Internet Law Commons^™

Foundations For Platform Liability, Kathryn E. Spier, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

From spreading misinformation to selling deadly products, bad actors use technology platforms to their advantage while causing devastating harms to privacy, health, and even democracy. Despite their central role in enabling these bad actors, the platforms almost entirely escape liability. This legal immunity is purportedly grounded in economics. From the beginning, courts and legislatures feared that liability would chill innovation, growth, and user access. They also speculated that platforms have sufficient market incentives to voluntarily police bad actors, making liability unnecessary.

Whereas many scholars have argued that platform immunity is blind to justice, this Article shows that it is also …

Consumer Agents, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

In the twenty-first century economy, individuals need market help that they are not getting. The technology has long existed for a browser plug-in that would filter out toxic social media content or a virtual shopping assistant that would find and even purchase the best deals online without having to go to many different websites and product pages. Yet tech platforms have used lawsuits and data control to stifle such tools. The lack of digital helpers has potentially profound consequences. Social media use is linked to alarming increases in teenage depression and anxiety. Businesses’ ability to manipulate consumers into paying higher …

Ius Constituendum Pengaturan Ambang Batas Parlemen Berdasarkan Putusan Mahkamah Konstitusi Nomor 116/Puu-Xxi/2023, Arsyianti Mega Nanda, Erland Ferdinansyah

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Pemilu merupakan wujud pelaksanaan kedaulatan rakyat di Indonesia yang menganut sistem presidensial dan multipartai. Namun, banyaknya partai memicu instabilitas koalisi dan melemahkan dukungan terhadap presiden. Untuk mengatasi hal ini diterapkan ambang batas parlemen (Parliamentary Threshold). Putusan MK No. 116/PUU-XXI/2023 menyatakan ambang batas 4% konstitusional untuk Pemilu 2024, namun inkonstitusional untuk Pemilu selanjutnya. Putusan ini menegaskan perlunya ambang batas baru yang tidak hanya menyederhanakan sistem kepartaian, tetapi juga menjamin keadilan suara dan proporsionalitas sesuai prinsip kedaulatan rakyat. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode yuridis normatif dengan pendekatan kualitatif-deskriptif. Pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui studi kepustakaan. Kerangka teori yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini meliputi teori …

Analisis Demokrasi Pada Pengisian Jabatan Gubernur Dan Wakil Gubernur Di Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, Akbar Ardya Putra, Rosita Candrakirana, Andina Elok Puri Maharani

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

The aim of this research is to analyze the implementation of democracy in the process of filling the governor and deputy governor positions in the Yogyakarta Special Region. This is regulated in the Special Areas Act No. 13/2012. The Act stipulates that the candidates for governor can only be the descendants of the Yogyakarta Sultanate and the candidates for deputy governor can be the descendants of the Duchy of Pakualaman. Following these provisions, there are differences between the special region of Yogyakarta and other regions using general elections to fill regional heads. The results of the study show that the …

Menguak Status Dan Legalitas Rupiah Digital Sebagai Legal Tender (Perspektif Teori Keadilan Bermartabat), Sylvia Setjoatmadja, Jeferson Kameo

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Digital technology and modern telecommunications have been and will continue to be key factors in the emergence of various innovative products. One such innovative product is digital currency, specifically Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). In Indonesia, advancements in digital technology and telecommunications have encouraged the government to issue a CBDC, which will be named Digital Rupiah. The initiative to issue Digital Rupiah also responds to global trends and the public's need for secure, efficient, and sustainable payment instruments.

However, the plan to issue Digital Rupiah is not without challenges, particularly regarding the clarity of its legal status as a lawful …

Digital Constitutionalism: Resistensi Kebebasan Berpendapat Di Indonesia Dalam Hegemoni Algoritma Ruang Digital, Yuniar Prehatini, Linda Noviana Mita Devi

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Era digital membawa transformasi dalam segala aspek kehidupan. Perkembangan teknologi menghadirkan perkembangan zaman pada sisi positif dan negatif dimana penggunaan ruang digital yang dapat diakses tanpa batasan wilayah. Kebebasan diartikan melalui teknologi dengan adanya akses ruang digital memberikan kemudahan akses kepada siapa pun. Melalui algoritma digital, segala hal baik dari aspek budaya, politik, maupun ekonomi dapat diketahui sehingga hal ini juga dapat menimbulkan keresahan apabila tidak diatur batasan akan keberadaannya. Penelitian ini menggunakan penelitian normatif yang fokus pada analisis terhadap norma, asas, doktrin, dan teori hukum yang berkaitan dengan perlindungan hak asasi manusia di ruang digital. Hasil penulisan ini menunjukkan …

Analisis Klausula Choice Of Forum Dalam Kontrak Standar E-Commerce Di Indonesia: Kajian Berdasarkan Perspektif Perlindungan Konsumen, Sarping Saputra

