Open Syllabus: Transformations in Law and Technology Governance

Open Syllabus: Transformations in Law and Technology Governance

 Transformations in Law and Technology Governance Syllabus

Introduction to the course
After decades of generative discussions, transformative negotiations, and passionate struggles on potential socio-technical imaginaries for the future(s) of the Internet, a certain feeling of finality is looming in the horizon. As technologies of advanced computation rapidly coalesce into ever-expanding infrastructures of information and computation, and as value chains of technology production transfer materials and wealth from Global South to Global North, ‘our’ digital world is showing determinate signs of an institutionally stabilised (world) order formed and sustained by dynamics of corporatism and legally constructed modes of governance. This is no longer (if it ever was) just about markets, competition, and innovation but about sovereignty, power, and control over the flow of capital and information in a deeply fragmented -yet globalised- world. In such a historical context and juncture, this course aims at unpacking the complex web of technologies, visions, and (legal) constructions that sustain our contemporary digital infrastructures and offer students: 1) the analytical skills necessary to study its modes of/for governance; and 2) the opportunity to sharpen their critical thinking in relation to the digital world we ended up having.

Content
In more detail, through this course the students will be able to:

  1. Analyse, and evaluate the political, social, and cultural theories of technology governance as they relate to law;
  2. Understand the opportunities and challenges posed for legal practice by contemporary technology governance in material context;
  3. Understand the role of markets as a particular mode of governance in the digital economy;
  4. Distinguish and apply different theoretical approaches to law and technology, including feminism, political economy, science and technology studies;
  5. Apply theoretical insights to practical experience from project work and internalize ethical governance framework;
  6. Create tech governance framework applicable to project work.

Contents
The course offers a holistic and deep exploration of the modes and dynamics of technology governance by looking into the various norms (Weeks 1-7) and institutions (Weeks 8-10) that form the backbone of the order-enabling functions of contemporary technologies and digital infrastructures. To do so, it zooms into the functionalities and affordances of modern devices and contextualises them within the broader political economy of information and computational production (Week 11-14).

Assessement

  1. Group case study presentations in Week 7 (20% of the final mark).
  2. A group report on the students’ assigned project-based partnership in Week 12 (25% of the final mark).
  3. Oral examination (55% of the final mark) – Students will be assessed individually by two lecturers on the basis of a list of 50 questions of varying difficulty. The examination will last for 30 mins. The pool of potential questions and case studies will be available to the students before the commencement of the course.

Modules

  • Week 1 - Histories of law and technology production
  • Week 2 - Thinking beyond the competition-law paradigm: Private power in the digital economy
  • Week 3 - And then he said: 'Beware of stifling innovation'
  • Week 4 - Indeed, code could be law, but does it even matter?
  • Week 5 - Auditing of risk as governance
  • Week 6 - Rights that work, rights that don’t, and the rights we need
  • Week 7 - Let’s make a board for that: Multistakeholderism, data spaces, and the governance of/by experts
  • Week 8 - The global (digital) corporation
  • Week 9 - State actors and the (geo)politics of (what people perceive as) the Internet
  • Week 10 - Activism and Workers
  • Week 11 - An introduction to Law and the Political Economy of Technology
  • Week 12 - The value chains of AI production (hardware)
  • Week 13 - The value chains of AI production (software)
  • Week 14 - What have we done?: Human Rights for technology regulation and governance

Week 1 – Histories of law and technology production

Introduction

Technology is not made in a vacuum but within a system of logics and logistics whose dynamics evolve over time shaping in the process the way our times evolve. A lot of the discourse on technology governance revolves around how to prepare for the future by institutionalising a socio-technical order for the present. Against this background, we will explore different methods and accounts for preparing for the future by looking at the past. In this week, you will follow the industry transformations in computational technologies that led to today’s AI infrastructures, the underlying incentives and priorities that drove this space forward, and the role of law throughout this (very) short history.

