Personalisierung im Internet, Autonomie der Politik und Service public

Wenn der Staat als Regulator in Erscheinung tritt, hat er sich in rechtsstaatlich geordneten Bahnen zu bewegen und kann für sein Handeln in Rechenschaft gezogen werden. Gleiches sollte gelten, wenn ein Unternehmen, das – wie die SRG – öffentliche Aufgaben im Dienste der Demokratie erfüllt, Algorithmen einsetzt, um Nachrichten zu personalisieren. Technologien zur Personalisierung von Nachrichten im Internet haben eine potentiell verzerrende Wirkung auf unsere Meinungs- und Informationsfreiheit und können Fragmentierungstendenzen im politischen Diskurs verstärken. Raison d’être der SRG sind die besonderen Service-public-Leistungen, die sie als Garant qualitativ hochstehender und vielfältiger Informationen erbringt. Ihre Aufgaben für Demokratie und gesellschaftliche Kohäsion kann sie jedoch nur dann wirksam erfüllen, wenn sie weiterhin alle Citoyens anspricht. Angesichts der durch soziale Medien begünstigten Bildung von Teilöffentlichkeiten muss die SRG ihre Anstrengungen verstärkt darauf richten, hier ein Gegengewicht zu setzen und sich als die gesamte Bevölkerung in der Schweiz integrierendes politisches und gesellschaftliches Forum zu verstehen. Zweifellos kann die SRG eine für Demokratie und Zusammenhalt des Landes so wichtige Aufgabe nur dann wirksam erfüllen, wenn sie auch im Internet aktiv sein darf; sollte die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung zu einer signifikanten Abnahme der Angebotsvielfalt im Bereich der für die Schweiz relevanten politischen Informationen führen, sollte die SRG ihre Online-Aktivitäten gar weiter ausbauen

Personalisierung im Internet, Autonomie der Politik und Service public

Wenn der Staat als Regulator in Erscheinung tritt, hat er sich in rechtsstaatlich geordneten Bahnen zu bewegen und kann für sein Handeln in Rechenschaft gezogen werden. Gleiches sollte gelten, wenn ein Unternehmen, das – wie die SRG – öffentliche Aufgaben im Dienste der Demokratie erfüllt, Algorithmen einsetzt, um Nachrichten zu personalisieren. Technologien zur Personalisierung von Nachrichten im Internet haben eine potentiell verzerrende Wirkung auf unsere Meinungs- und Informationsfreiheit und können Fragmentierungstendenzen im politischen Diskurs verstärken. Raison d’être der SRG sind die besonderen Service-public-Leistungen, die sie als Garant qualitativ hochstehender und vielfältiger Informationen erbringt. Ihre Aufgaben für Demokratie und gesellschaftliche Kohäsion kann sie jedoch nur dann wirksam erfüllen, wenn sie weiterhin alle Citoyens anspricht. Angesichts der durch soziale Medien begünstigten Bildung von Teilöffentlichkeiten muss die SRG ihre Anstrengungen verstärkt darauf richten, hier ein Gegengewicht zu setzen und sich als die gesamte Bevölkerung in der Schweiz integrierendes politisches und gesellschaftliches Forum zu verstehen. Zweifellos kann die SRG eine für Demokratie und Zusammenhalt des Landes so wichtige Aufgabe nur dann wirksam erfüllen, wenn sie auch im Internet aktiv sein darf; sollte die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung zu einer signifikanten Abnahme der Angebotsvielfalt im Bereich der für die Schweiz relevanten politischen Informationen führen, sollte die SRG ihre Online-Aktivitäten gar weiter ausbauen

Bottom-up constitutionalism: The case of net neutrality

Net neutrality is no longer only a battle cry of a few Internet romancers but has evolved into a key value for contemporary society that is being institutionalised as a constitutional right. With the help of sociological systems theory, this text argues that the social and legal institutionalisation of constitutional rights need to be distinguished. Commonly, constitutional rights emerge from society before they are reformulated in the legal realm. Using the example of the United States, the paper shows empirically that net neutrality is about to emerge as a new fundamental value and right. Its constitutionalisation is happening bottom-up, driven by social movements, Internet activists and advocacy groups, and further, in an interweavement of civil society dynamics with the legal system. The question is whether constitutional structures have already become identifiable. The last section discusses the relationship between social and formal constitutional structures from a legitimacy and democracy perspective

