IT - legal aspects of new technologies

The Global Legal Hackathon last weekend (23–25 February 2018) offered an excellent opportunity to grasp the potential that can be released from cooperation between lawyers and IT specialists. Legal Tech solutions are more than just technological novelties. They are solutions that can protect our legal system against a serious crisis.

Hardly have American and EU legislators enshrined the principle of net neutrality in law, when developments are already gaining strength and openly threatening its survival. The spread of the internet of things will give rise to new challenges to the neutrality principle. However, we should expect that this time the reaction of governments and parliaments will be different. This is because the internet of things makes it impossible to ensure equal treatment for each transfer of data. It is likely that there will be three speeds for data transfers over internet links. Data traffic from specialised services will be privileged, other services will enjoy neutral treatment, while transfers of data from the internet of things may be slowed.

Consumers and producers alike complain that labels on food products are hard to understand. Could the solution for crowding in too much information be an electronic label where data of interest to the consumer could be checked using a smartphone app?

Phrases like “using the cloud,” “software in the cloud,” or “cloud computing” long ago ceased to generate primarily meteorological associations. Our mail hangs in the cloud today, along with various computer programmes—from simpler tools like “GoToMeeting” to complex customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resourcing planning (ERP) systems.

Last year we discussed, in the context of copyright infringement, whether an Internet service provider could be required to block access to a specific web page. The conclusion was that current law did not expressly provide for such measures but attempts to apply them could not be ruled out. But a number of legislative proposals have appeared recently calling for blocking of Internet content that does not infringe copyright.

According to an Advocate General at the Court of Justice, a provider of free WiFi is not responsible for the actions of its users.