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Single-taught seminar (2 hr): A short history of Copyright: From peer-to-peer to LLMs
  3. Seminar: Introduction to the course & case-study teams’ formation (1hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. James Beniger, The Control Revolution, Introduction: p. 1-27, https://monoskop.org/images/e/e5/Beniger_James_The_Control_Revolution.pdf
  2. Martin Cambel-Kelly & Daniel Garcia-Swartz, From Mainframes to Smartphones: A History of the International Computer Industry, Chapters 10-12
  3. Jonathan Zittrain, ‘The Generative Internet’, 119 Harvard Law Review 1974 (2006), https://www.jstor.org/stable/4093608

Optional Readings

  1. Elettra Bietti (2023), ‘A Genealogy of Digital Platform Regulation’, 7 Geo. L. Tech. Rev. 1, Northeastern University School of Law Research Paper No. 459, https://georgetownlawtechreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Bietti-Pl...
  2. Cory Doctorow, How to Seize the Means of Computation, Chapter 4
  3. Paul N. Edwards, The Closed War: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America, Chapter 8, 239-273
  4. Ulrich Beck, The Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, Chapter 1, 19-50

Week 2 – Thinking beyond the competition-law paradigm: Private power in the digital economy

Introduction

When lawyers talk about the ‘power’ of Big Tech companies in the digital economy, what it’s usually meant, is their market power often interpreted and analysed through the microeconomic lenses of the quantitative-driven field of competition law. Against this trend, scholars and policymakers have started advocating for an agenda that seeks to encompass and argue for a regulatory logic that escapes mainstream economic thinking in favour of a more nuanced description of the complex interplay between private power, money, privacy, and competition. These shifts in the (legal) thinking patterns within and outside the competition law paradigm take place at a time when the intellectual currents therein are undergoing a phase of directional change with the Neo-Brandesian movement in the US and the Digital Markets Act in the EU challenging foundational assumptions and common narratives.   

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Hands-on seminar: Global reporting by competition authorities on the cloud market (3hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. Michael G Jacobides & Ioannis Lianos (2021), ‘Ecosystems and competition law in theory and practice’ Industrial and Corporate Change 30 (5), 1199–1229, https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dtab061
  2. John Kwoka & Tommaso Valletti (2021), ‘Unscrambling the eggs: breaking up consummated mergers and dominant firms’, Industrial and Corporate Change 30, 1286–1306, doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dtab050
  3. Corrine Cath (2024), ‘Is “More Clouds” the Future We Want? A Dispatch from the FTC AI Tech Summit’, TechPolicy Press, available at: https://www.techpolicy.press/is-more-clouds-the-future-we-want-a-dispatch-from-the-ftc-ai-tech-summit/
  4. Elettra Bietti (2023) ‘Data, Context and Competition Policy’, ProMarket, available at: https://www.promarket.org/2023/03/31/data-context-and-competition-policy/ .

Optional Readings

  1. Lina Khan (2017), ‘Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox’, Yale Law Journal 126 (3), https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.pdf
  2. Chase Foster and Kathleen Thelen (2024), ‘Brandeis in Brussels? Bureaucratic discretion, social learning, and the development of regulated competition in the European Union’ Regulation & Governance (EarlyView), https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12570
  3. Fraser Mince and others (2023), ‘The Grand Illusion: The Myth of Software Portability and Implications for ML Progress’, (preprint), https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.07181

Week 3 – And then he said: 'Beware of stifling innovation' 

Introduction

Risking oversimplification, we can argue that, based on what we have learnt so far, if one had to write a handbook of technology regulation in 50 words, the storyline would look like this:

  1. a technology is rolled out;
  2. civil society sings the alarm;
  3. regulators step in;
  4. policymakers & tech evangelists warn against stifling innovation;
  5. compromise is found in some sort of risk-based approach to monitor the development & use of that technology with reference to (western) people’s fundamental human rights.

Many aspects of this story have already been explored and others will follow. In this oversimplified sequence, however, step d) shall not be taken at face value. This week aims at providing you with the critical and analytical skills necessary to resist the most commonly-levelled argument against the regulation of (any) technology: the protection of (whatever can be pitched as) ‘innovation’. What kind of innovation is being protected against regulation? Who benefits from this innovation? For whom are we making compromises to the kinds of innovation we might have been able to achieve given the state of modern information technologies?

