Wenlong Li

🚨NEW ARTICLE ALERT🚨

I am thrilled that our article (@wenlongli.bsky.social @wenkaili.bsky.social Yuemming Zhang @aolanli.bsky.social ) ‘Mapping the empirical literature of the GDPR's (In-)effectiveness: A systematic review’ published by Computer Law & Security Review. OA: doi.org/10.1016/j.cl...

Wenlong Li on LinkedIn: LAION wins copyright infringement lawsuit in German court Been re-reading LAION judgment several times. The major controversies have been lucidly flagged in Andres Guadamuz’s excellent blog here…

The LAION judgment contains an intruiging discussion on machine-readability in the context of the reservation of copyright. Since Twitter/Mastodon/Blueksy is space-limited, I wrote a thread 🧵here. www.linkedin.com/posts/wenlon...

Miss you all too, hope to reunite soon

Hey Karen!! How nice to hear from you!

This looks like a very timely synthesis and analysis of several ongoing key case-law in relation to surveillance-based advertising. x.com/lexzard/stat...

Comparative lawyers, esp. data protection & China newbies, should read this. We're not in Kansas now...

#BrusselsEffect #GravityAssist  #GDPR #PIPL #dataprotection #privacy #China

In conclusion, PIPL has a GDPR-like face but also a neoliberal heart. The resemblance to the GDPR is thus elusive and distracting insofar as it does not lead to harmonisation/interoperability, hence casting doubts on the existence of the Brussels Effect in China.

10/n

enforcement priorities, thus making a case of 'asteroid capture'. Note that this is not a capture by GDPR-informed global standards, but China's own cyber-sovereignty ideology that is inherently at odds with European values in relation to data protection.

9/n

without looking at the details of enforcement. In the last part, prelim observations on future trajectories of PIPL are made based on its instrumental characteristics. We argue that the PIPL is so distinct from the GDPR in terms of institutional design, legal infra, and...

8/n

PIPL's alignment can be understood as a process of strategic acceleration i.e. China recognising the structural & instrumental importance of privacy legislation but intentionally leaving significant semantic gaps, rendering it almost impossible to gauge the real effects...

7/n

A further PIPL-GDPR textual comparison shows that the similarities are elusive, and claimed differences more contested than meets the eye. Despite being the most powerful form of gravity assist, the GDPR is still incapable of dictating China’s trajectory of DP development.

6/n

Gravity assist is needed in post-colonial societies because privacy/DP is neither culturally/political embedded nor legally institutionalised. We provide a historical analysis to show how China’s multiple trials to accommodate data protection across legal fields had failed.

5/n

Given the Brussels Effect hardly applies, we develop a supplementary theory 'gravity assist' to explain how China takes efforts to align, at least formulaically, with mainstream standards of data protection by managing cultural/political resistance, as well as literacy gaps.

4/n

In China’s specific case, neither concrete economic interdependencies nor shared values concerning privacy exist. The lack of de facto Brussels Effect in the initial years of GDPR enforcement re China further disincentivises sino-EU interoperability or harmonisation.

3/n

We provide a critical account of the Brussels Effect and its preceding theories in non-Western contexts where the culture of privacy is not entrenched and politics revolving around post-colonial stability, development and global competition.

2/n

We started our journey with the frustration that int’l frameworks have little bearings on the socio-legal landscapes in Asia and Global South, and the growing body of local legal analysis so technical & descriptive without engaging theoretical or conceptual frameworks.

1/n

NEW PAPER

Has China’s Personal Information Protection Law followed the EU approach to data protection?

Has the Brussels Effect evidently extended to China?

In a new paper w @jiahong_chen, we answer both questions above as negative. A 🧵

Preprint  arxiv.org/pdf/2312.082...