A Europe fit for Digital Age? (LAW-RS-DIGAGE-22)

LAW-RS-DIGAGE-22

Description

First and second year researchers as well as LLM researchers can gain 3 credits by attending one of the researcher-taught seminars in each academic year; they can also register for and attend further researcher-taught seminars without gaining credits.

This substantive law course provides a space for researchers to explore and discuss the EU’s recent steps in implementing its strategy for a ‘Europe fit for the Digital Age’. Each session within this course is divided into two sequential and interconnected elements: an overview of specific regulatory instruments and a discussion of the underlying values and potential implications. For this, in the first part of each focused session (excluding the first and last sessions), we first present the core principles of recently enacted or proposed EU regulatory instruments, namely the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), the Copyright Directive (DSM), the Data Act, the Data Governance Act, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the Regulation on Preventing the Dissemination of Terrorist Content Online (TERREG). We explore their diverse objectives and scopes as well as their common themes in the regulation of (big) tech, their interplay, and the fundamental principles they lay down for the European online space. We particularly look at the practical implications they have for actors in the digital sphere and society more broadly.

The second part of each session revolves around the presentation and discussion of various cases, which will be developed from existing case-law, as well as additional elements. These will focus on the trade-offs between democratic-constitutional, economical, ethical, privacy, and security concerns. Course participants will be enabled to concretely discuss the balancing of diverging interests. This includes situations in which economic interests and innovation incentives oppose the more protective democratic-constitutional, ethical, privacy, security, and data protection concerns as well as each other. A particular focus is set on the preservation of weighted societal interests to surpass doctrine’s common individualistic perspective. The objective of these exercises is to stimulate discussions that go beyond a formalistic analysis of the law and focus on the substantive trade-offs that actors regulating and operating in the digital space must make. Only by highlighting these value choices inherent to regulatory attempts scenarios of alternative digital environments can be contemplated.

First, Second & Third Term: registration from 19 to 26 September.