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This chapter aims to understand the entrepreneurial perspective on legal innovation. How do those who create legal innovation make the services and products that improve the way law is used? The conversation centres on topics such as passion for innovation, identifying needs for new products and services, dealing with failure, keys to success in the market, innovation networks, regulatory approaches to innovation and innovation in the financial services industry. The chapter also considers aspects of innovation that are particular to legal services. Among them are the creation and availability of legal datasets for the application of artificial intelligence and the transferability of legal innovation to other jurisdictions with different laws.
Like information disseminated through online platforms, infectious diseases can cross international borders as they track the movement of people (and sometimes animals and goods) and spread globally. Hence, their control and management have major implications for international relations, and international law. Drawing on this analogy, this chapter looks to global health governance to formulate suggestions for the governance of online platforms. Successes in global health governance suggest that the principle of tackling low-hanging fruit first to build trust and momentum towards more challenging goals may extend to online platform governance. Progress beyond the low-hanging fruit appears more challenging: For one, disagreement on the issue of resource allocation in the online platform setting may lead to “outbreaks” of disinformation being relegated to regions of the world that may not be at the top of online platforms’ market priorities lists. Secondly, while there may be wide consensus on the harms of infectious disease outbreaks, the harms from the spread of disinformation are more contested. Relying on national definitions of disinformation would hardly yield coherent international cooperation. Global health governance would thus suggest that an internationally negotiated agreement on standards as it relates to disinformation may be necessary.
In order to manage the issue of diversity of regulatory vision, States may, to some extent, harmonize substantive regulation—eliminating diversity. This is less likely than States determining unilaterally or multilaterally to develop manageable rules of jurisdiction, so that their regulation applies only in limited circumstances. The fullest realization of this “choice of law” solution would involve geoblocking or other technology that divides up regulatory authority according to a specified, and a perhaps agreed, principle. Geoblocking may be costly and ultimately porous, but it would allow different communities to effectuate their different visions of the good in the platform context. To the extent that the principles of jurisdiction are agreed, and are structured to be exclusive, platforms would have the certainty of knowing the requirements under which they must operate in each market. Of course, different communities may remain territorial states, but given the a-territorial nature of the internet, it may be possible for other divisions of authority and responsibility to develop. Cultural affinity, or political perspective, may be more compelling as an organizational principle to some than territorial co-location.
While the social media and digital platforms started with an objective to enhance social connectivity and information sharing, they also present a significant challenge in content moderation resulting in spreading disinformation. Disinformation Paradox is a phenomenon where an attempt to regulate harmful content online can inadvertently amplifies it. The social media platforms often serve as breeding grounds for disinformation. This chapter discusses the inherent difficulties in moderating content at a large scale, different responses of these platforms and potential solutions.
This chapter reviews the regulation of disinformation from an African human rights’ law perspective, focusing on the right to freedom of expression and the right to vote. It provides an overview of the African regional law framework, specifically the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights of 1981 (the African Charter) and corresponding jurisprudence. The chapter also analyses the way in which freedom of expression and disinformation laws have been applied in African countries, the aim being to contextualize and illustrate how African regional law plays out at the domestic level, but with an emphasis on the position in South Africa.
A broad consensus has emerged in recent years that although rumours, conspiracy theories and fabricated information are far from new, in the changed structure and operating mechanisms of the public sphere today we are faced with something much more challenging than anything to date, and the massive scale of this disinformation can even pose a threat to the foundations of democracy. However, the consensus extends only to this statement, and opinions differ considerably about the causes of the increased threat of disinformation, whom to blame for it, and the most effective means to counter it. From the perspective of freedom of speech, the picture is not uniform either, and there has been much debate about the most appropriate remedies. It is commonly argued, for example, that the free speech doctrine of the United States does not allow for effective legal action against disinformation, while in Europe there is much more room for manoeuvre at the disposal of the legislator.
This chapter investigates the logic of regulation that animates the AKP’s new securitisation technologies. The chapter begins by examining the new laws on security vetting and archival background checks. Reviewing the conduct of the OHAL Commission tasked to decide on applications by purged citizens for reversal of their refusal or civic death status, the chapter reveals how ambiguities in the new law allow for the extensive use of informal rule of law based on extra-legal practices. By focusing on several denunciation cases, the chapter’s theoretical and empirical strands come together in an analysis of the impact this new securitisation logic of regulation has both on those targeted and on society as a whole. I argue that the new regulatory technologies of citizen-informants and the perfusion of distrust throughout society an ‘atmosfear of terror’, inducing the population as a whole to self-regulate, perform, and participate in their own securitisation.
