A presentation by Katharina Pistor (Columbia University). This event is part of the Digital Governance Research Colloquium and Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium under the cluster “Fundamental Rights in the Global Political Economy", co-hosted by the Centre for the Digital Governance and Centre for Fundamental Rights.
Today, Big Tech and media companies as well as state security apparatuses wield unprecedented control over data of individuals and their social relations and deeply infiltrate the processes by which meaning is formed. This outcome was not inevitable from a technological or legal standpoint. Without doubt, the value of data as a capital asset and source of control was long underestimated, yet alternatives were on the table and different decisions could have been taken. The (literally) mis-takes made on the legal front include (1) The framing of the legal issue as a problem of individual “privacy”. (2) The failure to account for the social power dimension of data control by public and private agents. (3) The treatment of technology as fixed, not malleable by institutional choice. By recounting these three battle fields, Katharina's paper hopes to inform future choices about data governance.
Katharina Pistor is the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School and director of the Law School’s Center on Global Legal Transformation. Her work spans comparative law and corporate governance, law and finance, and law and development. She is the co-recipient of the Max Planck Research Award (2012), a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg and the European Academies of Science and a Fellow at the European Corporate Governance Institute. Her most recent book is “The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality” (Princeton UP, 2019).
Prior registration is required. Registered attendees will receive the dial-in details via e-mail prior to the event.
