The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is a leader in the study of the law and policy around the Internet and other emerging technologies.
By Brett Frischmann on November 29, 2018 at 1:28 pm
In this essay, we explore how personalization works for and against people. Personalization is just a tool. Society needs to pay attention to what is being personalized and to what and whose ends.
By Riana Pfefferkorn on November 28, 2018 at 4:29 pm
Today, I joined the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Northern California, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in moving to unseal a sealed case in federal district court in the Eastern District of California.
By Miquel Peguera on November 24, 2018 at 9:18 am
The new Law on Data Protection and Digital Rights (LOPD), recently enacted in Spain, includes a highly controversial provision allowing political parties and organizations to collect and use personal data revealing political views of individuals. The LOPD aims at adapting the national legal framework to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which became fully applicable on May 25, 2018.
By Chuck Cosson on November 23, 2018 at 2:14 pm
“Tool Without A Handle”: Tools and the Search for Meaning – Part II
"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment." ~ Marcus Aurelius
The last post in this series observed optimal policy thinking aims at allowing people sufficient control over technologies they may use them to apply their own capacities and, in that process, find meaning. This post explores that point further; in particular how emphasis on technology, rather than people, falls short of that aim.
By Riana Pfefferkorn on November 15, 2018 at 8:09 pm
By Annemarie Bridy on November 15, 2018 at 2:30 pm
In response to a global backlash in the wake of Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election, dominant tech companies are scrambling to stave off increased governmental regulation of their information handling practices. It is an attractive strategy for them to cut deals with regulators whereby they agree to follow privately negotiated rules in lieu of command-and-control regulation. With respect to content moderation, this form of hybrid public-private regulation could undermine First Amendment limits on state action that are designed to protect individual citizens from official censorship. This post explores the role of anti-piracy voluntary agreements in normalizing hybrid public-private speech regulation on the Internet.
By Richard Forno on November 6, 2018 at 11:57 am
As Americans go to the polls, the voting process and the information environment are still not secure.
By Riana Pfefferkorn on November 2, 2018 at 5:22 pm
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has released its fourth annual report on the impact of device encryption (i.e., smartphones and tablets) on the office’s investigations and prosecutions.
By Joan Barata on October 24, 2018 at 2:18 pm
The European Parliament recently took the final vote on the new Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). The text, which can be considered final, now awaits only the formal approval of the Council. The AVMSD will become the first legally binding instrument to impose new, and extensive, responsibilities for content regulation on privately owned Internet platforms. They are required to establish and apply detailed rules in areas such as hate speech, child pornography, protection of children’s development and preventing terrorism.
By Annemarie Bridy on October 18, 2018 at 9:02 am
Over the course of the last decade, in response to significant pressure from the US government and other governments, service providers have assumed private obligations to regulate online content that have no basis in public law. For US tech companies, a robust regime of "voluntary agreements" to resolve content-related disputes has grown up on the margins of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Communications Decency Act (CDA). For the most part, this regime has been built for the benefit of intellectual property rightholders attempting to control online piracy and counterfeiting beyond the territorial limits of the United States and without recourse to judicial process.
