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

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

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

Potential periodontal regeneration by application of monoclonal antibodies against integrin-subunits a6 and b1

Successful guided tissue regeneration (GTR) should result in a functional attachment apparatus of the periodontium. The crucial points in the healing process are potential microbiological colonization of mechanical barrier membranes, lacking contact to the connective tissue and apical growth of the gingival epithelium. The membranes‘ success might be improved by equipping them with antibiotics, specific inhibitors for the epithelial growth and growth factors for periodontal ligament cells (PLC) or progenitor cells. Monoclonal antibodies (mAb) directed to integrin subunits a6 and b1 were tested for their specificity to epithelial growth. In vitro assays were performed as direct and indirect contact by seeding the human HaCaT-cell-line and gingival fibroblasts.Peer Reviewe

Natural course of visual snow syndrome: a long-term follow-up study.

Visual snow syndrome is characterized by a continuous visual disturbance resembling a badly tuned analogue television and additional visual and non-visual symptoms causing significant disability. The natural course of visual snow syndrome has not hitherto been studied. In this prospective longitudinal study, 78 patients with the diagnosis of visual snow syndrome made in 2011 were re-contacted in 2019 to assess symptom evolution using a semi-structured questionnaire. Forty patients (51% of 78) were interviewed after 84 ± 5 months (mean ± SD). In all patients, symptoms had persisted. Visual snow itself was less frequently rated as the most disturbing symptom (72 versus 42%, P = 0.007), whereas a higher proportion of patients suffered primarily from entopic phenomena (2 versus 17%, P = 0.024). New treatment was commenced in 14 (35%) patients, of whom in seven, visual snow syndrome was ameliorated somewhat. Three (7%) experienced new visual migraine aura without headache, and one (2%) had new migraine headache. There were no differences in the levels of anxiety and depression measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire 8 and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale 7. Thirty-eight patients (49%) were lost to follow-up. In visual snow syndrome, symptoms can persist over 8 years without spontaneous resolution, although visual snow itself might become less bothersome