Internet Law & Governance
Full course description
Over the past forty years, the Internet has developed at an incredible pace. While the Internet in the 1980s consisted of a handful of computers, nowadays, the Internet connects us to billions of people around the globe. This rapid growth brought a need for a system of governance. In the first years of the Internet, its users consisted of a relatively homogenous group, mainly academics, experimenting with new possible features. When the number of users started to grow, and the personal computer became accessible to the general public, a new group of users emerged that saw the potential of the Internet for illegal activities. Governments responded to these kinds of activities by regulating and monitoring Internet activity. Besides unlawful activity, legal conduct can also be problematic. The Internet brought a number of companies that obtained very powerful positions in our society. They can control what kind of content we watch or the results we get in our searches. Moreover, they can gather vast data and profile us with increasing accuracy.
The course follows three Internet eras and addresses some of the most important economic and societal disruptions arising during these periods and compares regulatory approaches (statutory laws and self-regulation) taken by the European Union and the United States. It addresses opinions and theories primarily arising out of law and computer science, but also includes references to sociology, communication and media studies.
Topics each week:
- The Foundations of the World Wide Web
- Platform Regulation
- Data Protection & Privacy
- Apps & IoT
- AI & Machine Learning
- Intellectual Property in the age of AI
- Cybercrime & Cyberwar
Course objectives
-
Understand the underpinning technologies of the Internet and the developments towards the World Wide Web as well as the societal drivers behind current regulatory developments.
-
Understand the global regulatory challenges that are posed by the Internet and World Wide Web in particular and the patchwork of regulations within the EU that aim to provide a strong backbone for data governance.
-
Understand how regulation of digital services has worked in practice and how service providers have responded to such regulation.
-
Understand the core concepts of informational privacy and data protection regulation as well as current cybercrime and cybersecurity frameworks and debate the role of harmonized regulation, industry regulation, technology, and society in creating secure, privacy-friendly, and trustworthy infrastructure.
-
Understand the actors involved in “Internet Governance” and evaluate European regulatory approaches.
Prerequisites
None
Recommended reading
Interdisciplinary readings of scientific articles from law and computer science will be provided.