges for the law in terms of effective and proportionate regulation. Following unsuccessful attempts by states to transpose traditional laws to cyberspace, a new and radical regulatory framework eventually evolved for regulating internet pornography. In this process, the focus of the law has changed from merely controlling the publication and distribution of obscene material to a model that aims to deter private consumption of illegal content. In addition, various self- and co-regulatory initiatives have been introduced with the involvement of non-state actors, imposing a certain degree of de facto liability on intermediaries, all of which raise interesting issues. This book examines the relevant regulatory responses to internet pornography, with particular reference to the UK, but also drawing comparisons with other countries where relevant. It argues that the internet has fundamentally, and in many ways irreversibly, changed the regulation of pornography. Classifying internet pornography into three broad categories – child pornography, extreme pornography, and adult pornography – the book provides an in-depth analysis of the legal issues involved in regulating internet pornography, and argues that the notions of obscenity and indecency on their own will not provide an adequate basis for regulating online pornography. The book identifies the legitimising factors that will lend credibility and normative force to the law in order to successfully regulate pornography in cyberspace. It is the only comprehensive text that rigorously addresses the regulation of internet pornography as a whole, and offers valuable insights that will appeal to academics, students, policy makers, and those working in the areas of broader internet governance and online child protection.

The book draws a novel approach to data privacy (or data protection) regulations by presenting a solution to the problem of lack of individual control over personal data. It combines economic, technical, and legal perspectives to show how to reinforce individual autonomy and, at the same time, to increase the competitiveness of data economy.

Ensuring online safety has become a topic on the regulatory agenda in many Western societies. However, regulating for online safety is far from easy, due to the wide variety of national and international, private and public actors and stakeholders that are involved. When regulating online risks for children it is important to strike the right balance between protection against harms on the one hand and safeguarding their fundamental freedoms and rights on the other. The authors in this book attempt to grapple with precisely this theme: striking the right balance between ensuring safety for children on the internet while at the same time enabling them to experiment, to learn, to enrich their lives, to acquire skills and to have fun using this global network. The authors come from various scientific disciplines, ranging from law to social science and from media studies to philosophy. This means that the book provides the reader with both empirical and theoretical/conceptual chapters and sheds a multi-disciplinary light on the complex topic of regulating online safety for children.

"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Did you know that these twenty-six words are responsible for much of America's multibillion-dollar online industry? What we can and cannot write, say, and do online is based on just one law—a law that protects online services from lawsuits based on user content. Jeff Kosseff exposes the workings of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which has lived mostly in the shadows since its enshrinement in 1996. Because many segments of American society now exist largely online, Kosseff argues that we need to understand and pay attention to what Section 230 really means and how it affects what we like, share, and comment upon every day. The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet tells the story of the institutions that flourished as a result of this powerful statute. It introduces us to those who created the law, those who advocated for it, and those involved in some of the most prominent cases decided under the law. Kosseff assesses the law that has facilitated freedom of online speech, trolling, and much more. His keen eye for the law, combined with his background as an award-winning journalist, demystifies a statute that affects all our lives –for good and for ill. While Section 230 may be imperfect and in need of refinement, Kosseff maintains that it is necessary to foster free speech and innovation. For filings from many of the cases discussed in the book and updates about Section 230, visit jeffkosseff.com