'Data Pollution' (University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics Research Paper No. 854) by Omri Ben-Shahar
comments
Digital information is the fuel of the new economy. But like the old economy's carbon fuel, it also pollutes. Harmful "data emissions" are leaked into the digital ecosystem, disrupting social institutions and public interests. This article develops a novel framework- data pollution-to rethink the harms the data economy creates and the way they have to be regulated. It argues that social intervention should focus on the external harms from collection and misuse of personal data. The article challenges the hegemony of the prevailing view - that the injuries from digital data enterprise are exclusively private, diminishing the privacy of the people whose information is used. It claims that a central problem in the digital economy has been largely ignored: how the information individuals give affects others, and how it undermines and degrades public goods and interests. The data pollution metaphor offers a novel perspective why existing regulatory tools-torts, contracts, and disclosure law-are ineffective, mirroring their historical futility in curbing the external social harms from environmental pollution. The data pollution framework also unfolds up a rich roadmap for new regulatory devices - an environmental law for data protection - that focuses on controlling these external effects. The article examines whether the general tools society has long used to control industrial pollution-production restrictions, carbon tax, and emissions liability -could be adapted to govern data pollution.
'Fiduciary management of a social media account' by Kateryna Nekit in (2020)
Trusts and Trustees analyzes
the concept and legal nature of social media accounts to explore whether these can become the object of fiduciary management. It examines the essence of a social media account and reveals the possibility of equating it to a kind of property. The article focuses on the possibility of inheriting a social media account. This takes into account approaches in various countries to the problem of determination of the post-mortem fate of digital assets, which shows a unified tendency to consider social media accounts as part of the estate transferred to the heir. The legal requirements on fiduciary management of a social media account considering its specifications are revealed.
'Theorizing Transnational Fiduciary Law' by Seth Davis and Gregory C Shaffer in (2020) 5(1)
UCI Journal of International, Transnational and Comparative Law comments
This symposium Article theorizes and assesses transnational legal ordering of fiduciary law. Fiduciary law imposes legally enforceable duties on those entrusted with discretionary authority over the interests of others. The fiduciary law of a state may apply to fiduciary relationships having a transnational (or even global) scope. Fiduciary norms themselves are transnational to the extent that they settle as governing legal norms in ways that transcend and permeate state boundaries. Curiously, however, fiduciary legal theory and transnational legal theory have yet to meet. This symposium takes the first steps towards a comprehensive theory of transnational fiduciary law. To assess transnational legal ordering of fiduciary law, one must study the extent of normative settlement across state boundaries. This can be done in terms of a meta concept of fiduciary law involving a transnational body of law, or in terms of the processes that give rise to discrete domains of fiduciary law to address particular problems as understood by relevant actors. Comparative legal analysis is critical for assessing the extent of concordance and divergence in the development and practice of fiduciary law across states. This Article introduces symposium articles that assess transnational fiduciary law as a meta concept; transnational legal ordering of fiduciary law in discrete domains; and comparative fiduciary law. Together, these articles suggest that processes of transnational legal ordering can give rise to transnational fiduciary law and the potential development of discrete transnational legal orders that transcend and permeate nation-states.
