Monthly Archives: August, 2024
Nikolas Guggenberger, ‘Consent as Friction’
ABSTRACT The leading technology platforms generate several hundred billion dollars annually in revenue through algorithmically personalized advertising – with pernicious effects on our privacy, mental health, and democracy. To fuel their data-hungry algorithms, these platforms have long conditioned access to their services on far-reaching authorizations, embedded in boilerplate terms, to extract their users’ data. Until […]
Edward Lee, ‘Copyright Re-Alignment: The Growth of New Works Outside the Copyright System’
ABSTRACT This Essay introduces the concept of copyright alignment to analyze the history of copyright law. Alignment refers to how the copyright system divides the universe of creative works into two: copyrighted works and uncopyrighted works in the public domain. Copyright law has developed in four periods of alignment: (1) during the 18th century, a […]
Mark Geistfeld, ‘Tort Law in a World of Scarce Compensatory Resources’
ABSTRACT A number of large corporations facing extensive tort liabilities have gone into bankruptcy, forcing tort claimants to accept pennies on the dollar in satisfaction of their claims. Bankruptcy painfully illustrates the social fact that the compensatory properties of tort law depend on the availability of compensatory resources. Although this feature of tort law is […]
Sayre and Glover, ‘Machines Make Mistakes Too: Planning for AI Liability in Contracting’
ABSTRACT Recent advances in artificial intelligence have set off a frenzy of commercial activity, with companies fearful that they may fall behind if they are unable to quickly incorporate the new technology into their products or their internal processes. At the same time, numerous scholars from the machine learning community have warned of the fundamental […]
Chen Meng Lam, ‘The End of SAAMCO Counterfactual? Charles B Lawrence & Associates v Intercommercial Bank Limited (Trinidad and Tobago) [2021] UKPC 30′
ABSTRACT The recent decision in Charles B Lawrence & Associates v Intercommercial Bank Limited (Trinidad and Tobago) [2021] UKPC 30 serves as a salutary reminder that the SAAMCO counterfactual can be more of a hindrance than help in identifying the extent of a claimant’s loss that falls within the defendant’s scope of duty. In Lawrence, […]
Christoph Engel, ‘Experimental Comparative Law 2.0? Large Language Models as a Novel Empirical Tool’
ABSTRACT An empirical approach to comparative law is challenging: neither are jurisdictions independent, nor can observational data isolate the causal effect of differences in doctrine. One viable way out are experiments. Yet testing the same stimulus material in different jurisdictions is logistically complicated, and hard to truly standardize. Sampling a large language model is a […]
‘Child Bound By Parents’ Arbitration Agreement with Amusement Park, Case #1′
Today, we have two separate posts on two very similar cases. The Headlees took their daughter, KH to an amusement part. This is the torts equivalent to ‘A guy walks into a bar’. To reduce any suspense about what I am about to narrate, I add that KH was played on ‘Wipeout’ an attraction at […]
‘Oh no, not again … yet another mistaken offer’
Growing up, I remember a tv programme about technology repeating the aphorism that ‘To err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer’. Like many pithy axions, its first usage is unclear. And I don’t remember the particular tv programme on which I heard it. But it is well illustrated today by the […]
Kapur and Trehan, ‘A Course Correction on Liquidated Damages in India’
ABSTRACT The law on liquidated damages and penalties, in the words of Lord Neuberger and Lord Sumption, is ‘an ancient, haphazardly constructed edifice which has not weathered well’. Diplock LJ declared that he could make no attempt, where so many others have failed to rationalize this common law rule. This paper will look at the […]
‘AI-Generated Music: How Will the Existing Copyright Framework Cope?’
Recent technological advances in generative AI have transformed the way in which we listen to and create music. Many artists and industry players have readily adopted generative AI, viewing it as a creative force to be harnessed, while others remain wary. The use of increasingly sophisticated AI tools to generate musical works poses a number […]