Using artificial intelligence in healthcare: Allocating liability and risks

Within the framework of this article, the author considers the features regarding the application and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in medical practice. This includes complex issues related to the personal liability of a doctor when making decisions on diagnostics and treatment based on an algorithm proposal (a system for supporting medical decisions), as well as possible options for the responsibility of the algorithm (AI) developer. The analysis provides an overview of the existing system for holding medical professionals accountable, as well as an assessment of possible options for the distribution of responsibility in connection with the widespread introduction of AI into the work of doctors alongside the possible introduction of AI into standard medical care. The author considers the possibility of establishing more serious requirements for the collection of information on the side effects of such devices for an AI registered as a medical device. Using the method of legal analysis and the comparative legal method, the author analyzes the current global trends in the distribution of responsibility for harm in such cases where there is an error and/or inaccuracy in making a medical decision; as a result of this, the author demonstrates possible options for the distribution of the roles of the healthcare professional and AI in the near future.

Russian healthcare system digitalization: Opportunities and contradictions

The article is devoted to the opportunities and key contradictions of the Russian state healthcare system digitalization project implementation. The authors analyze various aspects of the system digitalization algorithms in light of the federal project “Creation of the Single Digital Circuit in Healthcare based on the Unified State Health Information System”. The aim of the article was to identify problems within goal-setting, documentation development, and practical implementation of the healthcare system digitalization project, as well as to come up with proposals for eliminating these issues. The analysis showed the inefficiency of the expensive healthcare system digitalization project, which has both objective and subjective reasons for its low effectiveness. The authors come to the conclusion that it is necessary to eliminate a number of contradictions and barriers in the framework of the project implementation in order to increase the efficiency of both the healthcare system itself and the high budget federal project of the economy digitalization as a whole. The practical significance of the article consists in the applicability of proposed approach to making the necessary amendments to the current federal project documentation, which will ensure a focus on real needs within the framework of the initiative implementation. The work may be of interest to civil servants, initiators of projects on the healthcare system digital transformation, governmental bodies, healthcare organizations managers, students, and practitioners.

Smart-Contracts in the digital economy: Contractual regulation and dispute resolution

This article has been prepared for the research purpose of identifying, disclosing, and justifying certain trends in the development of civil law and procedures in the context of the spread of smart contract practices and the expansion of their spheres of application. At the moment, there is no uniform approach to choosing an optimal form for the legal regulation of smart contracts within the system of contract law in modern legal systems or international law; meanwhile, globalization and the digitalization of the economy imply the growth of cross-border transactions. The emergence of smart contracts is due to the development of e-commerce, in which the parties’ interactions are carried out electronically instead of in physical exchanges or direct physical contact. Smart contracts gaining popularity in circulation are based on two interrelated elements: firstly, they eliminate a person’s direct participation in some or all cases of executing the agreement using an automated code designed for execution without reference to the intentions of the contracting parties after publication; secondly, they make use of decentralized blockchain technology, and also provide automatic code execution without any party’s potential intervention, so as to eliminate or reduce the self-control and third-party control of the commitment.This study examines the content, conclusion, validity, protection of rights and legitimate interests of the parties, interpretation, and legal nature of smart contracts. The research materials used foreign experience in resolving disputes from smart contracts on digital platforms (Kleros, JUR, Aragon Network Justice, OpenCourt, OpenBazaar), as well as domestic and foreign literature on smart contracts. This research has been prepared based on general (deduction, dialectical analysis, intersectoral relations of objects) and specialized (comparative-legal, economic-legal) methods of scientific experimentation.The authors conclude that there are no grounds for considering a smart contract as a new classification element of the system of contractual regulation (type or kind of contract). In addition, the analysis shows that the resolution of smart contract disputes through digital platforms remains radically uncertain, and currently is not creating obvious advantages in comparison with traditional judicial proceedings.

Civil liability of taxi-aggregation companies: Between contract and tort law

Technical and information progress undoubtably have an influence on the trade market and the consumer service sector of the modern economy. The sphere of taxi companies is no exception. When a user downloads a taxi-aggregation company’s application and orders a taxi, using its information about a carrier, this causes uncertainty in the qualifcation of the legal relationship between aggregator, carrier, and consumer. This ambiguity becomes critical if non-performance of the contract causes injury or non-pecuniary loss to a passenger. In this case, a concurrence arises between contact and tort qualifcation of the claim against the carrier and/or aggregator. The essay examines approaches to the distribution of liability between the aggregator, the carrier, and other persons who could contribute to causing harm, from the point of view of contract and tort law.

