Transformation of law in the context of digitalization: defining the correct priorities

Abstract

The subject under analysis is the peculiarities around the legal regulation of digital technologies and products arising from digital technologies. The choice of this topic was predetermined by the active development of digital services and digital financial assets, and the necessity to adapt modern legislation to the needs of the digital economy. Despite the fact that several strategies for the development of digital law are being worked out at the level of international organizations, neither in theory nor in practice is there a single understanding of the legal nature of digital technologies and the foundations of their legal regulation. From this perspective, the purpose of this article is to understand the system and the main categories of the digital economy through the prism of fundamental legal institutions, based both on the traditional principles of scientific analysis and on the results steaming from applied data processing methods. Using methods of theoretical modeling, idealization, and theoretical experiments, the authors consider the categories of legal personality, security, and tort of digital technologies and products, compare them with similar legal institutions, and determine possible options for integrating new legal categories into traditional rule of law on contracts, liability, and the protection of intellectual rights. As a result of the study, the authors have assembled their vision of those benchmarks, on which international strategies for regulating the digital economy should be built. The authors proceed from the fact that the adaptive capabilities of traditional law are very limited in relation to digital technologies; furthermore, in relation to many of them, qualitatively new legal models should be developed. The article presents the results of a review of the main legal parameters of digital technologies. Formulations of legal personality and protection are proposed, definitions of digital technology products in civil and copyright law are formulated. The conclusion reached concerns the inconsistency of approaches to assessing the legal nature of digital objects, and the insufficient consideration of the technical aspects of digital technologies, as well as the need to develop — at the international level — a unified legal strategy for civil and intellectual law regarding digital technologies. This study underlines, among the priority tasks and directions, the issues of legal personality of digital technologies, and the essential mechanisms for the protection of products using digital technologies. The conclusions formulated in the article have important practical and methodological significance, and can be taken into account when reforming the current legislation.