The Internet is not an unchartered territory. On the Internet, norms matter. They interact, regulate, are contested and legitimated by multiple actors. But are they diverse and unstructured, or are they part of a recognizable order? And if the latter, what does this order look like?
This collected volume explores these key questions while providing new perspectives on the role of law in times of digitality. The book compares six different areas of law that have been particularly exposed to global digitality, namely laws regulating consumer contracts, data protection, the media, financial markets, criminal activity and intellectual property law. By comparing how these very different areas of law have evolved with regard to cross-border online situations, the book considers whether cyberlaw is little more than "the law of the horse", or whether the law of global digitality is indeed special and, if so, what its characteristics across various areas of law are. The book brings together legal academics with expertise in how law has both reacted to and shaped cross-border, global Internet communication and their contributions consider whether it is possible to identify a particular mediality of law in the digital age.
Examining whether a global law of digitality has truly emerged, this book will appeal to academics, students and practitioners of law examining the future of the law of digitality as it intersects with traditional categories of law.
Matthias C. Kettemann, LL.M. (Harvard), is Professor of Innovation, Theory and Philosophy of Law at the Department for Theory and Future of Law at the University of Innsbruck, and heads research programs and groups on digital law and platform governance at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (Hamburg) and the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (Berlin).
Alexander Peukert is Professor of Civil and Commercial Law at the Faculty of Law at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.
Indra Spiecker gen. Döhmann, LL.M. (Georgetown University) holds the chair of Public and Administrative Law, especially Information Law, Environmental Law and Legal Theory at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt/Main in Germany. She is also Director of the Research Institute on Data Protection, Managing Director of the Institute of European Health Politics and Social Law, both at Goethe University of Frankfurt/Main, and also Principal Investigator with the Competence Center on IT-Security (KASTEL) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Professor Spiecker publishes in the entire field of constitutional and administrative law with a special focus on information law as well as technology law.