Jurisdictional challenge of the Internet: Treatise on theory and practice of digital turn

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Digital arbitration — A useful tool in the hands of homo sapiens

Currently, general digitalization has not spared the sphere of arbitration. What are the advantages and disadvantages of introducing digital technologies, how has COVID-19 influenced the work of leading arbitration institutions, does digitalization imply the delocalization of ICA, and does a “digital arbitrator” have a future? Alexey A. Kostin and Alexander V. Grebelsky answered these and other questions from Maxim I. Inozemtsev, Editor-in-Chief of the Digital Law Journal.

Internet court on solving online consumer contract disputes: Case of China

The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply influenced people’s way of life. The need to comply with various social restrictions has posed new and previously unknown challenges to humanity. Internet here plays a significant role in helping to maintain people’s life as usual. As online behavior increases, many disputes arise therefrom grow simultaneously. It is proposed that international online disputes would be solved effectively if Internet technologies were referred to and adopted. Therefore, online litigation, a judicial method specially established to solve online disputes, provides an ideal alternative to the traditional litigation process in this regard. Such litigation can be operated through Internet courts (or cyber courts). Today the palm in their establishment belongs to China that has successfully introduce the world’s first three, and only, Internet courts. Thus, the Chinese experience has been chosen as the primary empirical support of the study on Internet courts. In this essay, a detailed review of the online litigation process will be analyzed using the example of the adopted rules and regulations for resolving disputes, as well as the judgements handed down by the Hangzhou Internet Court, the world’s first cyber court successfully resolving multiple online disputes over four years. The essay firstly reviews the current rules and procedures of Hangzhou Internet court; this would serve for a better understanding of how the world’s first Internet court is operated. After that, the essay discusses in what circumstances foreign courts can recognize and enforce Internet courts’ judgments. The essay ends up with giving personal recommendations on the future development of Internet courts to solve online consumer contract disputes.

Non-fungible tokens (NFT) and intellectual property: The triumph of the proprietary approach?

Technical methods of intellectual property protection are reviewed and combined in the essay in the discourse of historical development — from man-made signatures of Renaissance artists to non-fungible tokens (NFT). The proliferation of NFTs is analyzed from the point of view of the commercial law: NFTs are discussed as objects that simultaneously have the characteristics of independence and a derivative nature in relation to intellectual property being the underlying digital asset. The self-sufficiency of NFTs as legal objects is provided by their commodity properties, which arise not only from the value of the underlying asset, but from the phenomenon of crystallization of the unique fixed version of the asset in a non-interchangeable and irreproducible token. The derivative nature of NFTs, figuratively correlated with the derivative contracts in financial markets, is manifested in the symbolization of intellectual property as an underlying asset and the loss (in full or in part) of its usual significance for a potential acquirer when placed in an NFT-image. Despite the variety and a specific evolution of legal approaches to the understanding of intellectual property, we can state a long-standing conceptual rejection by legal scholars from the simplest proprietary theories of transferring real rights constructions to intellectual property. However, some absolute property features of the NFTs, ensuring both internal and external legal aspects of the property, raise the question of a new legal life of “proprietarism” in the conditions of digitalization and information capitalism.

Technological orders and legal thought: A dualistic paradigm of development

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The realization of the right to freedom of speech on the Internet

The expression of opinions on the Internet has a number of features in comparison with traditional means of information dissemination. Firstly, imposition of classical measures of legal liability can be difficult due to the peculiarities of cyber space: anonymity and erasure of jurisdictional boundaries. In this regard, a new mechanism of restrictions has appeared, which consists in the withdrawal of information that violates the law or the rights of other citizens from the Internet at the direction of state bodies. The trends in this area are the predominance of the administrative procedure for making decisions on the withdrawal of information from public access, and the use of vague and evaluative terms as grounds for restrictions. Secondly, in most cases, in the process of realizing freedom of speech, intermediaries are involved — companies that provide a public forum for millions of users. The activities of these companies are also associated with new mechanisms for restricting freedom of speech: from blocking content to deleting users’ accounts. Such companies have a dual responsibility: to monitor the placement of content in order to prevent abuse of freedom of speech and to prevent violations of freedom of expression with their own corporate rules. The purpose of this article is to identify, through the method of analytical jurisprudence, the problems that arise when restricting freedom of speech, implemented in the digital environment, and to establish the reasons for their occurrence. To do this, the author has carried out a review of Russian legislation and the practice of its application, as well as the practice of restrictions, applied by corporations, and an analysis of foreign literature.