{"title":"Decentralisation: a multidisciplinary perspective","authors":"Balázs Bodó, J. Brekke, J. Hoepman","doi":"10.14763/2021.2.1563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1563","url":null,"abstract":"Decentralisation as a concept is attracting a lot of interest, not least with the rise of decentralised and distributed techno-social systems like Bitcoin, and distributed ledgers more generally. In this paper, we first define decentralisation as it is implemented for technical architectures and then discuss the technical, social, political and economic ideas that drive the development of decentralised, and in particular, distributed systems. We argue that technical efforts towards decentralisation tend to go hand-in-hand with ambitions for rearranging power dynamics. We caution, however, against simplistic understandings of power in relation to the decentralisation-centralisation spectrum, and argue that in practice, decentralisation might very well be served by and produce centralising effects. The paper then goes on to discuss the critical literature that highlights some of the common assumptions and critiques made about decentralisation and the pros and cons of a decentralised approach. Finally, we propose some of the missing parts to current debates about decentralisation, and argue for a more nuanced and grounded approach to the centralisation/decentralisation dichotomy. Issue 2 This article belongs to Concepts of the digital society, a special section of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Christian Katzenbach and Thomas Christian Bächle.","PeriodicalId":219999,"journal":{"name":"Internet Policy Rev.","volume":"128 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121555147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decentralisation in the blockchain space","authors":"Balázs Bodó, J. Brekke, J. Hoepman","doi":"10.14763/2021.2.1560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1560","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":219999,"journal":{"name":"Internet Policy Rev.","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115213625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Once again platform liability: on the edge of the 'Uber' and 'Airbnb' cases","authors":"Nataliia Filatova-Bilous","doi":"10.14763/2021.2.1559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1559","url":null,"abstract":": Online platforms are considered as very powerful economic agents often tending to obtain oligopolistic or even monopolistic positions in the market. In this respect, the liability of platform operators has been constantly discussed among scholars. The sharpest issue in this respect is whether the platform operator may be held liable towards a platform customer for the violations caused by platform suppliers. Unfortunately, this issue has not been duly addressed yet. However, recently adopted CJEU judgements in Asociación Profesional Elite Taxi v Uber Systems Spain, SL (2017) and in Airbnb Ireland (2019) cases may be helpful in this regard. Although the mentioned judgments do not refer to liability issues directly, they still are indirectly linked to the latter. In this article I analyse the approaches provided by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the mentioned cases and discuss their applicability to private disputes, in particular, to disputes on the liability of platform operators. I suggest that under the current","PeriodicalId":219999,"journal":{"name":"Internet Policy Rev.","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128739532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The geopolitics of 'platforms': the TikTok challenge","authors":"J. Gray","doi":"10.14763/2021.2.1557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1557","url":null,"abstract":"In the international digital platform market, a handful of US companies enjoy immense cultural, economic and political power. The short form video platform TikTok provides significant competition to these US incumbents but so far policymakers have focused on the geopolitical implications of TikTok. This paper provides a content analysis of government and company sources, issued between April and August 2020, to systematically establish the geopolitics of the TikTok controversy. It is important to identify geopolitical motivations because they can obscure other factors relevant to platform politics, such as the value of competition in a highly concentrated international platform market. The paper concludes by outlining a research agenda for enhancing competition and avoiding the solidification of conventional geopolitical power dynamics in the international digital platform market.","PeriodicalId":219999,"journal":{"name":"Internet Policy Rev.","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125079681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The promise of financial services regulatory theory to address disinformation in content recommender systems","authors":"Owen Bennett","doi":"10.14763/2021.2.1558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1558","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that the European regulatory approach to disinformation online is stymied by inappropriate regulatory theories. On that basis, this article seeks to advance an alternative theoretical approach, inspired by the contemporary European paradigm of financial services regulation. It outlines how the key theories underpinning financial services regulation could engender policy solutions that are both more rights-protective and more responsive to the role played by content recommender systems in compounding the policy problem of disinformation online. It assesses the extent to which these alternative regulatory theories manifest in the draft EU Digital Services Act. Issue 2 Section","PeriodicalId":219999,"journal":{"name":"Internet Policy Rev.","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122999287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Blockchain-based technologies","authors":"M. Valiente, Florian Tschorsch","doi":"10.14763/2021.2.1552","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1552","url":null,"abstract":": Blockchain-based technologies can be understood as a distributed network of computers, ideally organised in a decentralised way, mutually agreeing on a common state while tolerating failures (incl. malicious behaviour) to some extent.","PeriodicalId":219999,"journal":{"name":"Internet Policy Rev.","volume":"200 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123020388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Self-sovereign identity","authors":"A. Giannopoulou, Fennie Wang","doi":"10.14763/2021.2.1550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1550","url":null,"abstract":": The concept of self-sovereign identity (SSI) describes an identity management system created to operate independently of third-party public or private actors, based on decentralised technological architectures, and designed to prioritise user security, privacy, individual autonomy and self-empowerment.","PeriodicalId":219999,"journal":{"name":"Internet Policy Rev.","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125739463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decentralized Autonomous Organization","authors":"Samer Hassan, Primavera De Filippi","doi":"10.14763/2021.2.1556","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1556","url":null,"abstract":"The early smart contracts of Era Swap Ecosystem like TimeAlly, Newly Released Tokens (NRT), Assurance, BetDeEx, CertiDapp of Era Swap Ecosystem, are deployed on Ethereum mainnet. These smart contracts are decentralized finance-oriented (DeFi), i.e. most of the transactions are about exchange of Era Swap tokens in peer to peer mode which made paying the gas fees (transaction charges) somewhat intuitive to the user just like withdrawal charges in bank or paying tax while purchasing burgers. But the charges are in Ether (ETH), which is required in addition to Era Swap tokens to use multiple ÐApps of Era Swap Ecosystem and it only makes a new user experience, a complex stuff. Also, transactions that are not token oriented like adding a nominee or appointee, voting, etc. also needs considerable amount of gas fees to be charged (that too in ETH) which makes non-finance ÐApps costly and it fails to attract users from the centralized counterparts.","PeriodicalId":219999,"journal":{"name":"Internet Policy Rev.","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127095601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trust in blockchain-based systems","authors":"Moritz Y. Becker, Balázs Bodó","doi":"10.14763/2021.2.1555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1555","url":null,"abstract":": Trust can best be understood as a relational attribute between (1) a social actor and other actor(s) (interpersonal trust) and / or (2) actors and institutions (institutional or systemic trust) and (3) institutions and (trusting) actors (trust as shared expectations), where institutional frameworks define the nature and strength of trust relationships between different actors.","PeriodicalId":219999,"journal":{"name":"Internet Policy Rev.","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116033400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Primavera De Filippi, Ori Shimony, Antonio Tenorio-Fornés
{"title":"Reputation","authors":"Primavera De Filippi, Ori Shimony, Antonio Tenorio-Fornés","doi":"10.14763/2021.2.1547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1547","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":219999,"journal":{"name":"Internet Policy Rev.","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123513813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}