Bridging the accountability gap: rights for new entities in the information society?
Détails
Télécharger: BIB_D5D39CDA2AAD.P001.pdf (519.64 [Ko])
Etat: Public
Version: de l'auteur⸱e
Etat: Public
Version: de l'auteur⸱e
ID Serval
serval:BIB_D5D39CDA2AAD
Type
Rapport: document publié par une institution, habituellement élément d'une série.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Titre
Bridging the accountability gap: rights for new entities in the information society?
Détails de l'institution
FIDIS consortium, EC contract 507512
Date de publication
04/2009
Numéro
17.3
Genre
Deliverable
Langue
anglais
Nombre de pages
46
Notes
peer-reviewed
Résumé
New entities in the information society, such as pseudonyms, avatars, software agents, and robots, create an 'accountability gap' because they operate at increasing distance from their principals. One way of addressing this is to attribute legal rights and/or duties in some contexts to non-humans, thus creating entities that are addressable in law themselves rather than the persons 'behind' them. In this article, we review existing literature on rights for nonhumans, with a particular focus on emerging entities in the information society. We discuss three strategies for the law to deal with the challenge of these new entities: interpreting and extending existing law, introducing limited legal personhood with strict liability, and granting full legal personhood. To assess these strategies, we distinguish between different types of persons (abstract, legal, and moral) and different types of agency (automatic, autonomic, and autonomous). We conclude that interpretation and extension of the law seems to work well enough with today's emerging entities, but that sooner or later, attributing limited legal personhood with strict liability is probably a good solution to bridge the accountability gap for autonomic entities; for software agents, this may be sooner rather than later. The technology underlying new entities will, however, have to develop considerably further from facilitating autonomic to facilitating autonomous behavior, before it becomes legally relevant to attribute 'posthuman' rights to new entities.
Mots-clé
FIDIS, rights for non-human, pseudonyms, avatars, software agents, robots
Site de l'éditeur
Création de la notice
27/09/2010 8:20
Dernière modification de la notice
20/08/2019 15:55