Monthly Archives: January, 2025
Novelli, Floridi and Sartor, ‘AI as Legal Persons: Past, Patterns, and Prospects’
ABSTRACT This chapter examines the evolving debate on AI legal personhood, emphasizing the role of path dependencies in shaping current trajectories and prospects. Two primary path dependencies emerge: prevailing legal theories on personhood (singularist vs clustered) and the impact of technological advancements. We argue that these factors dynamically interact, with technological optimism fostering broader rights-based […]
Meg Jones, ‘The Character of Consent: The History of Cookies and The Future of Technology Policy’
ABSTRACT The rich, untold origin story of the ubiquitous web cookie – what’s wrong with it, why it’s being retired, and how we can do better. Consent pop-ups continually ask us to download cookies to our computers, but is this all-too-familiar form of privacy protection effective? No, Meg Leta Jones explains in The Character of […]
Maurizio Borghi, ‘The universal nature of performers’ rights under EU law (a note on Case C-265/19, Recorded Artists ActorsPerformers v Phonographic Performance Ireland)’
ABSTRACT Copyright’s neighbouring rights have been the subject of several referrals to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). In its judgment of 8 September 2020 in Case C‑265/19 (Recorded Artists Actors Performers Ltd v Phonographic Performance (Ireland) Ltd), the Court has defined for the first time the subjects of the right to […]
Linda Eggert, ‘Autonomised harming’
ABSTRACT This paper sketches elements of a theory of the ethics of autonomised harming: the phenomenon of delegating decisions about whether and whom to harm to artificial intelligence (AI) in self-driving cars and autonomous weapon systems. First, the paper elucidates the challenge of integrating non-human, artificial agents, which lack rights and duties, into our moral […]
Grant, Behrends and Basl, ‘What we owe to decision-subjects: beyond transparency and explanation in automated decision-making’
ABSTRACT The ongoing explosion of interest in artificial intelligence is fueled in part by recently developed techniques in machine learning. Those techniques allow automated systems to process huge amounts of data, utilizing mathematical methods that depart from traditional statistical approaches, and resulting in impressive advancements in our ability to make predictions and uncover correlations across […]
Francis and Karhu, ‘Getting machines to do your dirty work’
ABSTRACT Autonomous systems are machines that can alter their behavior without direct human oversight or control. How ought we to program them to behave? A plausible starting point is given by the Reduction to Acts Thesis, according to which we ought to program autonomous systems to do whatever a human agent ought to do in […]
Oren Bracha, ‘Generating Derivatives: AI and Copyright’s Most Troublesome Right’
ABSTRACT This Article examines broad arguments of infringing copyright’s entitlement of the right of derivatives in the context of Generative AI (‘GenAI’) systems. Copyright owners make derivatives arguments against various activities in the GenAI supply chain even in the absence of substantially similar output. They make these arguments in an attempt to go around the […]
Robert Stevens, ‘Property (Digital Assets) Bill Response’
SUMMARY The legal position may be simply stated. All legal property, however defined, is constituted by rights of some form. Whether we classify a right as being a ‘thing in action’ or a ‘thing in possession’ is of vanishingly little importance. ‘Things in possession’ refers to (transferable) rights in relation to physical things. ‘Things in […]
Elizabeth Chambliss, ‘Rural Legal Markets’
ABSTRACT Research on rural access to justice tends to appeal to a romantic conception of rural lawyers as accessible generalists who serve the public through pro bono, low bono, and community service, and some characterize rural private practice as public interest work. Many commentators call for programs to attract law graduates to rural locations and […]
Frederick Amara, ‘Revisiting Contractual Penalty Clauses: A Critical Analysis of Implied Terms and Breach in Cavendish Square Holding BV v Talal El Makdessi and ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis in Modern Contract Law’
ABSTRACT The Supreme Court’s rulings in Cavendish Square Holding BV v Talal El Makdessi and ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis represent a transformative moment in UK contract law, particularly concerning the enforceability of penalty clauses and non-compete agreements. These conjoined cases addressed critical legal principles surrounding the balance between contractual obligations and legitimate business interests. In […]