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Lecture: Competition law cases for tech mergers (1hr)
  3. Seminar: Hands-on seminar on tech mergers (OrbitM&A) (3hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. Cristian Binz & Bernhard Truffer (2017) ‘Global Innovation Systems—a conceptual framework for innovation dynamics in transnational contexts’, Research Policy 46 (7), 1284-1298, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2017.05.012
  2. Cecilia Rikap (2022), ‘Amazon: A story of accumulation through intellectual rentiership and predation’, Competition & Change 26 (3-4), 436-466, https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1024529420932418
  3. Cecilia Rikap & Bengt Åke Lundvall(2020), ‘Big Tech, knowledge predation and the implications for development’ Innovation and Development 12(3), 1–28, 10.1080/2157930x.2020.1855825

Optional Readings

  1. Crispin Niebel (2021), ‘The impact of the general data protection regulation on innovation and the global political economy’, Computer Law and Security Review 40, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clsr.2020.105523
  2. Cecilia Rikap (2024), ‘Varieties of corporate innovation systems and their interplay with global and national systems: Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft’s strategies to produce and appropriate artificial intelligence’, Review of International Political Economy (FirstView), https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2024.2365757

Week 4 – Indeed, code could be law, but does it even matter?

Introduction

Since the early days of the Internet and by the time people came to the realisation that programming code can have ‘ordering’ effects in our world(s), ‘code is law’ has become one of the most popular mantras in the short history of the field. Without disregarding possible intellectual benefits that can result from theorising the law-like functions of programming code, what this week will try to demonstrate is that code and computation, unlike law, have the potential to radically transform (rather than merely order or coordinate) the space where they are deployed and the behaviour of social actors therein.   

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Seminar: The case of Uniswap (2 hr)
  3. Group Workshops (2hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. Jake Goldenfein & Andrea Leiter (2018), ‘Legal Engineering on the Blockchain: “Smart Contracts” as Legal Conduct’ 29 Law and Critique 141, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-018-9224-0
  2. Mireille Hildebrandt (2020) , ‘Code-Driven Law: Freezing the Future and Scaling the Past’ in Simon Deakin (ed), Is Law Computable?: Critical Perspectives on Law and Artificial Intelligence, Hart Publishing, https://www.cohubicol.com/assets/uploads/hildebrandt-freezing-the-future...
  3. Roxana Vatanparast (2021), ‘The Code of Data Capital: A Distributional Analysis of Law in the Global Data Economy’ (2021) 1 Juridikum 98, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3832471

Optional Readings

  1. Samer Hassan and Primavera De Filippi P (2017), ‘The Expansion of Algorithmic Governance: From Code Is Law to Law Is Code’ Field Actions Science Reports. The Journal of Field Actions 88, https://journals.openedition.org/factsreports/4518
  2. Tom Barbereau, Reilly Smethurst, Orestis Papageorgiou, Johannes Sedlmeir, Gilbert Fridgen (2023), ‘Decentralised Finance’s timocratic governance: The distribution and exercise of tokenised voting rights’, Technology in Society, Volume 73 (sections 1 & 2), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2023.102251
  3. Gavin Wood (2015), ‘Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger’, Yellow Paper
  4. Ruth Catlow & Penny Rafferty (eds), Radical Friends: Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and the Arts (Torque Editions 2022)

Week 5 – Auditing of risk as governance

Introduction

Regulation of technology in Europe has been predominantly risk-based. This essentially means that the intellectual and technical endeavour of drafting regulation gravitates towards specifying the objective, quantifiable, and measurable properties against which compliance can be sought and through which expectations can be stabilised.  However, the process of risk definition is anything but neutral and the associated balancing exercises between risks and benefits are usually compromises founded upon strong value-laden assumptions. This is because, in reality, those organisations and institutions that identify the risks posed by a particular technology are also those who get to selectively define the problem that law is supposed to solve. In this week, we will explore the promises and perils of risk-based approaches to technology regulation and governance from both a technical and theoretical perspective.

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Seminar on Trust & Safety (2 hr)
  3. Group Workshops (2hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. Sarah Hooker (2021), ‘On the Limitations of Compute Thresholds as a Governance Strategy’, (preprint) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.05694v1
  2. Martha Poon (2009), ‘From new deal institutions to capital markets: Commercial consumer risk scores and the making of subprime mortgage finance’, Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (5), 654-674, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2009.02.003
  3. Graham Denyer Willis (2023), '‘Trust and safety’: exchange, protection and the digital market–fortress in platform capitalism', Socio-Economic Review 21 (4),1877–1895, https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwad003
  4. Petros Terzis, Michael Veale, and Noëlle Gaumann (2024), ‘Law and the Emerging Political Economy of Algorithmic Audits’, ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’24), June 03–06, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, https://doi.org/10.1145/3630106.3658970
  5. Emily Bender and others, ‘On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?, ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’21), March 1, Virtual Event, https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Optional Readings

