DiDIY and legal systems
Digital DIY creates new rights and responsibilities for its practitioners and technology producers, but also for its (maybe unaware!) end users, that is for everybody who uses, or is "exposed to" any product manufactured thanks to Digital DIY.
This situation, which will only become more common in the next years, deeply affects the applicability of current legislation (when it doesn't directly question its reason to exist...), and vice versa. The main legal challenges that Digital DIY creates, or by which it is impacted, often have Ethics impacts too. Such challenges include:
- product liability
- exemptions / fair use, for example for personal, non-commercial use, or when repairing one's own stuff, of digital designs or copies of existing products
- gun control, medical DIY...
- vehicle safety regulations
- liability when injuries occur when using designs, machines, spaces from others: DIY vs contracting a service, member-based spaces and tools...
- sharing or downloading of Digital DIY design files
The diffusion of Digital DIY in the Internet of Things (IoT) space also increases the cases in which privacy, anonimity and, in general, control of personal data, may be challenged.
The Digital DIY project studies scenarios like these, in order to find out if, when, how existing laws should be changed to cope with the new situations. To know more, read this more detailed page, or this description of our "Rights and Responsibilities" Work package.
For further reading we recommend in particular the reference manual Dominant legal challenges and solutions practised and the case studies on Legal practices of DiDIY hardware technologies.
