Legal Challenges in a Digital Context

The project is running between 2014 and 2016 and is funded by The Swedish Research Council as a so-called international postdoc. Stefan Larsson is using copyright as a case to study legal challenges in a digital context, which specifically relates to 1.) The “gap problem” in terms of the distance between law and social norms in a digital context; 2.) Online traceability, that is, consequences and trends of traceability in relation to legal enforcement and surveillance; as well as 3.) Conceptual change, exemplified by how the transition of concepts to originally describe tangible objects to now describe digital “stuff”, and, particularly, what this means for law and other norms.

The project is hosted by the Lund University Internet Institue (LUii), and during its three years Stefan has been visiting researcher at 1.) the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa; 2.) the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) in Berlin; 3.) the IT University of Copenhagen; 4.) and
the Centre for Comparative and European Constitutional Studies, Faculty of Law at University of Copenhagen.

The project is concluded with the book "Conceptions in the Code. How Metaphors Explain Legal Challenges in Digital Times", to be published at Oxford University Press in January 2017.