Hannibal Travis – författare

This book analyzes questions of platform bias, algorithmic filtering and ranking of Internet speech, and declining perceptions of online freedom.

Courts have intervened against unfair platforms in important cases, but they have deferred to private sector decisions in many others, particularly in the United States. The First Amendment, human rights law, competition law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and an array of state and foreign laws address bad faith conduct by Internet platforms or other commercial actors. Arguing that the problem of platform neutrality is similar to the net neutrality problem, the book discusses the assault on freedom of speech that emerges from public-private partnerships. The book draws parallels between U.S. constitutional and statutory doctrines relating to shared spaces and the teachings of international human rights bodies relating to the responsibilities of private actors. It also connects the dots between new rights to appeal account or post removals under the Digital Services Act of the European Union and a variety of fair treatment obligations of platforms under American and European competition laws, “public accommodations” laws, and public utilities laws. Analyzing artificial intelligence (AI) regulation from the point of view of social-media and video-platform users, the book explores overlaps between European and U.S. efforts to limit algorithmic censorship or “shadow-banning”.

The book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of cyberlaw, the law of emerging technologies and AI law.

This book analyzes questions of platform bias, algorithmic filtering and ranking of Internet speech, and declining perceptions of online freedom.

Courts have intervened against unfair platforms in important cases, but they have deferred to private sector decisions in many others, particularly in the United States. The First Amendment, human rights law, competition law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and an array of state and foreign laws address bad faith conduct by Internet platforms or other commercial actors. Arguing that the problem of platform neutrality is similar to the net neutrality problem, the book discusses the assault on freedom of speech that emerges from public-private partnerships. The book draws parallels between U.S. constitutional and statutory doctrines relating to shared spaces and the teachings of international human rights bodies relating to the responsibilities of private actors. It also connects the dots between new rights to appeal account or post removals under the Digital Services Act of the European Union and a variety of fair treatment obligations of platforms under American and European competition laws, “public accommodations” laws, and public utilities laws. Analyzing artificial intelligence (AI) regulation from the point of view of social-media and video-platform users, the book explores overlaps between European and U.S. efforts to limit algorithmic censorship or “shadow-banning”.

The book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of cyberlaw, the law of emerging technologies and AI law.

This book explores what the American Civil Liberties Union calls the "third era" in cyberspace, in which filters "fundamentally alter the architectural structure of the Internet, with significant implications for free speech." Although courts and nongovernmental organizations increasingly insist upon constitutional and other legal guarantees of a freewheeling Internet, multi-national corporations compete to produce tools and strategies for making it more predictable. When Google attempted to improve our access to information containing in books and the World Wide Web, copyright litigation began to tie up the process of making content searchable, and resulted in the wrongful removal of access to thousands if not millions of works. Just as the courts were insisting that using trademarks online to criticize their owners is First Amendment-protected, corporations and trade associations accelerated their development of ways to make Internet companies liable for their users’ infringing words and actions, potentially circumventing free speech rights. And as social networking and content-sharing sites have proliferated, so have the terms of service and content-detecting tools for detecting, flagging, and deleting content that makes one or another corporation or trade association fear for its image or profits. The book provides a legal history of Internet regulation since the mid-1990s, with a particular focus on efforts by patent, trademark, and copyright owners to compel Internet firms to monitor their online offerings and remove or pay for any violations of the rights of others.

This book will be of interest to students of law, communications, political science, government and policy, business, and economics, as well as anyone interested in free speech and commerce on the internet.

This book explores what the American Civil Liberties Union calls the "third era" in cyberspace, in which filters "fundamentally alter the architectural structure of the Internet, with significant implications for free speech." Although courts and nongovernmental organizations increasingly insist upon constitutional and other legal guarantees of a freewheeling Internet, multi-national corporations compete to produce tools and strategies for making it more predictable. When Google attempted to improve our access to information containing in books and the World Wide Web, copyright litigation began to tie up the process of making content searchable, and resulted in the wrongful removal of access to thousands if not millions of works. Just as the courts were insisting that using trademarks online to criticize their owners is First Amendment-protected, corporations and trade associations accelerated their development of ways to make Internet companies liable for their users’ infringing words and actions, potentially circumventing free speech rights. And as social networking and content-sharing sites have proliferated, so have the terms of service and content-detecting tools for detecting, flagging, and deleting content that makes one or another corporation or trade association fear for its image or profits. The book provides a legal history of Internet regulation since the mid-1990s, with a particular focus on efforts by patent, trademark, and copyright owners to compel Internet firms to monitor their online offerings and remove or pay for any violations of the rights of others.