In the digital age, the landscape of information dissemination has undergone a profound transformation. The traditional boundaries between information and news have become increasingly blurred as technology allows anyone to create and share content online. The once-excusive realm of authoritative media outlets and professional journalists has given way to a decentralized public square, where individuals can voice their opinions and reach vast audiences regardless of mainstream coverage. The evolution of the digital age has dismantled the conventional notions of journalism and reshaped how news is obtained and interpreted. This shift has paved the way for the proliferation of fake news and online disinformation. The ease with which false information can be fabricated, packaged convincingly and rapidly disseminated to a wide audience has contributed to the rise of fake news. This phenomenon gained global attention during the 2016 US presidential election, prompting nations worldwide to seek strategies for tackling this issue.
This book examines how new AKP authoritarian securitisation practices shape and reshape the daily lives of people purged by emergency decree. The Introduction defines key concepts such as authoritarianism, securitisation, and civic death, as well as describes the methodology. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combines empirical ethnographic and historical research with theoretical and philosophical perspectives on the political, the book highlights the new forms of citizenship deprivation, security, and punishment that have emerged under the AKP. It argues that new methods of securitisation are designed to reduce those targeted for civic death, a type of disposable citizen who is denied the opportunity to reclaim their social, economic, and political rights even after they have been acquitted or the state of emergency has been lifted.
Today is a time of retrogression in sustaining rights-protecting democracies, and of high levels of distrust in institutions. Of particular concern are threats to the institutions, including universities and the press, that help provide the information base for successful democracies. Attacks on universities, and university faculties, are rising. In Poland over the last four years, a world-renowned constitutional law theorist, Wojciech Sadurski, has been subject to civil and criminal prosecutions for defamation of the governing party. In Hungary, the Central European University (CEU) was ejected by the government, and had to partly relocate to Vienna, and other attacks on academic freedom followed. Faculty members in a number of countries have needed to relocate to other countries for their own safety. Governments attack what subjects can be taught – in Hungary bans on gender studies; in Poland, a government minister issued a call to ban gender studies and ‘LGBT ideology’. Attacks on academics and universities, through government restrictions and public or private violence, are not limited to Poland and Hungary, but are of concern in Brazil, India, Turkey and a range of other countries. Attacks on journalists are similarly rising. These developments are deeply concerning. The proliferation of ‘fake news’, doctored photos and false claims on social media has been widely documented. Constitutional democracy cannot long be sustained in an ‘age of lies’, where truth and knowledge no longer matter.
The issue of mass disinformation on the Internet is a long-standing concern for policymakers, legislators, academics and the wider public. Disinformation is believed to have had a significant impact on the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. Concern about the threat of foreign – mainly Russian – interference in the democratic process is also growing. The COVID-19 pandemic, which reached global proportions in 2020, gave new impetus to the spread of disinformation, which even put lives at risk. The problem is real and serious enough to force all parties concerned to reassess the previous European understanding of the proper regulation of freedom of expression.
In April 2023, the Government of India amended a set of regulations called the Information Technology Rules, which primarily dealt with issues around online intermediary liability and safe harbour. Until 2023, these rules required online intermediaries to take all reasonable efforts to ensure that ‘fake, false or misleading’ information was not published on their platforms. Previous iterations of these rules had already been challenged before the Indian courts for imposing a disproportionate burden on intermediaries, and having the effect of chilling online speech. Now, the 2023 Amendment went even further: it introduced an entity called a ‘Fact Check Unit’, to be created by the government. This government-created unit would flag information that – in its view – was ‘fake, false or misleading’ with respect to ‘the business of the central government’. Online intermediaries were then obligated to make reasonable efforts to ensure that any such flagged information would not be on their platforms. In practical terms, what this meant was that if intermediaries did not take down flagged speech, they risked losing their safe harbour (guaranteed under the Information Technology Act).
