Suchergebnisse

This contribution examines how checks and balances can be organised so that the individual freedom of users in the digital space is protected from the encroachment of platforms. Indeed, platforms are quasi-states which enjoy legislative, judiciary and executive powers. This merging of functions in the hands of one single entity illustrates the failure of the liberal attempt to set up a cyberspace free of sovereign power: Platforms are the new sovereign. Modern thinkers like Foucault and Habermas have examined how sovereigns in the past have seen their powers curtailed and the role that the birth of two distinct spheres, one public and one private, has played in this process. Traditional public economic law builds on this public-private dichotomy, leaving little room to conceptualize hybrids. Yet this paper shows that platforms are such hybrids. Building on an analysis of the activities taking place on platforms, as well as the rights at stake in platform governance, it finds that platforms' immaterial locus is both political and economic, bundling public and private powers. Hence, this paper puts forward the idea that public economic law should seek to develop mirroring hybrid counter-powers. Civil society especially should be conceptualized in the digital space, with its rights, duties and responsibilities, to foster balanced relationships between the various actors present on platforms.

This contribution examines how checks and balances can be organised so that the individual freedom of users in the digital space is protected from the encroachment of platforms. Indeed, platforms are quasi-states which enjoy legislative, judiciary and executive powers. This merging of functions in the hands of one single entity illustrates the failure of the liberal attempt to set up a cyberspace free of sovereign power: Platforms are the new sovereign. Modern thinkers like Foucault and Habermas have examined how sovereigns in the past have seen their powers curtailed and the role that the birth of two distinct spheres, one public and one private, has played in this process. Traditional public economic law builds on this public-private dichotomy, leaving little room to conceptualize hybrids. Yet this paper shows that platforms are such hybrids. Building on an analysis of the activities taking place on platforms, as well as the rights at stake in platform governance, it finds that platforms' immaterial locus is both political and economic, bundling public and private powers. Hence, this paper puts forward the idea that public economic law should seek to develop mirroring hybrid counter-powers. Civil society especially should be conceptualized in the digital space, with its rights, duties and responsibilities, to foster balanced relationships between the various actors present on platforms.

This paper asks which legal tools digital operators could use to manage colliding rights on their platforms in a digitalised and transnational space such as the Internet. This space can be understood as a "modern public square", bringing together actions in the digitalised world and their interactions with actual events in the physical world. It is then useful to provide this space with a discursive framework allowing for discussing and contesting actions happening on it. In particular, this paper suggests that two well-known legal concepts, proportionality and sanctions, can be helpfully articulated within that discursive framework. In a first step, proportionality, a justificatory tool, is often used to suggest a way for managing colliding rights. This paper argues that for proportionality to be useful in managing colliding rights on digital platforms, its role, scope and limits need to be better framed and supplemented by an overall digital environment which can feed into the proportionality test in an appropriate way. This can be provided, thanks to a second step, namely labelling in law the actions digital operators take as sanctions. Sanctions are the reactions organised by digital operators to bring back social order on the platforms. The labelling of these reactions under the legal category of "sanctions" offers a meaningful tool for thinking about what digital operators do when they manage colliding rights by blocking or withdrawing contents and/or accounts. As different types of sanctions can be distinguished, differentiated legal consequences, especially in relation to managing colliding rights, can be identified. Here the role played by the proportionality test can be distinguished depending on the type of sanctions. In any case, for sanctions and proportionality to help address colliding rights on the modern public square, a discursive framework needs to be developed, which depends on the existence of relevant meaningful communities engaging in reflecting on the use of sanctions and proportionality.

the note comments on a Manni judgment, in which the Court examines the compatibility of the rules on the disclosure of information relating to undertakings with the regime protecting the use of personal data. ; This case note examines the case-law of the Court of Justice, and especially the Manni case, in which the compatibility of the compulosry regime of publicty of information for companies with the regime of protection of personal data is assessed. ; the note comments on a Manni judgment, in which the Court examines the compatibility of the rules on the disclosure of information relating to undertakings with the regime protecting the use of personal data. ; La note commente un arrêt Manni, dans lequel Cour examine la compatibilité de la réglementation en matière de publicité d'informations relatives aux entreprises avec le régime protégeant l'utilisation des données personnelles.