  1. Deborah Raji, Emily Denton, Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, Amandalynne Paullada (2021), ‘AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmark’, Proceedings of the 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021)
  2. Dimitri Van Den Meerssche & Geoff Gordon (2020) ‘A new normative architecture’ – risk and resilience as routines of un-governance’, Transnational Legal Theory, 11 (3), 267-299
  3. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: how Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Chapter 1, p. 11-33
  4. Michael Power (2005), ‘The Invention of Operational Risk’, Review of International Political Economy 12 (4), 577-599
  5. Richmond Y. Wong, Michael A. Madaio, and Nick Merrill (2023), ‘Seeing Like a Toolkit: How Toolkits Envision the Work of AI Ethics’, Proceedings of ACM Human-Computer Interaction 7, CSCW1, Article 145, 1-27

Week 6 – Rights that work, rights that don’t, and the rights we need

Introduction

We are approaching a decade since the day the GDPR entered into force; a monumental piece of legislation that offered novel legal-institutional possibilities for data subjects and largely defined the way data protection applies (at scale) around the world. But 2016 seems now as a distant memory. Those conditions and technologies that once necessitated legal intervention(s) were centred on the protection of data collection and processing have now changed dramatically. Today, new problems have come to the fore; problems that are related -amongst others- with data generation and data production at scale but also – and ironically- with the proliferation of Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) and their, oftentimes, self-evident value. During this week, we will set to explore novel problems and challenges of these technologies along with the risks posed by the ever-changing functionalities of our devices (from on-device computation to sensing).

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Lecture on running things locally (1 hr)
  3. Seminar on Client-Side Scanning (2hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. Michael Veale (2023), ‘Rights for Those Who Unwillingly, Unknowingly and Unidentifiably Compute!’ Hans – Wolfgang Micklitz and Giussepe Vettori (eds.), The Person and the Future of Private Law (Hart, forthcoming), preprint available here: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/4ugxd
  2. Michael Veale (2024), ‘Denied by Design? Data Access Rights in Encrypted Infrastructures’, (forthcoming) in Jef Ausloos and Siddharth P de Souza (eds) Research Access to Digital Infrastructures, preprint available here: https://doi.org/k5mk
  3. Joris van Hoboken & Ronan Ó Fathaigh (2021), ‘Smartphone as privacy regulator’, Computer Law and Security Review 41, available at: https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/Smartphone-platforms-as-privacy-regulators.pdf
  4. Jatinder Singh, Jeniffer Cobbe, Do le Quoc, and Zahra Tarkhrani (2021), ‘Enclaves in the Clouds: Legal Considerations and Broader Implications’, Communications of the ACM 64(5), 42-51, https://doi.org/10.1145/3447543

Optional Readings

  1. Hal Abelson and others (2021), ‘Bugs in Our Pockets: The Risks of Client-Side Scanning’, preprint available here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.07450
  2. Salome Viljoen (2021), ‘A Relational Theory of Data Governance’, Yale Law Journal 131 (2), 370-781, https://www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/a-relational-theory-of-data-gover...

Week 7 – Let’s make a board for that: Multistakeholderism, data spaces, and the governance of/by experts

Introduction

Since the early days of the Internet, decisions over its structure, infrastructure, and architecture were usually undertaken by domain-specific experts bodies such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This model of multistakeholder governance by experts has been adapted to respond to new institutional challenges and crises of ‘legitimacy’. From the Facebook Oversight Board to the emerging reality of data spaces in Europe, to the prominent role of experts and auditors in scrutinising algorithmic systems under the DSA, the significance of expertise in the governance of dominant private actors often seems to be taken at face value. But how are these bodies engaging with value-laden questions and assumptions around the kind of digital world we will end up ‘inhabit’? What kind of compromises are made when substantive question of value distribution and epistemic justice are left to be resolved within ‘technical’ discourses? And who is missing from the standard-setting table? During this week, we will learn about the role of expertise in the governance of online platforms and data infrastructures and the institutional arrangements that have started formulating around it.