This book will be of interest to students of law, communications, political science, government and policy, business, and economics, as well as anyone interested in free speech and commerce on the internet.

Genocide, Ethnonationalism, and the United Nations examines a series of related crises in human civilization growing out of conflicts between powerful states or empires and indigenous or stateless peoples. This is the first book to attempt to explore the causes of genocide and other mass killing by a detailed exploration of UN archives covering the period spanning from 1945 through 2011. Hannibal Travis argues that large states and empires disproportionately committed or facilitated genocide and other mass killings between 1945 and 2011. His research incorporates data concerning factors linked to the scale of mass killing, and recent findings in human rights, political science, and legal theory. Turning to potential solutions, he argues that the concept of genocide imagines a future system of global governance under which the nation-state itself is made subject to law. The United Nations, however, has deflected the possibility of such a cosmopolitical law. It selectively condemns genocide and has established an institutional structure that denies most peoples subjected to genocide of a realistic possibility of global justice, lacks a robust international criminal tribunal or UN army, and even encourages "security" cooperation among states that have proven to be destructive of peoples in the past.

Questions raised include:

Genocide, Ethnonationalism, and the United Nations examines a series of related crises in human civilization growing out of conflicts between powerful states or empires and indigenous or stateless peoples. This is the first book to attempt to explore the causes of genocide and other mass killing by a detailed exploration of UN archives covering the period spanning from 1945 through 2011. Hannibal Travis argues that large states and empires disproportionately committed or facilitated genocide and other mass killings between 1945 and 2011. His research incorporates data concerning factors linked to the scale of mass killing, and recent findings in human rights, political science, and legal theory. Turning to potential solutions, he argues that the concept of genocide imagines a future system of global governance under which the nation-state itself is made subject to law. The United Nations, however, has deflected the possibility of such a cosmopolitical law. It selectively condemns genocide and has established an institutional structure that denies most peoples subjected to genocide of a realistic possibility of global justice, lacks a robust international criminal tribunal or UN army, and even encourages "security" cooperation among states that have proven to be destructive of peoples in the past.

Questions raised include:

For a brief period, the attention of the international community has focused once again on the plight of religious minorities in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. In particular, the abductions and massacres of Yezidis and Assyrians in the Sinjar, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Baghdad, and Hasakah regions in 2007–2015 raised questions about the prevention of genocide. This book, while principally analyzing the Assyrian genocide of 1914–1925 and its implications for the culture and politics of the region, also raises broader questions concerning the future of religious diversity in the Middle East. It gathers and analyzes the findings of a broad spectrum of historical and scholarly works on Christian identities in the Middle East, genocide studies, international law, and the politics of the late Ottoman Empire, as well as the politics of the Ottomans'' British and Russian rivals for power in western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean basin.

A key question the book raises is whether the fate of the Assyrians maps onto any of the concepts used within international law and diplomatic history to study genocide and group violence. In this light, the Assyrian genocide stands out as being several times larger, in both absolute terms and relative to the size of the affected group, than the Srebrenica genocide, which is recognized by Turkey as well as by international tribunals and organizations. Including its Armenian and Greek victims, the Ottoman Christian Genocide rivals the Rwandan, Bengali, and Biafran genocides. The book also aims to explore the impact of the genocide period of 1914–1925 on the development or partial unraveling of Assyrian group cohesion, including aspirations to autonomy in the Assyrian areas of northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and southeastern Turkey. Scholars from around the world have collaborated to approach these research questions by reference to diplomatic and political archives, international legal materials, memoirs, and literary works.