| CODE | MCT4009 | ||||||||
| TITLE | Emerging Technologies and the Law | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 04 - Years 4, 5 in Modular UG or PG Cert Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 6 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Media, Communications & Technology Law | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | Our laws represent our current realities. They represent a mainly industrial world with some level of digitization. But our realities will soon emigrate from a digitized to a digitalized environment. Our laws will then look outdated. The synergetic added value of the current technological landscape (blockchain, cloud computing, the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence) highlights that current laws will come into question. What was the norm yesterday, becomes a liability today. What is illegal today might become legal tomorrow, and vice versa. Situations that posed no regulatory risks might now be exposed to unprecedented changes, challenges and transformations that will require a new regulatory approach. How can law embrace such a reality? In order to address the aforementioned issues, this study-unit will explore the following areas: - The Information Society, the Network Society; - Regulating the Information, Network society; - Content and the Information, Network Society (Personality rights in the Metaverse); - Digital Content and Intellectual Property Rights (Intellectual Property in the Metaverse); - E-Commerce (Transactions in the Metaverse: e-commerce, competition law, cryptoassets, smart contracts, contracts concluded and performed by autonomous agents); - Data Protection in the Metaverse; - Digital Ownership; - Virtual environments; - The future of IT law. Study-Unit Aims: The study-unit analyses the laws that govern our current digitized world and, at the same time, explores the major regulatory transformations that will dictate the modus vivendi of emerging digital societies. It does not limit itself to presenting existing laws, but also seeks their underlying values, tests their potential to adapt, uncovers their limitations and reflects on their long term survivability. Furthermore, it crosses the virtual borders of the emerging metaverses, in order to immerse in the regulatory challenges that lie in the unexplored territories of our digitalized future. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Explain the transformative societal processes that are driven by innovation in Information Technologies; - Question the supremacy of govermental regulation of new and emerging technologies; - Assess the regulatory potential of existing regulatory modalities beyond governmental intervention; - Identify relevant existing laws, and their limits, as well as future regulatory gaps and challenges; 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Analyse the impact of New and Emerging Technologies on Law; - Identify the processes that both challenge and recreate the legal landscape; - Demonstrate enhanced problem solving skills and ability to identify, process, assess, and, ultimately, mitigate technology-driven regulatory risks; - Integrate existing legal norms and solutions to multilayered technological challenges; - Design innovative legal solutions that go beyond current legal doctrine and jurisprudence. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Murray, A., (2019) Information Technology Law: Law and Society, (4th ed.) (Oxford University Press). - Lodder R.A., Murray A. (2017), EU Regulation of E-Commerce (Edward Elgar Publishing). - Stamatoudi I., Torremans P., EU Copyright Law-A Commentary (2nd edition, Edward Elgar Publishing 2021). - Artzt, M., Richter T. (2020), Handbook of Blockchain Law (Wolters Kluwer). - Pagallo, U., Woodrow, B. (2020), Advanced Introduction to Law and Artificial Intelligence (Edward Elgar Publishing). - Bygrave L, “Minding the Machine v2.0: The EU General Data Protection Regulation and Automated Decision Making” in Yeung & Lodge (eds.), Algorithmic Regulation (OUP 2019), pp. 246–260. - Bygrave L, “Machine Learning, Cognitive Sovereignty and Data Protection Rights with Respect to Automated Decisions” in M. Ienca and others (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Life Science, Information Technology and Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2021), forthcoming Supplementary Readings: - Easterbrook, F.H. (1996) "Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse"; accessible at https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=2147&context=journal_articles - Johnson, D.R., Post, D. (1996) "Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace" 5 Stanford Law Review 48, pp. 1367-1402 - Goldsmith, J. L. (1999) "Against Cyberanarchy"; accessible at https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1001&context=occasional_papers - Lessig, L. (2006) "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace 2.0"; accessible at https://lessig.org/product/codev2 - Lohsse S., Schulze R., Staudenmayer D. (2017), Contracts for the Supply of Digital Content: Regulatory Challenges and Gaps (Hart Publishing-Nomos). - Schulze R., Staudenmayer D. (2020), EU Digital Law: Article-by-Article Commentary (Hart Publishing). - Savin A., (2020) EU Internet Law (3rd ed.) (Edward Elgar Publishing). - Pila J., Torremans P., European Intellectual Property Law (2nd edition, Oxford University Press 2019). - Kur A., Dreier Th., Luginbuehl St., European Intellectual Property Law (2nd edition, Edward Elgar Publishing 2019). - De Filippi, P., Wright, A. (2018), Blockchain and the Law-The Rule of Code (Harvard University Press). - Wehrbach, K. (2018), Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust (The MIT Press). - Szostek, D. (2019), Blockchain and the Law (Nomos). - Veale, M., Borgesius F. Z. (2021), Demystifying the Draft EU Artificial Intelligence Act. Available at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.03721.pdf - Lynskey, Orla. The Foundations of EU Data Protection Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Print. ISBN: 9780198718239 Available at library as an e-book - Kuner C, Lee A. Bygrave, Christopher Docksey, and Laura Drechsler (Des) The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): A Commentary (OUP 2020) - Zuboff S, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (Public Affairs 2019) ISBN-13: 9781610395694 Note: The area of Information Technology Law is a fast moving one. As such, it can be difficult to find textbooks which are up-to-date with current developments, as textbooks can often be 12 months behind current developments even at the time of their publication. Journal articles are often the best source of more recent information, and have the added advantage of often being available electronically via the WWW. Primary materials, such as legislation and caselaw, as well as other useful secondary material are also often published on-line and, as a result, learning how to search Internet resources effectively is an increasingly important skill. There are a wide range of websites relevant to the course. As Information Technology law is a rapidly developing area, the law is often challenged to respond to the many advances in technology. It is therefore important to keep abreast of developments. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture and Independent Study | ||||||||
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| LECTURER/S | Ioannis Revolidis Mireille-Martine Sant (Co-ord.) |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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