Is “Big Data” creepy?

We now live in a world of Big Data, massive repositories of structured, unstructured or semi-structured data. This is seen as a valuable resource for organisations, given the potential to analyse and exploit that data to turn it into useful information. However, the cost and risk of continuing to hold that data can also make it a burden for many organisations.     

From ‘Rustless Screws’ to ‘Nail Houses’: The Evolution of Property Rights in China

This article addresses property rights in China under four headings. I begin by placing the Chinese case within the larger context of property rights literature. The second section reviews the existing scholarship on property rights in China and identifies existing lacunae. The third section provides the broad contours of the contemporary Chinese intellectual and political discourse over property rights in China. And finally, I offer several cases of property rights that illustrate the variation in the scope of the concept of property rights in China and suggest possible avenues for future research.

The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive the people of this is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.- Arthur Lee, Virginia, 1775

You reproach us with planning to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels¹

The fact that a legal or economic model does not exist for an activity or a behavior is no reason to oppose it, because the laws can develop out of experience and practice.- Wu Guoping, Yangtze Water Resources Commission²

     

Asia-Pacific news

This column provides a country-by-country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications' industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.     

Review essay / torture as Raison D'État

Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers New York: Pantheon, 1990, ix + 293 pp.     

Building our future glass homes – An essay about influencing the future through regulation

The present paper surveys the prospects and possibilities of regulating the application areas of Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) – or in a broader sense, of influencing the future way of life – at the intersection of law, technology and society. It dissects the anticipated further erosion of personal privacy – the focus area of the essay – caused by technological developments and related interests. After sketching out an ironic dystopia, in which the idea of transparency is foisted upon the public by future technological developments, the author contemplates the relationships between legal regulation and the underlying values in the predictable but unknowable milieu of future life conditions. While studying the immutability of fundamental values, the author offers a brief survey of the role of public opinion, as well as of the limitations of taking into account the majority opinion, followed by a thought experiment about the possible ways of regulating the “Code”, approaching it from the direction of two fundamental rights, the right to human dignity and the freedom of academic research. After reaching conflicting conclusions and making a few suggestions about possible ways to regulate the area, the author makes a proposal about the introduction of a small-scale experimental tool, metaphorically named as a predictive learning model of regulation. Despite the difficulties and the uncertainties, the essay's overall perspective on the role of legal regulation is not a pessimistic one, as long as it is used flexibly and in conjunction with other means of regulation.