Book launch at: The Conservatory, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square
London
WC1B 3DP
6pm – 8pm, 31 January 2017
This event is FREE but registration is required on Eventbrite.
Speaker: Angela Daly
With guest speakers: Professor Chris Marsden, University of Sussex; Dr Orla Lynskey, London School of Economics and Political Science
About the Book
This monograph examines how European Union law and regulation address concentrations of private economic power which impede free information flows on the Internet to the detriment of Internet users’ autonomy. In particular, competition law, sector specific regulation (if it exists), data protection and human rights law are considered and assessed to the extent they can tackle such concentrations of power for the benefit of users.
Using a series of illustrative case studies, of Internet provision (including the net neutrality debate), search, mobile devices and app stores, and the cloud, the work demonstrates the gaps that currently exist in EU law and regulation. It is argued that these gaps exist due, in part, to current overarching trends guiding the regulation of economic power, namely neoliberalism, by which only the situation of market failure can invite ex ante rules, buoyed by the lobbying of regulators and legislators by those in possession of such economic power to achieve outcomes which favour their businesses. Given this systemic, and extra-legal, nature of the reasons as to why the gaps exist, solutions from outside the system are proposed at the end of each case study.
Praise for the Book
‘This is a richly textured, critically argued work, shedding new light on case studies in information law which require critical thinking. It is both an interesting series of case studies (notably cloud computing, app stores and search) that displays original and deeply researched scholarship and a framework for critiquing neoliberal competition policy from a prosumerist and citizen-oriented perspective.’ – Professor Chris Marsden, University of Sussex.