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Group Case-Study presentations (3hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. Corinne Cath (2021), ‘The technology we choose to create: Human rights advocacy in the Internet Engineering Task Force’, Telecommunications Policy 45 (6), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2021.102144
  2. William Lehr, David Clark, Steve Bauer, Arthur Berger, and Philipp Richter (2019), ‘Whither the public Internet?’, Journal of Information Policy 9, 1-42, https://doi.org/10.5325/jinfopoli.9.2019.0001
  3. Niels ten Oever (2020), Wired Norms: Inscription, resistance, and subversion in the governance of the Internet infrastructure, Chapter 4, 95-114, https://nielstenoever.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/WiredNorms-Nielsten...
  4. Rachel Griffin (2023), 'Public and private in social media governance: Multistakeholderism, rule of law, and democratic accountability', Transnational Legal Theory 14 (1), 46-89, https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2023.2203538

Optional Readings

  1. David Kennedy, A World of Struggle: How Power, Law, and Expertise Shape Global Political Economy, Chapter 4, 108-134
  2. Charles Goodwin (1994), ‘Professional Vision’, American Anthropologist 96 (3), 606-633, https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1525/aa.1994.96.3.02a00100
  3. Roxana Radu (2019), Negotiating Internet governance, Chapter 3, 43-74, http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25231
  4. Alexander Kotsev and others (2020) ‘From Spatial Data Infrastructures to Data Spaces—A Technological Perspective on the Evolution of European SDIs’ (2020) ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 9(3), https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi9030176

Week 8 – The global (digital) corporation

Introduction

Although public law and regulation are still (considered to be) powerful means through which people and institutions can instigate change in the way platforms and digital infrastructures are (re)configured and operate, a lot of the micro-work that decides what code our device will run or what functionalities they will have is ultimately determined by engineers and protected by constructs of private law (i.e. contracts, trade secrets, intellectual property etc). These legal constructs are themselves sustained at a transnational level by the corporate form. For this reason, understanding the way technologies are governed, requires us to develop an analytical framework for mapping and scrutinising the role of private power in the decision-making processes that end up shaping the digital infrastructures that mediate and sustain our lives and work. To do so, throughout this week we will explore how the growth-imperatives of the dominant cloud companies end up shaping what the rest of the world will be able to use their devices for. At the same time, we will explore the role and history of venture capital and its significance as an analytical method and evidence in our attempt to understand and find the best way to regulate the digital environment.

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Seminar: Feedback on case studies (1 hr)
  3. Group Workshops (2hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. Amy Kapczynski (2020), ‘The Law of Informational Capitalism’, Yale Law Journal 129 (5), 1276-1599, https://www.yalelawjournal.org/review/the-law-of-informational-capitalism
  2. Fleur Johns (1994), 'The Invisibility of the Transnational Corporation: An Analysis of International Law and Legal Theory', Melbourne University Law Review 19, 893, available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=603243
  3. Jaakko Salminen, Kevin Sobel-Read, Mika Viljanen, and Klaas Eller (2022), ‘Digital platforms as second-order lead firms: Beyond the industrial/digital divide in regulating value chains’ European Review of Private Law 30 (6), 1059–1087, https://doi.org/10.54648/erpl2022049

Optional Readings

  1. Ari Ezra Waldman (2020), 'Privacy Law's False Promise', Washington University Law Review 97 (3), 773, https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol97/iss3/7/
  2. Andrea Leiter (2022), ‘Protecting Concessionary Rights: General Principles and the Making of International Investment Law’, Leiden Journal of International Law 35(1), 55-69, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156521000601
  3. Grietje Baars (2019), The Corporation, Law and Capitalism, 34-75

Week 9 – State actors and the (geo)politics of (what people perceive as) the Internet

Introduction

State power has always been central in shaping the architecture and affordances of network technologies. Today, the fear of a Splinternet where different states block different aspects of the Internet, be it for censorship or surveillance, seem already outworn. With the US-China trade war dominating the discursive and policy space, and with the EU proclaiming its strategy towards digital sovereignty, a future where digital infrastructures fragment and reprogram depending on the jurisdiction one resides or travels to is on the horizon.  From chips hardware to software and AI models, national claims over all layers of the infrastructural stack, be it for purposes of national security, innovation, or supply chain resilience, are becoming the main drivers of policy change for the governance of technology worldwide. Taking stock of these developments, this week will map the main actors involved in the contemporary (geo)politics of technology and explore what’s missing when we talk and think about technology within the nation-state framing. 

