Editorial

• Author: Karin Sein
• Position: University of Tartu
• Pages: 100-100

2020

Editorial

100

2

Editorial

by Karin Sein

© 2020 Karin Sein

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 obta ined at http://nbn-resolving.

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

Recommended citation: Kar in Sein, Editorial, 11 (2020) JIPITEC 100 para 1.

1 The editorial of our last issue started with admiring

how fast and effectively the world shifted many

activities to the digital realm during the COVID-19

crisis. Indeed, within a few weeks we all became

experts of Zoom, Teams and BigBlueButton, hosted

and attended webinars, and tested the options

of various e-learning tools. While this certainly

has been a tremendous leap forward, now, as this

extraordinary summer semester has come to an end,

maybe the time has arrived to assess the boundaries

of going digital.

2 What I personally have been missing a lot, are these

magical moments during the lecture when someone

asks you a question and you must admit that you have

never really thought about it from this perspective.

Or, when students start debating a topic amongst

each other so that you can happily just step aside

feeling content that they are intrigued by the subject

that you just introduced. These situations have not

(yet) happened to me in online lectures. Surely, we

have also become aware of how different we are

concerning learning and teaching preferences – as

some of us enjoy digital learning so much more than

others.

3

And as the holiday season started, it has become

obvious that it’s not really possible to have an

e-vacation: hiking in virtual mountains does not

make you sweat and when swimming in the digital

sea you do not feel the waves. And while of course

we can send each other the 101

st

perfect sunset photo

from the beach, we still cannot share the taste of wild

strawberries or Aperol Spritz online.

4 But coming back to the possibilities of digital world

and legal matters, our summer issue offers a lot of

new insights regarding digital copyright and data

privacy questions. Liliia Oprysk explores the broader

implications of the CJEU’s Tom Kabinet decision on

secondary communication and advocates a casuistic

approach which considers the initial authorisation

of communication, remuneration obtained by the

right holder, and the potential interference with

a work’s exploitation. Pinar Oruç analyses the

copyright implications of the method, purposes

and the level of collaboration in 3D digitisation of

cultural heritage and argues that it is possible, and

in some instances even very likely, that 3D projects

lead to protectable outcomes under the EU copyright

law. Andreas Rahmatian discusses the concept of

dematerialised property and its application to debts,

money and intellectual property. And a group of

leading European copyright scholars, the European

Copyright Society, have created an impressive set

of comments on the implementation of different

articles of the new DSM directive - surely extremely

valuable guidelines for national legislators.

5

From the data protection side, Bart van der Sloot

observes that the European Court of Human

Rights has recently undergone a revolutionary

transformation and now formally assesses the

quality of Member States’ laws and even advises

the national legislators on how to make their legal

systems Convention-compliant. He puts forward

an intriguing argument that the European Court

of Human Rights has thereby gradually turned into

a European Constitutional Court for privacy cases.

Maurice Schellekens, in turn, asks who is or who are

the data controller(s) in a permissionless blockchain

context and argues that there are good reasons to

consider the administrators of nodes together with

the core developers as joint controllers. However,

he also admits that there is currently not enough

coordination within the blockchain that is necessary

for adequate data protection. Finally, the “Consumer

Law Days 2019” conference report provides an

elaborate overview on the discussions on designing

the regulatory framework for data access in the

digital economy with an emphasis on consumer

interests and public welfare.

Have a nice summer and we hope you enjoy reading

this issue!

Karin Sein, University of Tartu