Direito Digital 3.0

Maria Raquel Guimarães • Rute Teixeira Pedro • Maria Regina Redinha

Keywords

digital law; technology; artificial intelligence (AI); digital revolution; digital society

Abstract

The third volume dedicated to Digital Law is now published, continuing the initiative launched in 2021 to disseminate the master’s theses defended at the Faculty of Law of the University of Porto that received the highest marks in areas concerning the intersection between Law and Technology.

What we wrote in the introductory note to the first volume of this series remains current: technological developments continue to occur at a very rapid pace, intensifying both the extent and the speed of transformations in everyday life; there continues to be no field untouched by the digital revolution with which we are confronted; and whether one considers the new products endowed with increasing degrees of artificial intelligence or the environment represented by the internet, the challenges are multiple and complex, given the processes of deterritorialisation, dematerialisation, and the erosion of State barriers associated with new technologies.

More than ever, all branches of law are called upon to reflect upon these developments — from civil law to commercial law, from consumer law to corporate law, from labour law to industrial property law, from intellectual property law to criminal law, from civil and criminal procedural law to insurance law and tax law.

Digital Law 3.0 publishes the theses defended between 2023 and 2025, initially developed within the scope of the project “It’s a Wonderful (Digital) World: Law in a Digital and Technological Society” and, subsequently, within the context of the project Digital Law 2.0, of the CIJ — Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Justice. The research carried out results from the challenge posed to the students of the Master’s Programme of the Faculty of Law of the University of Porto to reflect upon new digital markets, their regulation and supervision, and the need to protect consumers, as well as workers, within the digital context; upon the data protection issues raised by Big Data, Deepfakes, and distributed ledger technologies; and upon the challenges posed by artificial intelligence and robotics, among others.

We once again express our gratitude to all colleagues who undertook the responsibility of supervision, as well as to those who served on the panels appointed for the public examinations through which the works published herein were assessed, and in particular, as examiners, to those who, although external to the research projects, generously devoted their time and expertise to the careful assessment of the texts and to the questioning of the candidates.

A further word of recognition is also due to Mestre Fernanda de Araujo Meirelles Magalhães for the careful organisation and revision of this edition, now with the collaboration of Mestre Cláudia Isabel Lima da Costa, to whom our thanks are likewise extended.

To the Authors, we extend our gratitude for their enthusiastic and dedicated work and congratulate them on this new achievement of sharing their research with the wider world.