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Lecture on the Brussels Effect (2 hr)
  3. Seminars (2hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. Paul N. Edwards (1997), The Closed War: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America, Chapter 2, 43-73
  2. Dennis Broeders, Fabio Cristiano, and Monica Kaminska (2023), ‘In Search of Digital Sovereignty and Strategic Autonomy: Normative Power Europe to the Test of Its Geopolitical Ambitions’, Journal of Common Market Studies 61 (5), 1261-1280, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13462
  3. Georg Glasze and others (2023), ‘Contested Spatialities of Digital Sovereignty’ 28 (2), 919-958, 10.1080/14650045.2022.2050070, sections: Sovereign Power: Artificial Intelligence and Europe’s Digital Sovereignty (p. 932-937) and Platform Vs. States: A Sovereignty Conundrum (p. 945-951)
  4. Dawn Carla Nunziato (2023), ‘The Digital Services Act and the Brussels Effect on Platform Content Moderation’, Chicago Journal of International Law24 (1), https://cjil.uchicago.edu/print-archive/digital-services-act-and-brussel...

Optional Readings

  1. Rebecca Adler-Nissen & Kristin Anabel Eggeling (2024), ‘The Discursive Struggle for Digital Sovereignty: Security, Economy, Rights and the Cloud Project Gaia-X’, Journal of Common Market Studies 62 (4), 993-1011, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13594
  2. Chris Miller, ‘The global chip war could turn into a cloud war’, 30 July 2024, Financial Times, available at: https://www.ft.com/content/202c3240-fa20-4081-a2a7-8470b7f12110
  3. Petros Terzis & Joris van Hoboken (2024), ‘A Brussels Affect’, Tech Policy Press, available at: https://www.techpolicy.press/a-brussels-affect/

Week 10 – Activism and Workers

Introduction

When thinking about the labour that goes into a technology artefact, people will be excused to picture the star graduate of an Ivy League university typing code for his (it’s usually ‘his’) Silicon Valley start-up. But beneath this labour, there is a plethora of value-added activities, much less replicable than coding, and therefore much more central to the political economy of technology. From the data labelling activities that filters inappropriate content out of our social media feeds to the labour that goes into scrutinising text or image prompts to generative AI models, a complex web of outsourced workers (usually in the Global South, perform a lot of the labour that ends up producing value for companies and people in the Global North. Yet, despite its significance for contemporary production in the digital economy, this labour is not just underappreciated but also -at times- entirely neglected by the mainstream legal and policy analysis. Against this background, during this week we will explore the different kinds of labour that go into the modern digital infrastructures, their development and visibility over the course of the last decade, and their collective organising as a lever to exert power over how technologies are governed and operate.

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Class event (1hr 30mins) followed by class discussion (1hr 30 mins)
  3. Group Workshops (2hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. Moritz Altenried (2020), ‘The platform as factory: Crowdwork and the hidden labour behind artificial intelligence’, Capital & Class, Vol. 44(2) 145–158, https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816819899410
  2. Wenlong Li and Jill Toh (2023), ‘Data Subject Rights as a Tool for Platform Worker Resistance: Lessons from the Uber/Ola Judgments’, in H. Matsumi, D. Hallinan, D. Dimitrova, E. Kosta, & P. De Hert (Eds.), Data Protection and Privacy: In Transitional Times, 119-156, https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/152544227/Rights-based_Platform_Worker_Resi...
  3. Antonio Aloisi, Silvia Rainone, and Nicola Countouris (2023), ‘An unfinished task? Matching the Platform Work Directive with the EU and international "social acquis"’, ILO Working Paper 101, available here: https://webapps.ilo.org/static/english/intserv/working-papers/wp101/index.html

Optional Readings

  1. Niamh Rowe (2023), “‘It’s destroyed me completely’: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training of AI models”, The Guardian, available here
  2. ‘The Gig Is Up’, Documentary

Week 11 – An introduction to Law and the Political Economy of Technology

Introduction

Taking stock of what we have been discussing during the first 10 weeks of the course, we are now confronted with the uncomfortable reality of having few multinationals controlling the means and ends of [technology] production based on their agendas, growth mandates, and logi(sti)cs. This reality may suffice to give even to the most adamant supporter of [technology] regulation a moment of reflection. Perhaps the fact that you can replace the word ‘technology’ in the previous sentence with other domain-specific terms (e.g. ‘food’, ‘media’, ‘textile’, ‘energy’, or ‘pharma’) without the sentence losing much of its nuance and meaning can itself be quite indicative of the function(s) of law in today’s political economy. Making (analytical) sense of what’s been happening is a prerequisite of any attempt that wishes to build and institutionalise novel modes of technology governance. For this reason, during weeks 11-13, we will embark on an intellectual enquiry of what’s actually going on in the governance of contemporary technology. Starting from the material element (hardware) and working ourselves up the technology stack we will confront the complex web of physical artefacts and legal constructions that establish the order-enabling infrastructures of information and computation. 

