Introductory note

• Author: Dieter Grimm
• Pages: 6-6

FRONTIERS OF LAW IN CHINA

VOL. 13 SEPTEMBER 2018 NO. 3

DOI 10.3868/s050-007-018-0023-4

SPECIAL ISSUE

PARADIGMS OF INTERNET REGULATION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION AND CHINA

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Dieter Grimm*

The initial euphoria about the internet as a space for free and equal communication of

everybody with everyone else has been superseded by a more sober view. Like all other

areas of human interaction, the internet allows power structures and the inequalities that

go along with them; it creates risks for other legal goods or legally protected interests and

it is not immune against violations of fundamental principles of the social order or of

human rights.

Consequently, the emphasis has shifted from internet freedom to internet regulation.

As is often the case when new phenomena emerge that require legal regulation, scholars

as well as practitioners try to apply traditional theories or doctrinal figures to new

problems. But usually it turns out soon that they are ill suited to furnish adequate

solutions. This is particularly so if the object of regulation does not fit within the

traditional legal framework. The internet is such a phenomenon. It transgresses the

traditional borderlines between private and public and between internal and external.

Although the internet operates irrespectively of territorial borders, the regulatory

power remains mainly in the hands of states and is thus integrated into national legal

cultures and legal systems. This is why comparative studies are of particular importance

in the field of internet regulation. Europe and China are two political and legal systems

that react differently to the new phenomenon internet. The United States stand for a third

alternative.

This volume by a number of younger scholars from China and Germany offers

important insights into the approach of their countries and the European Union in general,

examines them in their social and political contexts and ask for mutually promising

solutions. The most important insight is perhaps that freedom and regulation should not

be seen as contradicting each other, but as mutually dependent: freedom through

regulation.

* Dieter Grimm, Dr. jur., Faculty of Law, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany;

LL.M., Harvard Law School, Cambridge, USA; Former Justice, Federal Constitutional Court of Germany;

Professor of Public Law, Faculty of Law, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin D-10099, Germany. Contact:

grimm@wiko-berlin.de