Complexity, Networks and Internet Regulation

Lundi 2 Avril, 10h-12h

Speaker:

Andrés Guadamuz is Associate Professor at the School of Law of the Universidad de Costa Rica and Vice President at Innova Technology, a software firm in Costa Rica. He is also Associate Director of the SCRIPT Centre for IP and Technology at the University of Edinburgh,
where he has also served as Lecturer in Electronic Commerce Law.

He is the author of the book Networks, Complexity and Internet Regulation: Scale-free Law, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011 and blogs at http://www.technollama.co.uk/

Description of the book:

Complexity theory as a subject has gained increasing prominence across numerous disciplines including physics, biology, sociology and economics. Large interconnected systems such as the Internet display a number of inherent architectural characteristics deeming them well-suited to the study of complex dynamic networks. This book uses various network science-based tools to explore the contentious issue of Internet regulation.
The author demonstrates that the Internet as a global communications space is a self-organising entity that has proven problematic for regulators, and that in order to regulate cyberspace, one must first understand how the network operates. In order to illustrate how the world wide web operates, Andres Guadamuz presents case studies in copyright policy, peer-production and cyber crime, providing in-depth analyses of the challenges posed by the Internet’s complex dynamic networks. The book concludes that regulatory efforts that ignore empirical evidence will ultimately encounter serious problems.

Contents of the book: 1. Introduction 2. The Science of Complex Networks 3. Complexity and the Law 4. Internet Architecture and Regulation 5. Copyright Networks 6. Peer-production Networks 7. Cybercrime and Networks 8. Conclusion Bibliography Index