Since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, data protection has been elevated to the status of a fundamental right in the European Union and is now enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights alongside the right to privacy. This timely book investigates the normative significance of data protection as a fundamental right in the EU. The first part of the book examines the scope, the content and the capabilities of data protection as a fundamental right to resolve problems and to provide for an effective protection. It discusses the current approaches to this right in the legal scholarship and the case-law and identifies the limitations that prevent it from having an added value of its own. It suggests a theory of data protection that reconstructs the understanding of this right and could guide courts and legislators on data protection issues. The second part of the book goes on to empirically test the reconstructed right to data protection in four case-studies of counter-terrorism surveillance: communications metadata, travel data, financial data and Internet data surveillance. The book will be of interest to academics, students, policy-makers and practitioners in EU law, privacy, data protection, counter-terrorism and human rights law.

This book asks a simple question: are the tech giants monopolies? In the current environment of suspicion towards the major technology companies as a result of concerns about their power and influence, it has become commonplace to talk of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or Netflix as the modern day version of the 19th century trusts. In turn, the tech giants are vilified for a whole range of monopoly harms towards consumers, workers and even the democratic process. In the US and the EU, antitrust, and regulatory reform is on the way. Using economics, business and management science as well legal reasoning, this book offers a new perspective on big tech. It builds a theory of "moligopoly". The theory advances that the tech giants, or at least some of them, coexist both as monopolies and oligopoly firms that compete against each other in an environment of substantial uncertainty and economic dynamism. With this, the book assesses ongoing antitrust and regulatory policy efforts. It demonstrates that it is counterproductive to pursue policies that introduce more rivalry in moligopoly markets subject to technological discontinuities. And that non-economic harms like privacy violations, fake news, or hate speech are difficult issues that belong to the realm of regulation, not antimonopoly remediation.

This monograph examines how European Union law and regulation address concentrations of private economic power which impede free information flows on the Internet to the detriment of Internet users' autonomy. In particular, competition law, sector specific regulation (if it exists), data protection and human rights law are considered and assessed to the extent they can tackle such concentrations of power for the benefit of users. Using a series of illustrative case studies, of Internet provision, search, mobile devices and app stores, and the cloud, the work demonstrates the gaps that currently exist in EU law and regulation. It is argued that these gaps exist due, in part, to current overarching trends guiding the regulation of economic power, namely neoliberalism, by which only the situation of market failure can invite ex ante rules, buoyed by the lobbying of regulators and legislators by those in possession of such economic power to achieve outcomes which favour their businesses. Given this systemic, and extra-legal, nature of the reasons as to why the gaps exist, solutions from outside the system are proposed at the end of each case study. This study will appeal to EU competition lawyers and media lawyers.

It has been said that the only asset that a lawyer has is time. But the reality is that a lawyer's greatest asset is information. The practice and the business of law is all about information exchange. The flow of information travels in a number of different directions during the life of a case. A client communicates certain facts to a lawyer. The lawyer assimilates those facts and seeks out specialised legal information which may be applicable to those facts. In the course of a generation there has been a technological revolution which represents a paradigm shift in the flow of information and communication. Collisions in the Digital Paradigm is about how the law deals with digital information technologies and some of the problems that arise when the law has to deal with issues arising in a new paradigm.

Private International Law Online is a dedicated analysis of the private international law framework in the European Union as it applies to online activities such as content publishing, selling and advertising goods through internet marketplaces, or offering services that are performed online. It provides an insight into the history of internet regulation, and examines the interplay between substantive regulation and private international law in a transaction space that is inherently independent from physical borders. Lutzi investigates the current legal framework of the European Union from two angles: first questioning how the rules of private international law affect the effectiveness of substantive legislation, and then considering how the resulting legal framework affects individual internet users. The book addresses recent judgments like the Court of Justice's controversial decision in Glawischnig-Piesczek v Facebook, and the potential consequences of global injunctions, including the adverse effects on freedom of speech and the challenges of coordinating different national laws with regard to online platforms. It also considers the European Union's new Copyright Directive, and the way private international law affects the ability of instruments such as this to create a coherent legal framework for online activities in the European Union. Based on this discussion, Lutzi advocates an alternative approach and sets out how reform might provide a more effective framework, and develops individual elements of the approach to propose new rules and how those rules might adapt to accommodate more recent phenomena and technologies.

The book provides a critical analysis of electronic alternatives to documents used in the international sale of goods carried by sea, including invoices, bills of lading, certificates of insurance, as well as other documentation required under documentary credits, and payment processing arrangements. It constitutes an in-depth discussion of their legal status and the practices relating to their use. The new edition examines recent developments in the evolving digital transformation that is taking place in the field of international trade. The book examines the commercial pressure to move from paper to electronic data, and the new technologies and relationships built for this purpose. This transition is ever evolving and as such an understanding of the attendant legal implications of the change is crucial. Analysis is provided on the adoption by UNCITRAL of its Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records, the author having been involved first hand in its drafting as a delegate and observer in UNCITRAL Working Group IV, and on the Uniform Rules on Bank Payment Obligations (URBPO). The book considers the practical workings and legal underpinnings of new electronic bill of lading platforms such as e-Title and Placing Platform Limited and of pilot projects such as Wave BL, Marco Polo and Voltron. It also examines the legal implications of proposed uses of new technologies such as distributed ledger technologies (DLT) (including blockchain), Internet of Things (IoT) and smart contracts. This book provides a complete and practical analysis of e-documents in cross-border business contracts for goods carried by sea. It examines recent trends in practice and assesses the ability of electronic alternatives to achieve legal functions performed by the paper documents they replace.