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

This research discusses choice of forum clauses in standard contracts on the five largest e-commerce platforms in Indonesia, namely Shopee, Tokopedia, Lazada, Bukalapak, and Blibli. The clause stipulates the mechanism and location of dispute resolution that automatically binds consumers when using the platform. In practice, these clauses tend to burden consumers, especially regarding access to fair dispute resolution. This research focuses on the compatibility of the choice of forum clause with the principles of consumer protection regulated in the Consumer Protection Law (UUPK). The results reveal that most e-commerce platforms use exclusive forms of choice of forum clauses, such as …

Dekolonisasi Hukum Perdata Indonesia: Kritik Terhadap Warisan Kolonial Dan Implikasinya Terhadap Pembangunan Hukum Berkeadilan, R. Mustar Lofi

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Hukum perdata Indonesia hingga kini masih berada di bawah bayang-bayang warisan kolonial, terutama melalui keberlakuan Burgerlijk Wetboek (BW) 1848 yang diwarisi dari Belanda. Meskipun berbagai peraturan baru telah diundangkan, fondasi utama hukum perdata belum sepenuhnya lepas dari struktur, nilai, dan cara pandang kolonial. Artikel ini mengkaji secara kritis bagaimana dominasi hukum kolonial masih berpengaruh dalam pembentukan dan penegakan hukum perdata di Indonesia, serta mengapa dekolonisasi menjadi penting dalam pembangunan sistem hukum yang berkeadilan. Dengan menggunakan pendekatan yuridis-normatif dan analisis interdisipliner dari perspektif sosiologis hukum dan filsafat hukum, tulisan ini menelusuri bagaimana warisan hukum kolonial menciptakan ketimpangan, terutama dalam hal akses …

Urgensi Optimalisasi Regulasi Ico Dan Regulatory Sandbox Di Indonesia: Studi Komparatif Malaysia, Singapura, Dan Uea, Arfan Yanayir Akbar Sabillilah

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Regulasi aset kripto di Indonesia sedang mengalami transisi mendasar menyusul diberlakukannya Undang-Undang Pengembangan dan Penguatan Sektor Keuangan (UU P2SK), yang mengalihkan pengawasan dari Bappebti ke Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK) dan Bank Indonesia. Meskipun demikian, kerangka kerja saat ini masih menyisakan celah yang signifikan, khususnya terkait mekanisme penggalangan dana publik seperti Initial Coin Offering (ICO), Initial Exchange Offering (IEO), dan Security Token Offering (STO), serta tidak adanya Regulatory Sandbox khusus untuk inovasi berbasis kripto. Celah-celah ini menciptakan ketidakpastian hukum, meningkatkan risiko penipuan, dan melemahkan perlindungan investor. Studi ini menggunakan metode yuridis-normatif dengan pendekatan hukum komparatif, menganalisis model regulasi di Malaysia, Singapura, …

The Illusion Of Inclusion: The False Promise Of The New Governance Project For Content Moderation, Brenda Dvoskin

Scholarship@WashULaw

Because private companies now control the most prominent communication platforms, the most pressing question in the field of content moderation is how to ensure that the governance of public discourse responds to public values. The prevailing approach, given that the state cannot regulate speech directly, is that state regulation can be substituted with audited self-regulation, broad stakeholder participation, and negotiated rulemaking. In this model, which this article refers to as the “new governance model for content moderation,” companies include advocates as representatives of the public in their processes to govern online speech. Ideally, they negotiate policy goals and share responsibility …

Harmful Connections: How Tort Law Can Address Algorithmic Account Recommendation Harms And Protect Youth Social Media Users, Francesca Kennedy

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In 2023, the United States Surgeon General published an advisory to bring an urgent public health issue affecting America’s youth to the nation’s attention. The urgent public health issue was the ongoing negative impact of social media on children and adolescents. The report revealed that ninety-five percent of youths aged thirteen to seventeen use social media. Exposure to harmful content poses a risk to their mental health, including body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, depression, and, in extreme cases, death. Their mental health is also harmed by predatory behaviors and interactions with malicious adults that target and exploit minors on internet platforms. …

Going Generic: A Linguistics Approach To Genericide In Trademark Law, James A. Heilpern, William G. Eggington, Earl Kjar Brown, Zachary D. Smith

BYU Law Review

This Article examines the phenomenon of trademark genericide—the process by which once-protected brand names like “escalator” and “trampoline” lose their legal status by becoming synonymous with entire product categories. Traditional methods used by courts to assess genericide, such as consumer surveys and dictionary definitions, are often criticized for their subjectivity and lack of scientific rigor. In response, this Article introduces corpus linguistics as a more reliable, data-driven alternative for determining whether a trademark has become generic.

