Professor to be published in Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Professor Emily Laidlaw's article "The Challenge Designing Intermediary Liability Laws" will be published in an upcoming issue of the Canadian Journal of Law and Technology. In her article, Emily aims to answer the question "why is it so difficult for law and policymakers to agree on a regulatory framework?"

This paper tackles two parts of the regulatory challenge that are vital to finding a way through this thicket. The first part examines the conceptual evolution of intermediaries into platforms to identify the challenge in regulating what we cannot easily define. The second part situates the definitional challenge in the evolution of various intermediary liability laws with a goal to unpack why it is hard to land on a regulatory framework of wide appeal. The central argument is that intermediary liability laws must account for the gatekeeping power of intermediaries. What emerges from the analysis is that there is a significant disconnect between the evolving role of intermediaries, and their power over information flows, and intermediary liability laws, which have historically not been concerned with gatekeeping power.

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