Derecho Privado de Internet, Cuarta Edición Pedro Alberto de Miguel Asensio

• Author: Gerald Spindler
• Position: Göttingen, Prof. Dr., Department of Civil Law, Commercial and Economic Law, Comparative Law, Multimedia- and Telecommunication Law, University of Göttingen
• Pages: 88-90

2012

Gerald Spindler

88

1

Derecho Privado de Internet, Cuarta Edición

Pedro Alberto de Miguel Asensio

Book Review

by Gerald Spindler, Göttingen, Prof. Dr., Department of Civil Law, Commercial and Economic Law, Comparative

Law, Multimedia- and Telecommunication Law, University of Göttingen

© 2012 Gerald Spindler

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

conditions of the Digita l Peer Publishing Licence (DPPL). A copy of the license text may be obtained a t http://nbn-resolving.

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

Recommended citation: Ger ald Spindler, Book Review: Derecho Priva do de Internet, cuarta edición by P edro Alberto de Miguel

1

This book is appearing in its 4

th

edition, which gi-

ves a clear hint of its outstanding importance in the

Spanish (and international) discussion. The author

deals with nearly all conceivable issues in terms of

‘Internetl aw’ or electronic commerce.

2 -

ations of the Internet –in particular the ‘governance’

of the net such as ICANN or domain names and IP

numbers–the second chapter turns to the fundamen-

tal services and their providers with regard to their

liability. The steadily intensifying discussion sur-

rounding data protection (which recently reached

its zenith with the publication of the proposal of the

new EC regulation on data protection) is dealt with

in the third chapter, followed by a somewhat smal-

ler part on unfair competition law. In contrast, De

Miguel focuses on intellectual property rights such



to domain name litigations or copyright (sixth chap-



most salient phenomena on the Internet, including

p2pnetworks, search engines and the retro-digitiza-

tion by Google Books. The last chapter of the book is

dedicated to contract law with an emphasis on the

formation of the contract, electronic payment ser-

vices and digital signatures and their like.

3 Given the global character of the Internet, it is quite



its regulation. Hence, every chapter (each legal area)

-

vate law and the criteria that should be used to as-

sess the location of an act or a damage. In this con-

text and with regard to the principle of country of

origin enshrined in Art. 3 of the E-commerceDirec-

tive, the author recommends– in line with the recent

decision of the European Court of Justice – that this

article not be read as a principle of private internati-

onal law rather than limiting the applicable law (No



the interpretation of Art. 3 of the E-commerce Direc-

tive, the details of its application still remain unc-

lear, such as the test of which law is more provider-

friendly (including how far the test should reach).

4

For such an encyclopedic review of nearly all aspects





focus on abstract issues, such as regulation of the In-

-

ding liability and intellectual property rights.

5    

known tension that was intensively discussed in the

1990s between the anarchical and global structure

of the Internet on one hand and the regulatory ap-

proaches of states to somehow regain control of the

Internet. The author omits neither self-regulatory

phenomena nor software as a means to steer the be-

havior of participants, taking into account most of

the internationally relevant literature from both si-

des of the Atlantic (No. 71 –89). He discards the idea

of a virtual space free of regulation and points to a

multifactor and multilevel approach that pragmati-

cally uses those means that promise to render an ef-



6

Regarding liability issues, Miguel intensively discus-

ses the role of contractual disclaimers (No. 138 -140)

that are frequently also part of standard contract

terms. However, the author does not further ana-

lyze whether these standard contract terms could be

deemed unfair, for instance with regard to the con-

trol of virus infections of data stored by a host pro-

vider. After reviewing potential liability issues such

as defamation, product liability, and wrongful infor-

mation, De Miguel also debates the role of Internet

intermediaries.He takes the developments in the US

into account, in particular the DMCA, and compares