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Lecture (1 hr) on ChatGPT and the (un)promise of open-source LLMs
  3. Seminar: Open-source software then and now (2hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, pp 116-135, https://inctpped.ie.ufrj.br/spiderweb/pdf_4/Great_Transformation.pdf
  2. Julie Cohen (2019), ‘Chapter 2: The Biopolitical Public Domain’ in Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism, pp 48-74
  3. Poul Kjaer (2020), ‘Chapter 1: The Law of Political Economy: An introduction’ in The Law of Political Economy: Transformation in the Function of Law, pp 1-30, available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3458360

Optional Readings

  1. Nancy Fraser, ‘Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode’, (2014) New Left Review, https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii86/articles/nancy-fraser-behind-marx-...
  2. Benjamin Birkinbine (2020), 'Chapter 3: Shifting Toward the Commons: Microsoft and Competing Models of Software Production' in ‘Incorporating the Digital Commons: Corporate Involvement in Free and Open Source Software’, pp49-72, https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/37226/1/incorpor...
  3. Tim Hwang (2018), ‘Computational Power and the Social Impact of Artificial Intelligence’, preprint available here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.08971
  4. Jai Vipra and Sarah Myers West, ‘Computational Power and AI’ (AI Now Institute, 27 September 2023), https://ainowinstitute.org/publication/policy/compute-and-ai

Week 12 – The value chains of AI production (hardware)

Introduction

The way we build computers is changing as the general-purpose hardware that invited software and code is gradually being elbowed aside for the sake of application-specific hardware that is tailored to the computational needs of particular applications. This change in the dynamics of advanced computational technologies risks further centralising their production logics and dictating the tempo of an entire industry. In other words, if market demand is the driver of applications and applications, in turn, drive the demand for specialised hardware, computers end up becoming accelerators of particular production pipelines and the generative potential of general-purpose computers is being severely squeezed off. The generative Internet is thereby transforming into a sterile digital ecosystem capable of sustaining very specific kinds of functionalities. As a result, new governance challenges and questions for law and policy emerge.

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Co-taught seminar on chips trade, export controls, and knowledge security (2 hr)
  3. Group Workshops (2hrs)
  4. Data centre visit (7 hours)

Essential Readings

  1. Neil Thompson & Svenja Spanuth (2018), ‘The Decline of Computers as a General-Purpose Technology: Why Deep Learning and the End of Moore’s Law are Fragmenting Computing’, Working Paper, available here: https://ide.mit.edu/sites/default/files/publications/SSRN-id3287769.pdf
  2. Petros Terzis (2024), ‘Law and the Political Economy of AI production’, International Journal of Law and Information Technology 31 (4), 302–330, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijlit/eaae001
  3. Fabian Ferrari (2023), ‘Neural Production Networks: AI’s infrastructural geographies’, Environment and Planning F:Philosophy, Theory, Models, Methods and Practice 2 (4), 459-476

Optional Readings

  1. Volker Stocker, Günter Knieps, and Cristoph Dietzel (2021), ‘The Rise and Evolution of Clouds and Private Networks – Internet Interconnection, Ecosystem Fragmentation’, 49th Annual Research Conference on Communications, Information, and Internet Policy (TPRC), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3910108  
  2. Klass Eller (2020), ‘Is ‘Global Value Chain’ a Legal Concept?: Situating Contract Law in Discourses Around Global Production’, European Review of Contract Law 16 (1)
  3. Jooknoo Lee and Gary Gereffi (2021), ‘Innovation, upgrading, and governance in cross-sectoral global value chains: The case of smartphones’, Industrial and Corporate Change 30 (1), 215-231, https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dtaa062

Week 13 – The value chains of AI production (software)

Introduction

Alongside the transformation of the materials of computation, the production of software has also undergone tectonic shifts mostly due to the emergence and rise to dominance of cloud computing. With no immediate need to purchase servers anymore to satisfy organisational, the incentive structures have shifted towards relying on remote servers and (often tailor-made) accelerators for a large variety of information processing and computation, from development of AI systems to collaborative working. But dependency on cloud computing is unlike any other dependencies on material resources (e.g. electricity). Cloud computing bears certain production logics and affordances that are fundamentally distinct to how software was thought through designed before cloud. Accordingly, what law was tasked to encompass in the off-the-shelf software of the early computer era is materially different to the current reality of agile software development through cloud.

