Lawless

Nicolas P. Suzor, Lawless: The Secret Rules that Govern Our Digital Lives (Cambridge University Press, 2019). 

Rampant abuse, hate speech, censorship, bias, and disinformation -- our internet has problems. It is governed by technology companies -- search engines, social media platforms, and infrastructure providers -- whose hidden rules influence what we are allowed to see and say. In Lawless, Nicolas P. Suzor presents gripping examples of exactly how tech companies govern our digital environment and how they bend to pressure from governments and other powerful actors to censor and control the flow of information online. We are at a constitutional moment -- an opportunity to rethink the basic rules of how the internet is governed. Suzor offers a vision of a vibrant, diverse, and flourishing internet that can protect our fundamental rights from the lawless rule of tech. The culmination of more than ten years of original research, this groundbreaking work should be read by anyone who cares about the internet and the future of our shared social spaces. 

-Publisher's Description

Humans as a Service

Jeremias Prassl, Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy (Oxford University Press, 2018).

As courts and governments around the world begin to grapple with the gig economy, Humans as a Service explores the challenges of on-demand work, and explains how we can ensure decent working conditions, protect consumers, and foster innovation. Employment law plays a central role in levelling the playing field: gigs, tasks, and rides are work -- and should be regulated as such. 

-Publisher's Description

Patentability of Software

 Anton Hughes, The Patentability of Software: Software as Mathematics (Routledge, 2019). 

This book explores the question of whether software should be patented. It analyses the ways in which the courts of the US, the EU, and Australia have attempted to deal with the problems surrounding the patentability of software and describes why it is that the software patent issue should be dealt with as a patentable subject matter issue, rather than as an issue of novelty or non-obviousness. 

-Publisher's Description

Big Tech & The Digital Economy

Nicolas Petit, Big Tech & The Digital Economy: The Moligopoly Scenario (Oxford University Press, 2020). 

Using economics, business, and management science as well legal reasoning, this book offers a new perspective on big tech. It builds a theory of "moligopoly." The theory advances that the tech giants, or at least some of them, coexist both as monopolies and oligopoly firms that compete against each other in an environment of deep uncertainty and economic dynamism. 

-Publisher's Description

Online Courts and the Future of Justice

 Richard Susskind, Online Courts and the Future of Justice (Oxford University Press, 2019). 

Drawing on almost 40 years in the fields of legal technology and jurisprudence, Susskind shows how we can use the remarkable reach of the internet to help people understand and enforce their legal rights. More than half of humanity is now online. More people in the world now have internet access than access to justice. 

-Publisher's Description

The 2020 Solo and Small Firm Legal Technology Guide

Sharon D. Nelson, John W. Simek & Michael C. Maschke, The 2020 Solo and Small Firm Legal Technology Guide (American Bar Association, 2020).

In clear, understandable language, it gives a vendor-neutral overview of and recommendations for computers, servers, networking equipment, legal software, printers, security products, smartphones, tablets, and more. Whether you choose to do it yourself or work with an IT consultant, this book has the information you need to reduce the sea of choices to a manageable set of proven options.

-Publisher's Description

Platform Economy

Bram Devolder, The Platform Economy: Unravelling the Legal Status of Online Intermediaries (Intersentia, 2019).

Emerging platforms claim to create new market opportunities and to provide innovative solutions to improve social welfare. Conversely, the platform economy blurs established lines between traditional legal categories, such as business and consumer, personal and professional, and worker and contractor. Traditional regulation, which often focuses on balancing the interests of two contracting parties, is now confronted with the three-sided contractual relationship between a platform, a supplier and a user. 

In this book, a panel of international legal experts unravels the legal status of online intermediaries -- a thorny knot that legislators, judges and lawyers across the globe are facing. 

-Publisher's Description

Smart Surveillance: How to Interpret the Fourth Amendment in the Twenty-First Century

Ric Simmons, Smart Surveillance: How to Interpret the Fourth Amendment in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Over the last decade, law enforcement agencies have engaged in increasingly intrusive surveillance methods, from location tracking on cell phones to reading metadata off of e-mails. As a result, many believe we are heading towards an omniscient surveillance state and irrevocable damage to our privacy rights. In Smart Surveillance, Ric Simmons challenges this conventional wisdom by taking a broader look at the effect of new technologies and privacy, arguing that advances in technology can enhance our privacy and our security at the same time. Rather than focusing exclusively on the rise of invasive surveillance technologies, Simmons proposes a fundamentally new method of evaluating government searches -- based on quantification, transparency, and efficiency -- resulting in a legal regime that can adapt as technology and society change.

-Publisher's Description

Law and the Visual

Desmond Manderson (Australian National University), ed., Law and the Visual: Representations, Technologies, and Critique (University of Toronto Press 2018).

“ . . .  legal theorists, art historians, and critics come together to present new work examining the intersection between legal and visual discourses. Proceeding chronologically, the volume offers leading analyses of the juncture between legal and visual culture as witnessed from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries.”   
– book jacket 

"Desmond Manderson’s Law and the Visual marks a significant development in visual studies of law. Manderson moves readers across centuries, cultural contexts, and visual media. There is nothing like this book!"

– Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

Robot Law

Ryan Calo (University of Washington), A. Michael Froomkin (University of Miami) & Ian Kerr (University of Ottawa) (eds.), Robot Law (Edward Elgar, 2016).

"Robot Law brings together exemplary research on robotics law and policy – an area of scholarly inquiry responding to transformative technology. Expert scholars from law, engineering, computer science and philosophy provide original contributions on topics such as liability, warfare, domestic law enforcement, personhood, and other cutting-edge issues in robotics and artificial intelligence. Together the chapters form a field-defining look at an area of law that will only grow in importance." 
—Publisher's description