Power(s) & sovereignty in (and/or via) digital information

The editors are Virgilio D’Antonio and Giorgio Giannone Codiglione (Università degli Studi di Salerno)

Power(s) & sovereignty in (and/or via) digital information

The last decade of the new millennium has provided us the confirmation that the Internet is no longer a simple mass media, but is a connective tissue that permeates all aspects of our lives. This epochal passage of entry into the era of hyperhistory (Floridi) is characterized by the definitive osmosis between real and virtual: the human person, understood as a complex informational entity (Solove, Rodotà), carries out most of its activities within a space governed by a constant flow of data. In this context, social sciences find themselves at a crossroads: stick with tradition, describing the disruptive effect of technologies and information in negative and positive terms (Ellul), or move beyond the dichotomy between apocalyptic and integrated (Eco), in the attempt to understand the essence of these phenomena without limiting themselves to a mere reclassification exercise or the adaptation of an analogical interpretation (Frosini).

Data today represents the most innovative form of social subject ever created by humans (Morton, Ferraris). From an eminently technical point of view, the so-called Web 2.0 puts the human being inside this flow of information in their new role as prosumers of data for the purpose of further circulation and use. This means that when contextualized into the taxonomy of human rights, the Internet not only represents the modern incarnation of the freedom of expression, “a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication“, as stated in 1997 by the American Supreme Court in Reno v. Aclu (Sunstein,Posner, Balkin).

One of the emerging phenomena in contemporary societies is the blurring of the boundaries between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ dimensions. The digital transformation is among the drivers of such a process, together with the evolution of economic and social relationships, in a context characterized by growing exchanges and cultural contaminations, as well as environmental and social emergencies.

For example, it’s now a fact that European Union law, together with the Member States, has finally opened up to a more realistic and effective approach to the enforcement of the right to personal data protection. The affirmation of the principle of free movement of personal data as the main scope of GDPR deeply changes the perspective of a solely personalistic logic of protection. Moreover, GDPR’s neutral approach read in conjunction with the adoption of a normative model based on accountability principle and risk-based approach (we could say, in terms of liability: from a dangerous to a risky activity), in no way clash with the nature of data protection as a higher level fundamental right, hierarchically superordinate to the exercise of other fundamental rights and freedoms, such as the freedom to conduct business – as for instance affirmed by the ECJ in the Google Spain case (2012).The enforcement of fundamental right to data protection, moreover, must not focus exclusively on the protection of the data subject as an human person whose data are processed, but must remain open to checking the impact that these legitimate economic activities have on the consumers well-being in the ICT’s society and, as a consequence, on the competitive structure of the related markets.

The privatisation of aspects traditionally attributed to government, along with the increasingly public characterisation of relationships previously regarded as pertaining to the private sphere, question many fields of knowledge, including the law. The once reassuring traditional legal categories are deeply affected. In particular, the always contested divide between public law and private law is nowadays more and more under stress and reveals its limited adequacy to read the legal implications of new social phenomena.

The following is a list of tentative questions for which the call-for-papers is open: – Data as Law or Law as Data? – Data as an essential facility? – The contractual relationship in the digital dimension and the protection of fundamental rights – Antitrust enforcement as a public regulatory tool for “data markets”? – The public dimension of digital platforms: towards a new feudalism? – Which role for the traditional States? Net vs Nets? Towards the overcoming of the Internet monopoly.

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes.

Juridical, philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by 30th March 2024 (acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by April 30th, 2024).