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Single-taught seminar (1 hr)
  3. Seminar groups (2hrs) on mapping supply chains: the case of smartphone

Essential Readings

  1. Seda Gürses and Joris van Hoboken (2017), ‘Privacy after the Agile Turn’ in Jules Polonetsky, Omer Tene and Evan Selinger (eds), Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy (Cambridge University Press), available here: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/9gy73
  2. Jennifer Cobbe, Michael Veale and Jatinder Singh (2023), ‘Understanding Accountability in Algorithmic Supply Chains’, ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM-FAccT 2023), https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593013.3594073
  3. Roel Dobbe, Thomas Krendl Gilbert, Yonatan Mintz (2021), ‘Hard choices in artificial intelligence’, Artificial Intelligence (300), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2021.103555
  4. Agathe Belayn & Seda Gürses (2024), 'Misguided: AI regulation needs a shift in focus', Internet Policy Review, https://policyreview.info/articles/news/misguided-ai-regulation-needs-sh...
  5. David Gray Widder & Dawn Nafus (2023), ‘Dislocated accountabilities in the “AI supply chain”: Modularity and developers' notions of responsibility’, Big Data & Society 10 (1), https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231177620

Optional Readings

  1. Devika Narayan (2022), ‘Platform Capitalism and Cloud Infrastructure: Theorizing a Hyper-Scalable Computing Regime’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 54 (5), https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X221094028
  2. Luitse Dieuwertje (2024), ‘Platform power in AI: The evolution of cloud infrastructures in the political economy of artificial intelligence’, Internet Policy Review 13 (2), https://doi.org/10.14763/2024.2.1768
  3. Seda Gürses and Roel Dobbe, ‘Programmable Infrastructures’ (TU Delft) <https://www.tudelft.nl/tbm/programmable-infrastructures>

Week 14 – What have we done?: Human Rights for technology regulation and governance

Introduction

For more than two decades, human rights discourse has been offering (particularly in the EU) the normative anchor and intellectual tools for numerous legislative initiatives for the digital environment. From data protection to content moderation, and from digital markets to the regulation of data spaces, much of the policy and rule-making that goes into the drafting of regulations, speaks the language of human rights. However, the necessarily individualistic focus of human rights and its natural tendency to gravitate towards very specific ‘harms’ may not bond well with the material characteristics of modern information and computational technologies that produce value by operating and sustaining ever-expanding digital infrastructures of information production and computation. In other words, the risks, problems, and challenges posed by modern digital technologies may be more collective and social than our legal thinking patterns and mental maps seem to assume. At a time when human rights as a foundational pillar of the international legal order is being challenged, questioned, and reviewed, this week reflects on lessons we can learn from this critique to better evaluate ‘human rights’ as a prism through which to design mechanisms of/for technology governance.

Structure

  1. Co-taught lecture (2hrs)
  2. Lecture on human rights, technology, and the doctrinal method (2 hr)
  3. Seminar (2hrs)

Essential Readings

  1. Fleur Johns (2019), ‘From Planning to Prototype: New Ways of Seeing Like a State’, Modern Law Review 82 (5), 833-863, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12442
  2. Julie Cohen (2019), ‘Chapter 8: The Future(s) of Fundamental Rights’ in Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism, p 238–268
  3. Barie Sander (2021), ‘Democratic Disruption in the Age of Social Media: Between Marketized and Structural Conceptions of Human Rights Law’, European Journal of International Law 32 (1), 159-192, https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chab022

Optional Readings

  1. Daniel Mügge (2023), ‘The Securitization of EU’s Digital Regulation’, Journal of European Public Policy 30 (7), 1431–1446, https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2023.2171090
  2. Petros Terzis (2024), ‘Against Digital Constitutionalism’, European Law Open, FirstView, https://doi.org/10.1017/elo.2024.15

*Photo by elnaz asadi on Unsplash

info[a]petrosterzis.com

University College London,

United Kingdom

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