This year’s lecture was given by Professor Mark D. Cole, Professor of Media and Telecommunication Law at the University of Luxembourg, who took his audience through an interesting overview of the EU’s experience of regulating online platforms and what future legislation may look like. Although a complex and dense topic, Professor Cole gave an accessible and engaging lecture in which he explained how regulation has evolved from the EU’s e-Commerce Directive and Information Society Directive to the recent Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.
In a nice tribute, the title of Professor Cole’s lecture “The Answer to Platform Regulation is in the Regulation of Platforms” was inspired by a famous phrase coined Charles Clark and later used as the title for a book of his collected writings called “The Answer to the Machine is in the Machine”. In that spirit, Professor Cole’s lecture continued a fine tradition of highly topical, engaging talks from experts in copyright, which we look forward to continuing next year.
Commenting on the lecture, Jessica Sänger, Chair of the IPA’s Copyright Committee said: It was great to be back at London Book Fair for a real life Charles Clark Memorial Lecture. Professor Mark Cole’s insights were very interesting, especially in the way he approached copyright enforcement from a broader regulatory perspective. I hope that all the attendees enjoyed it as much as I did.
This event was supported by The Copyright Licensing Agency, Federation of European Publishers, International Publishers Association, The Publisher’s Association and Publishers’ Licensing Services.
You can see the lecture here:
Based on original PLS summary available here: https://www.pls.org.uk/news-events/2022-charles-clark-memorial-lecture/