e.harbinja@aston.ac.uk #online harms, duty of care, platform regulation, online safety This article critiques key proposals of the United Kingdom’s “Online Harms” White Paper; in particular, the proposal for new digital regulator and the imposition of a “duty of care” on platforms. While acknowledging that a duty of care, backed up by sanctions works well in some environments, we argue is not appropriate for policing the White Paper’s identified harms as it could result in the blocking of legal, subjectively harmful content. Furthermore, the proposed regulator lacks the necessary independence and could be subjected to political interference. We conclude that the imposition of a duty of care will result in an unacceptable chilling effect on free expression, resulting in a draconian regulatory environment for platforms, with users’ digital rights adversely affected. Content Not Available

Ob vernetzte Fabriken, intelligente Social Bots oder autonomes Fahren – smarte Produkte sind in aller Munde. Das vorliegende Buch erweitert in der 2. Auflage das Spektrum der Themen, die in Zukunft die rechtliche Diskussion beherrschen werden, bis hin zum Weltraumrecht. Es erörtert Fragen künstlicher Intelligenz und autonomer Systeme, insbesondere unter haftungs- und produktsicherheitsrechtlichen Aspekten; ein praktischer Teil stellt ausgewählte Anwendungen des Internets der Dinge vor.

This chapter examines the concept of digital assets from an angle that has not yet been explored in legal scholarship around digital death and the transmission of digital assets on death. Digital death is conceived herein as the death of an individual who leaves behind various digital fragments of their identity, either in the form of digital assets broadly or as digital biographies, dossiers, autobiographies and archives. Digital death causes uncertainty as to what happens in this dispersed, interconnected and often unregulated digital space, which Kasket lucidly entitles The New Elysium. Most legal scholars have considered digital assets either from a perspective of ‘hard law’ of succession and probate or the intersection of property, contracts and intellectual property; sometimes referring to data protection, jurisdiction or cybercrime. The scholars have not ventured into exploring theory that goes beyond theories of property, intellectual property and privacy. The chapter begins by examining classical conceptualisations of digital assets as property and the ‘”new” new property’, exploring whether this is the correct way to perceive digital assets conceptually. It will then go on to examine post-mortem privacy in the context of digital assets, and introduce a novel link with the Floridian concept of informational bodies. In the attempt to offer a comprehensive framework and a more nuanced normative support for future policy and law, the chapter interrelates all of the concepts with the ideas of postmortal society, introducing a new concept of ‘postmortal privacy’. Finally, the author uses this conceptualisation to test some of the existing legal regimes in the area of the transmission of digital assets. Suggestions from this chapter remain mainly at an abstract level, due to the scope and the nature of the framework it introduces.

This article critiques key proposals of the United Kingdom’s “Online Harms” White Paper; in particular, the proposal for new digital regulator and the imposition of a “duty of care” on platforms. While acknowledging that a duty of care, backed up by sanctions works well in some environments, we argue is not appropriate for policing the White Paper’s identified harms as it could result in the blocking of legal, subjectively harmful content. Furthermore, the proposed regulator lacks the necessary independence and could be subjected to political interference. We conclude that the imposition of a duty of care will result in an unacceptable chilling effect on free expression, resulting in a draconian regulatory environment for platforms, with users’ digital rights adversely affected.

Abstract The paper is a first thorough examination of what happens to one’s emails on death. The paper demonstrates that some content of emails can be protected by copyright and transmitted on death accordingly. The paper then analyzes the contractual provisions of the main email providers, Google and Microsoft, in order to determine how these contracts, regulate the transmission of emails on death. The author finds that these provisions complicate the issues of property and transmission of digital assets and do not offer a meaningful control over the assets for their users. The paper adopts a novel focus introduced in the author’s earlier research, the idea of post-mortem privacy that is the right to privacy after death. This concept serves as an argument against the default transmission of emails on death without the deceased’s consent, whether through the laws of intestacy or by requiring the service providers to provide access to the deceased’s emails. Finally, the paper canvasses a solution which combines law and technology. It is argued that much more control should be placed in the hands of emails users. Post-mortem privacy, a potentially contested phenomenon, only accentuates the need to better account for the interests of the deceased, having in mind the volume of personal data and personal nature of emails. Therefore, an in-service solution is promoted, backed up by policy and legislation.

The British Irish Law Education and Technology Association (BILETA) has concerns about the broad scope of the proposals in the White Paper and how the proposals will be applied to platforms. The White Paper proposes co-regulation by a new regulator called OfWeb. Previous attempts to regulate broadcast and press (Ofcom and IPSO) might provide insights on what its scope and application might look like, but there are different principles, issues, and regulatory designs needed for platforms. If establishing a new regulator proves necessary (and we are sceptical in this regard), the key requirement is its independence. The White Paper proposes that OfWeb will be granted a delegated power to define an online harm any way it wants . This is not only ripe for abuse, it does not meet commonly accepted ‘quality of law’ and ‘reasonable foreseeability’ standards. Furthermore, it could also subject a regulator to the whims of political and industry influence. This is potentially undemocratic and does not meet rule of law standards required in a democratic society. Despite parity between the offline and online world listed as a specific objective, the scope of powers goes far beyond parity to what is permitted by UK substantive law in the offline world. It regulates users and tech companies through the imposition of a “duty of care” applicable to content that is not necessarily unlawful, but regarded as harmful.