Oreste Pollicino Livres

The protection of fundamental rights in the digital age is increasingly at the core of Internet law. The massive spread of digital and algorithmic technologies is raising questions that are intimately constitutional. Rights and freedoms are exposed to the opportunities and challenges of digital technologies, thus leading to different constitutional reactions. The book is structured in three parts. It starts by providing a focus on the primary questions around the Internet, particularly the regulation and governance of the digital environment, the jurisdictional challenge, and the access to the Internet. Then, the second part of the book examines the law of online content, looking at the protection of freedom of expression in the real and the digital world, the law of online intermediaries, the challenges raised by disinformation and hate speech, and specific sectors such as copyright and audiovisual media services. The third part analyses the field of privacy and data protection by looking at their historical roots, the role of the GDPR and specific challenges, particularly the right to be forgotten, data retention, and the transfer of data.

What balance should be struck between freedom of expression, as an essential right and value of any democratic society, and other constitutional rights when facing falsehood and extreme speech? How are Europe and legislators around the world reacting to the rise of online disinformation and hate speech, in the wake of mounting evidence of adverse effects on democratic processes? What is the most effective approach to address and tackle harmful practices over the Internet, if any? These are some of the pivotal questions that this book seeks to explore. The potentially global scale and the unprecedented velocity of the dissemination of false and extreme content raise concerns that are specific to our digital age. It is the Authors’ belief that the answers to such questions plunge their roots in the origins of contemporary constitutionalism, with the paradigm of the constitutional traditions of Europe and the United States. Specifically, the right to freedom of expression, its development and subsequent application to the digital dimension constitute the starting ground of the analyses here proposed.