Professors J.H.H. Weiler and Moritz Schramm
Fall 2024
Monday, 4:45 to 6:45 pm
Furman Hall, Room 318
LAW-LW.12657.001
Global digital corporations (e.g. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter) have played leading roles in shaping the transnational digital order, enabled by light regulation and robust liability protection in the US. Their platforms make rules and their lobbying has influenced both national regulators and international treaty negotiators. US companies are encountering increasing regulatory pushback, especially in the EU with its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), new platform regulation in form of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), and the proposed Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). As the political environment in the US is changing, a new transatlantic regulatory discourse is emerging. The EU and the US are increasingly positioning themselves vis-a-vis China, the home of several world-leading digital economy companies (e.g. Alibaba, Bytedance, Huawei, Tencent), which operate successfully in many emerging economies but are confronted with an increasingly challenging regulatory environment in the US and at home. In recent years, Chinese legislative authorities have enacted numerous new rules covering areas such as antitrust, data and labor protection, while regulatory agencies have significantly stepped up their enforcement efforts aimed at tech companies. The Colloquium deals with a rapidly changing and very complex technological and economic environment. The objective is to equip students with the basic knowledge, core concepts, and versatile tools necessary to think critically and creatively about how to regulate global digital corporations going forward.