Copyright Insight Out: A Legal Sociologist’s Perspective

In my work as a researcher and teacher of legal sociology, copyright issues have always played an important role. I have been particularly interested in studying how copyright has changed under the influence of technology. The start of my career as a law professor in 1998 coincided with the invention of file sharing. In the years that followed, I used file sharing in my teaching to illustrate how digital technology challenged the effectiveness of government sanctions as a means of copyright enforcement. In my research, exploring the relationship between materiality and sociality, or how technological infrastructure and law interact, has become central. It focuses on the concept of normative expectations and the related question of how the law can regulate norm-building processes in a social context. Overall, the law and society perspective has proved useful in analysing the social impact of a new technology and in incorporating the insights gained into legal practice in order to make concrete suggestions for improvement

Art and Money: Constitutional Rights in the Private Sphere?

The present debate on constitutional rights aims to protect the individual against the intrusive power of the state. Analysing the precarious relationship between art and money, the authors argue that constitutional rights need to be extended into the regimes of private governance. This requires four fundamental changes. (1) Constitutional rights can no longer be limited to the protection of individual actors. Instead, they need to be extended to guarantees of freedom of discourses. (2) The new experience of the twentieth century is that totalizing tendencies have their origin not only in politics, but also in other fields of action, especially in technology, science, and the economy. Thus, a discursive concept of constitutional rights should be directed against any social system with totalizing tendencies. (3) Instead of concentrating on centres of economic and social power, constitutional rights in the private sphere should focus on the specific communicative medium of the expansionist social system involved. (4) This excludes the direct analogy of a ‘right' as a quasispatial exclusion zone. More significant guarantees of discursive autonomy could be found in a ‘proceduralization' of constitutional right

Is Digital Text-Watermarking the Long-Desired User Friendly Digital Rights Management? Copyright and Fundamental Values from a Comparative Perspective

Many have argued that technologies used to protect copyrighted works usually go beyond the letter of the law and subsequently impinge on interests relating to freedom of information and expression, privacy and free choice. Classic examples are technologies that prevent CDs or DVDs from being accessed or copied under certain conditions, or that block or filter-out copyright-protected materials. This article assesses digital text-watermarking, which does not restrict users’ access to or use of works, but individualises every user’s copy by changing the formatting or words in a text (e.g. “not visible” for “invisible”). Every purchaser/user receives a unique version of the work, meaning that, if there is any illegal upload or usage, it is possible to determine which user the copy came from. The technology thereby allows legal (and illegal) use to be undertaken, but serves as a tool for enforcement when there is illegal use. This article assesses digital text-watermarking from a comparative law perspective, particularly the Civil Law and the Common Law traditions

Stimulating Trade and Development of Indigenous Cultural Heritage by Means of International Law: Issues of Legitimacy and Method

Adopting the view that a more active participation of indigenous peoples in the trade of their knowledge assets would promote their socioeconomic development raises difficult questions of legitimacy and method. Questions of legitimacy are posed by the potentially modernising effects of development endangering traditional ways of indigenous peoples’ social organisation. Questions of method arise when studying how international law, including international economic law, could better contribute to furthering the development interests of indigenous peoples in the trade of indigenous cultural heritage (ICH). There will be many areas where modern law and indigenous custom collide. These questions are the focus of the first part of the paper. The second part studies international law’s potential to stimulate ICH trade for the sake of indigenous socioeconomic development. To this end, it first assesses how interests of indigenous peoples in trade and development of ICH are currently institutionalised in international economic law. The paper then examines whether preferential trade rules for indigenous cultural goods and services would be an adequate tool to advance the interests of indigenous peoples in ICH trade and development

Collective Rights Management, Competition Policy and Cultural Diversity: EU Lawmaking at a Crossroads

In the digital networked environment, user’s expectations of getting easy access to digital content all the time and through a multitude of devices clash with the territorial structure of copyright and the complications of the licencing process. Under these circumstances, systems of collective rights management (CRM) offering a one-stop shop for rights clearance would seem to be an attractive solution to simplify cross-border licencing and save on transaction costs. In the European Union (EU), the Commission has made many attempts over the last decade not only to make collective management organisations (CMOs) work more efficiently but also to bring them from a system of national licences granted by national monopolies to a system of EU-wide authorisations. The European Commission’s Proposal of 12 July 2012 for a directive on CRM is a confirmation of this policy. However, it is questionable whether these regulatory attempts are compatible with cultural diversity interests. This paper discusses the role of CRM in ensuring cultural diversity and how a purely competition-orientated approach can impinge on this. It does so through analysing EU case law and the Commission’s Proposal