By analyzing real-world language usage through large corpora, corpus linguistics can track the public’s shifting perceptions of a trademark over time. Using case studies …

The Constitutional Case Against State-Controlled Fact-Checking: A Case Comment On Kunal Kamra V. Union Of India, Abhinav Ravi, Aravind Sundar

National Law School of India Review

The Bombay High Court in Kunal Kamra v Union of India struck down the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023, which had established a centralised fact-checking unit to issue takedown orders against social media posts that were identified as “fake or false or misleading”. The Rules threatened the safe harbour protection of social media intermediaries for failing to adhere to such takedown orders. The Court held that the establishment of the fact-check unit violates the rights of free speech, profession and equality under the Indian Constitution. This article explores the free speech implications of …

Data Scraping For Generative Ai—To What Extent?, Jae Yeon Cecilia Kim

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Generative AI platforms are developed by scraping data from other platforms. This raises complex copyright infringement issues that are yet to be resolved. Courts have attempted to address these problems using the fair use doctrine, which evaluates four factors to determine whether a use infringes on copyright: (1) the purpose and character of the use, (2) the nature of the use, (3) the amount and substantiality of the copyrighted work’s use, and (4) the impact of the use on the market for the original work. Despite efforts to apply this long-established doctrine, challenges persist, including difficulties in identifying the copyright …

A Call For Statutory Reform: Online Marketplaces That Profit From Product Sales Should Be Held Strictly Liable As Sellers, Mark Anderson

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Today, Americans purchase roughly 16% of all consumer goods through online marketplaces such as Amazon. While traditional brick-and-mortar retailers that sell defective products are strictly liable for harm caused by those products, online marketplace retailers, which serve analogous roles in defective product sales, can often evade liability entirely. Amazon, for instance, is immune from liability for product defects in more than 60% of sales conducted on its website in almost every state. This Note explains why online marketplaces that profit from defective product sales should be strictly liable for harm those products cause, and why courts often refuse to hold …

I Ain't Afraid Of No Ghost…Kitchen! A New Realm Of Consumer Protection After The Inform Consumers Act, Johanna Silva

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were pervasive, sparing none from its impact. However, the restaurant industry bore an even greater change and a heavier burden than most. At the height of the pandemic, some 110,000 restaurants shut down. QR codes replaced paper menus, street parking transformed into outdoor dining sheds, and Friday night dinners at the “great spot on the corner” became takeout orders from the couch. Reopening was an unpredictable gamble for restaurant owners, fraught with tiered plans and inconsistent regulations on safe and unsafe dining practices. The desperate search for creative solutions to stay in business propelled …

Emerging Compliance In The Generative Decentralized Era, Nizan Geslevich Packin

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Is it the end of compliance as we know it? Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), including Generative AI (“GenAI”), and blockchain are reshaping regulatory compliance in the Web 3.0 era. As machine-generated data becomes the norm, traditional models reliant on human oversight are becoming obsolete, necessitating swift adaptation from regulators and industry stakeholders. Historically, compliance was designed to be managed by humans due to the need for critical thinking, ethical considerations, and nuanced decision-making. Yet, in today’s era, this approach is no longer viable. Addressing this need, Regulatory Technology (“RegTech”) has played a key role in modernizing compliance …

The New Social Contracts, Andrew Keane Woods Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

Contracts rule our digital world. Platform terms of service determine speech rights, privacy rights, and much more. This is no accident—from the very beginning, the U.S. model of internet governance was explicitly built around private ordering. In this context, it is worth asking what contract law and contract scholarship have to say about the public harms of digital dealmaking.

The answer, quite surprisingly, is: not much. To be sure, the rise of the digital economy has generated over two decades of sustained scholarship and several huge national reform efforts aimed at updating contract law. But this work has largely focused …

Streaming Service Arms Race: Protection And Distribution Of Live Sports Broadcasting In A Cord-Cutting Environment, Leo Bourgeois

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

This paper highlights the disparity in meeting consumer expectations for broadcasting sports content. The current shift to online streaming services creates accessibility and affordability challenges, leading to an increase in illegal streaming. The existing copyright laws in Canada and the U.S. have some limitations in enforcing the rights of sports media rights holders against primary or secondary infringement, and intermediaries face difficulties in removing infringing content. While injunctions and site-blocking orders are potential solutions, they may not completely combat online piracy. A possible solution is a centralized streaming service to address piracy while improving customer satisfaction. However, concerns about feasibility, …

The False Choice Between Digital Regulation And Innovation, Anu Bradford

Northwestern University Law Review

This Article challenges the common view that more stringent regulation of the digital economy inevitably compromises innovation and undermines technological progress. This view, vigorously advocated by the tech industry, has shaped the public discourse in the United States, where the country’s thriving tech economy is often associated with a staunch commitment to free markets. U.S. lawmakers have also traditionally embraced this perspective, which explains their hesitancy to regulate the tech industry to date. The European Union has chosen another path, regulating the digital economy with stringent data privacy, antitrust, content moderation, and other digital regulations designed to shape the evolution …