Currently, general digitalization has not spared the sphere of arbitration. What are the advantages and disadvantages of introducing digital technologies, how has COVID-19 influenced the work of leading arbitration institutions, does digitalization imply the delocalization of ICA, and does a “digital arbitrator” have a future? Alexey A. Kostin and Alexander V. Grebelsky answered these and other questions from Maxim I. