Regulating Social Network Sites

Data Protection, Copyright and Power

Elgar Law, Technology and Society series

Asma Vranaki, Senior Lecturer in Law, School of Law, University of Bristol, UK

Drawing on rich, empirical case studies, this innovative book provides a contemporary and comprehensive exploration of the plural, dynamic and precarious processes, materials, practices, interventions and relationships on social network sites, and their resultant power effects, when copyright and data privacy rights are at stake.

‘Lawyers are nowadays used to the idea that law needs to be studied in its context. This book’s major insight is that context is not merely the background to law, but rather that the web of power relationships between actors is the primary context which shapes the law and gives it meaning in action. Power is not reserved to lawmakers and platform owners – all actors have some degree of power. Thus we learn that YouTube’s copyright notice and takedown processes and its Content ID system are merely influenced by the content of law rather than determined by it, and that rights owners and content creators use these ‘legal’ structures in unexpected ways which give them new meanings. Similarly, data privacy on Facebook is not statically determined by legal texts such as laws and platform terms, but is a dynamic balance whose shifts are determined by power asserted by all players in the Facebook ecosystem. Vranaki’s use of Actor Network Theory and Foucault’s theories of power to analyse these phenomena is always illuminating, and few readers will finish this book without a new and deeper understanding of how law works.’
– Chris Reed, Queen Mary University of London, UK

‘Asma Vranaki dives into power relationships online, in particular social networks. She critically surveys cyberspace regulation literature, and suggests an improved theory. The core of the monograph studies empirically issues of Facebook on data protection, and YouTube on copyright. The monograph is wonderfully written, sharply analysed, and a joy to read.’
– Arno R. Lodder, Vrije Universiteit, the Netherlands