Author: Nicolo Zingales See also intermediary liability. Liability refers to a legally enforceable responsibility for a harmful event. Liability can be civil or criminal, which are fundamentally different concepts in their origin and nature: the former implies a responsibility from a financial perspective, which can be explicitly foreseen by a statute but also be the result… Continue reading Liability
Glossary of Platform Law and Policy Terms
Nicolo Zingales
Nicolo Zingales is Professor of Information Law and Regulation at the law school of the Fundação Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro, and coordinator of its E-commerce research group. He is also an affiliated researcher at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, the Tilburg Law & Economics Center and the Tilburg Institute for Law and Technology, co-founder and co-chair of the Internet Governance Forum’s Dynamic Coalition on Platform Responsibility.
Interoperability
Authors: Vittorio Bertola and Nicolo Zingales Interoperability is the ability to transfer and render useful data and other information across systems, applications, or components. The combination of transmission and analysis involves several layers of the so-called Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model), requiring the achievement of various levels of interoperability. At a minimum, one should… Continue reading Interoperability
Information Fiduciary
Author: Nicolo Zingales Information fiduciaries are entities entrusted with the management of the personal information of third parties. The concept, first proposed by Balkin and Zittrain (2016), evokes an analogy with professional figures assigned with fiduciary duties due to the relationship with their clients, which leads to situations of asymmetrical power and. For instance, doctors,… Continue reading Information Fiduciary
Digital Gatekeeper
Nicolo Zingales Digital gatekeepers are the equivalent of the guardians of critical infrastructure (e.g., highway, railway, utilities, and telecommunications) in the digital world. Thus, the focal element of this definition is the critical nature of the services they provide, in enabling both the enjoyment of services that are considered essential for digital citizenship and the provision… Continue reading Digital Gatekeeper
Demonetization
Author: Nicolo Zingales and Catalina Goanta See also deplatforming/de-platforming. Demonetization refers to unilateral action in the form of a sanction that a platform (traditionally a social media platform) takes in order to remove a creator/influencer’s access to the streams of revenue the platform controls. As indicated under two other relevant entries (‘Content creators/influencers’ and ‘Content/web monetization’),… Continue reading Demonetization
Data Portability
Authors: Vittorio Bertola, Nicolo Zingales and Luca Belli The current debate on (data) portability finds its predecessor in the discussions on Mobile Number Portability (MNP), which emerged towards the end of the 1990s. MNP requires that, when switching from one provider to another, mobile telephone users must be able to keep their telephone number(s). The world’s… Continue reading Data Portability
Dark Patterns
Author: Nicolo Zingales This entry discusses: (I) the notion of ‘dark patterns’, its history and evolution; (II) a taxonomy of dark patterns; (III) existing regulatory and consumer advocacy responses to dark patterns. (i) A ‘dark pattern’ is a user interface design choice that benefits an online service by coercing, steering, or deceiving users into making… Continue reading Dark Patterns
Application Program Interface
Author: Nicolo Zingales An Application Program Interface (also known as API, or ‘middleware’) is any well-defined interface which identifies the service that one component, module, or application provides to other software elements (de Souza et al., 2004). APIs can be grouped into two types: those which are more intensively computational, based on an execution engine, and those which… Continue reading Application Program Interface
Accountability
Author: Nicolo Zingales Accountability refers, in the simplest conception of the term, to the condition of subjecting oneself to external oversight and control. This is a general concept that has widely different implications depending on the context in which it is used (e.g., governmental organizations, private companies, and even computer algorithms). However, as it can… Continue reading Accountability
Introduction
Luca Belli and Nicolo Zingales (01/12/2021). Preface: Framing the Roles and Responsibilities of Platforms and their Impact on Human Rights. In Belli, L.; Zingales, N. & Curzi, Y. (Eds.), Glossary of Platform Law and Policy Terms (online). FGV Direito Rio. https://platformglossary.info/preface/ A Glossary of Platform Law and Policy Terms to Foster Legal Interoperability Luca Belli and… Continue reading Introduction