Private International Law Issues in the Age of Social Media
By Simona Matta, President of the Commission on Private International Law
Our annual 2014 congress is just around the corner, and the Private International Law commission is organizing its working session to be held on October 30. This year, we have assembled an outstanding group of speakers presenting on the following topics: Social Media Mobility and Fixed Laws: Applying Private International Law to a Changing World.
Today, more than 3 billion people communicate and interact in cyberspace, irrespective of their location. Online content legal in one country, can be illegal in another. Rules applicable to activities in one territory impact individuals elsewhere.
The landscape is even more intricate since the Internet shifted to the “Web 2.0” model, increasingly dominated by “user-generated content”, uploaded to a website by an individual with no official relationship with the publisher. Social networks, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, along with Wikipedia and corporate or personal blogs have made particularly urgent issues concerning publisher liability and extraterritorial reach of laws of countries distant from where the activity "occurred."
Although the US generally provides publishers with immunity from liability based on user-generated content, the trend in Europe and elsewhere has been to require that publishers monitor all content that appears on their sites and possibly to defend suits in every place they reach. The recent CJEU Google Spain trial of May 13, 2014, ruling on the territorial reach of EU Data Protection Law, is a striking example of how courts have erected national borders around content that knows no bounds.
Cloud computing adds an additional complication, as data may be dispersed across and stored in multiple data centers all over the world. If the data exists everywhere, whose law applies? Whose courts have jurisdiction?
From an International Law perspective, the consequences are broad and impressive. Today, governments continue to apply local laws to universal activities creating a growing tension between the cross-border nature of the network and the territorial conception of national jurisdictions.
During the Private International Law Commission session in Florence, we will discuss the risks facing website operators and private individuals in this intricate online space and, through landmark cases, we will illustrate the complex jurisdiction and choice of law issues that the cloud computing and social networks era pose for courts, regulators and private individuals.
We look forward to welcoming you in Florence.