Liable and Sustainable by Design: A Toolbox for a Regulatory Compliant and Sustainable Tech

Abstract

The pandemic has exacerbated the effects of the digital transformation: the extractive economy is steadily giving way to the new economic space—the digital economy. This transformation shakes the very foundations of the existence and purpose of law, i.e., the regulation of social relations. However, today, the consequences of developing tech in an unsustainable manner are becoming obvious. Despite the internet’s many benefits, it also erodes trust and fuels misinformation, polarization, and inequality. These developments occur partly because the algorithms that shape our economies, society, and even public discourse were developed with few legal restrictions or commonly held ethical standards. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the technologies that currently shape our socio-economic relations must be consistent with both our shared norms and values and the existing rules. The main question of this study is how to correctly introduce tech that is legal by design, but also, and especially, liable and sustainable by design. The underlying questions are hence, firstly: to this end, do we need (to create) a whole new body of norms, law, and regulation? Alternatively, are there already legal fields, concepts, and tools that can help us lay comprehensive groundwork for tech that is liable and sustainable by design? The central object of this study is to address this problem with regard to the types of organization that is in any way involved in or at least related to tech and innovation, essentially, the Web 3-4 actors. My principal method is systems analysis, which engages with a system as a whole. The construct of regulatory compliant and sustainable tech is thus analysed both functionally and institutionally, with concepts including norm-setting and law-making, formal application and enforcement, case law, real-world effects, and limitations. The objective of the article is to first synthesize the pre-existing legal and regulatory fields and constructs, and then analyse in a succinct yet systematic manner the conditions for their applicability to, and efficiency for, regulation of Web 3.0 (and soon, Web 4.0), as well as their limits. In the course of the study, I found that there are a few pre-existing legal fields, concepts, and tools that can pave the way to creating a Web that is liable and sustainable by design. I have also identified two key developments that arise from the digital transformation: (i) the digital economic space creates the so-called governance and regulatory gaps; and (ii) some of these gaps are rapidly filled (at times, successfully and at times, less so) by a burgeoning newest legal framework (national and supranational targeted regulation, legislation, and case law), which has been growing especially rapidly since the global digital ‘leap’ facilitated by the COVID-19 pandemic in the beginning of the 2020s. To conclude, the article summarizes both pre-existing and new tools and thus offers a ready-to-use toolkit for a regulatory compliant and sustainable tech (including a table summarizing the toolkit), which is the key aim of this paper.