Radim Polčák

Stone Roots, Digital Leaves: Czech Law against Unfair Competition in the Internet Era

The article explains the ways in which the Czech law against unfair competitions addreesses new challenges arising of the use of information and communication technologies.

Information Society Between Orwell and Zapata: A Czech Perspective on Safe Harbours

The Czech Republic is an EU member state, so the safe harbour regime for information society service providers in the E-Commerce Directive applies as elsewhere in the EU. This Chapter explains and critically discusses the Czech harmonisation of the directive and related case-law. In addition, it discusses the impact of the adoption of the new Czech Civil Code. In particular, it focuses on ways in which the concept of legal liability of ISPs was transformed from past Orwellian safety to present Zapatist uncertainty.

Stock Exchange Interconnections and Legal Issues in Data Exchange

If philosophical cybernetics was interested in stock exchanges, it would probably treat them as relatively simple information structures. From that perspective, stock exchanges can be viewed as places where data on supply and demand of various negotiable instruments are processed. Besides that, stock exchanges, as institutions, provide respective transactions with additional informational (organisational) value that mostly consist of trust regarding the traders, clearing etc. Consequently, a stock exchange interconnection can be seen as very natural process providing for bigger pool of useful data. One of key tasks in the establishment of exchange schemes is then not to hinder or diminish the added information value, i.e. to at least keep the existing level of trust. In that sense, one of the most important components of interconnection design is the legal compliance. In the comment, we will examine some of the most emerging legal issues in data sharing between stock exchanges that were subject to examination under recently concluded project ‘Creating a legal and regulatory framework for interconnections between stock exchanges: A comparative study of the UK and Taiwan’ funded by the British Academy (UK) and the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan. We will particularly focus in this comment on compliance issues in cross-border transfers of personal data and newly emerging regulatory phenomenon of cybersecurity.

Digitisation, Cultural Institutions and Intellectual Property

The paper critically summarises legal issues in digitisation of content held by cultural institutions such as libraries or museums.

Aims, methods and achievements in European data protection1

The protection of personal data represents one of recent most emerging legal issues. On one hand, the privacy and the discretion of individuals are challenged by various new means of data collection and communication. On the other hand, the growth and development of the information economy is heavily dependent on the level of freedom of business units in gathering, processing and distribution of various kinds of information. In this short notice, we will try to summarize the experience with the data protection laws with respect to their basic teleology.