Chile’s regulation of fake news dates back nearly a century. The initial instance occurred in 1925 during a constitutional crisis that resulted in the drafting of a new constitution. At that time, a de facto government issued a decree making it illegal to publish and distribute fake news. The second regulatory milestone occurred during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet with the inclusion of provisions related to defamation in the 1980 constitution. Defamation involved spreading false information through mass media to unjustly tarnish someone’s reputation. Upon the restoration of democracy in Chile in 1990, these stipulations were permanently abolished from the legal system. Since 2001, the judicial pursuit of disinformation in Chile has been limited to exceptional means such as the State Security Law or, indirectly, through the right to rectification.
This article is part of a larger series that is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Jerry Ellig, with whom I had the pleasure of working on multiple occasions. It explores the concept of regulatory subsidiarity, which involves pushing regulatory power down from centralized governments to state, local, tribal, and other governments. It explains how this approach both promotes policy tailoring and facilitates regulatory experimentation, allowing policy makers to test which interventions produce the best results. Finally, it considers how regulatory subsidiarity has proven itself outside of the U.S. and can succeed within the U.S. as well.
The European Clozapine Task Force is a group of psychiatrists and pharmacologists practicing in 18 countries under European Medicines Agency (EMA) regulation, who are deeply concerned about the underuse of clozapine in European countries. Although clozapine is the most effective antipsychotic for people with treatment-resistant schizophrenia, a large proportion of them do not have access to this treatment. Concerns about clozapine-induced agranulocytosis and stringent blood monitoring rules are major barriers to clozapine prescribing and use. There is a growing body of evidence that the incidence of clozapine-induced agranulocytosis is very low after the first year of treatment. Maintaining lifelong monthly blood monitoring after this period contributes to unjustified discontinuation of clozapine. We leverage recent and replicated evidence on the long-term safety of clozapine to call for the revision and updating of the EMA’s blood monitoring rules, thus aiming to overcome this major barrier to clozapine prescribing and use. We believe the time has come for relaxing the rules without increasing the risks for people using clozapine in Europe.
In today's digital age, the spread of dis- and misinformation across traditional and social media poses a significant threat to democracy. Yet repressing political speech in the name of truth can also undermine democratic values. This volume brings together prominent legal scholars from democracies worldwide to explore and evaluate different regulatory approaches for addressing this complex problem – all taking into account that the cure must not be worse than the disease. Using a comparative lens, the book offers important and novel insights into methods ranging from national regulation of politicians' speech to empowering civil-society groups that are well-positioned to blunt the effects of disinformation and misinformation. The book also provides solutions-oriented recommendations for policymakers, judges, legal practitioners, and scholars seeking to promote democratic values by encouraging free political speech while combatting disinformation and misinformation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
What does it mean for a government to declare its citizens 'dead' while they still live? Following the failed 2016 coup, the Turkish AKP government implemented sweeping powers against some 152,000 of its citizens. These Kanun hükmünde kararnameli ('emergency decreed') were dismissed from their positions and banned for life from public service. With their citizenship rights revoked, Seçkin Sertdemir argues these individuals were rendered into a state of 'civic death'. This study considers how these authoritarian securitisation methods took shape, shedding light on the lived experiences of targeted people. Bringing together approaches from political philosophy, social anthropology, and sociology, Sertdemir outlines the approaches and justifications used by the Turkish government to dismiss opponents, increase surveillance, and brand citizens as 'terrorists'. At the same time, extensive archival research and in-depth interviews bring focus to the impact of these measures on the lives of women, and the disabled and LGBTQ+ communities.
People may believe sleep to be simply a static state that is the direct opposite of wakefulness; however, this is not the case. Rather, it is a complex and dynamic process, and throughout sleep we progress through multiple stages that can be measured discretely across behavioural, physiological, and cognitive domains. This chapter describes the differences and features of these different stages and how they can be measured. Also described is the fact that sleep and wakefulness are not mutually exclusive, and that there are times when the lines between sleep and wake can be blurred, and this is notably true in insomnia. Finally, the chapter explains how sleep is regulated through interacting homeostatic and circadian processes, and the neuroscientific underpinnings of the sleep and circadian system.
Chapter 2 describes the fundamentals, applications, standardization, and operating principles of RFID technology and offers a glimpse into the design considerations and architectures of modern UHF RFID readers.