Angela Daly, Private Power, Online Information Flows and EU Law: Mind the Gap

• Author: Gregory Voss
• Position: Professor of Business Law, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse Business School (TBS), Toulouse
• Pages: 89-92

Angela Daly, Private Power, Online Information Flows and EU Law: Mind the Gap

2017

89

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Angela Daly, Private Power, Online

Information Flows and EU Law: Mind the Gap

Hart Publishing 2016, 184 pages, ISBN 978-1-50990-063-3

by W. Gregory Voss, Professor of Business Law, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse Business School (TBS),

Toulouse

© 2017 W. Gregory Voss

Everybody may disseminate this ar ticle by electronic m eans and make it available for downloa d under the terms and

conditions of the Digital P eer Publishing Licence (DPPL). A copy of the license text may be obtain ed at http://nbn-resolving.

de/urn:nbn:de:0009-dppl-v3-en8.

Recommended citation: , W. Grego ry Voss, Book Review: Angela Daly, Private Power, Online Informati on Flows and EU Law:

Mind the Gap, 8 (2017) JIPITEC 89 par a 1.

1

This book, which is part of the Hart Studies in

Competition Law series, may, at rst glance, seem

to fall outside the scope of the main areas of

interest for many scholars in intellectual property,

information technology, and e-commerce law.

However, the European Commission’s issuance

of a Statement of Objections to Google regarding

comparative shopping services, the opening of a

formal competition law investigation into Google’s

conduct related to the Android mobile operating

system, both in 2015, followed by a 2016 report of

the French and German competition authorities

on competition law and the collection and use of

data, should have put an end to any doubt about

the interest of competition law to the sectors such

scholars study. Furthermore, this book’s subject

matter is not limited to competition law and concerns

European Union telecommunications regulation,

privacy and data protection law, the right to free

expression, and technical measures intended to limit

the impact of concentrations of private economic

power on online information ows as well.

2

The rst chapter of the book provides an introduction,

sets out the mission of the book and outlines

its structure and approach. The second chapter

establishes the book’s theoretical framework which

serves as the basis for the discussions of what Daly

calls the ‘substantive’ part of the book, consisting

of discrete ‘case studies’ and providing examples of

existing EU law. The rst of these is contained in

chapter three on dominance and internet provision,

particularly covering net neutrality. In the fourth

chapter, dominance and internet search are the

subject, focussing as might be expected on Google.

The fth chapter deals with dominance and mobile

devices, placing an emphasis on application (or

‘app’) stores. The last of the ‘substantive’ chapters

is chapter six, which covers dominance and the

cloud, followed by a conclusion (chapter seven).

Notably, each of the substantive chapters contains

a competition law analysis, followed by a discussion

of other areas of law (data protection and privacy,

free expression, etc.) and technique. The chapters

are fairly well balanced in terms of length, with

the sixth chapter on the cloud being the shortest

of the ‘substantive’ chapters, likely because of

its ‘speculative’ nature, and the fourth chapter

on internet search being slightly longer than the

theoretical chapter (chapter two) and the chapter

on mobile devices (chapter six), due to the European

Commission’s investigations in this area.

3 In the rst chapter, Daly sets out some of the limits

of the book. First, it does not cover state-only

control of online information ows, such as for the

prevention of crime. Second, only current EU law

(including the European Convention on Human

Rights, as amended) is discussed in detail, to the

exclusion of ‘possible conceptual reforms’. Finally,

Book Review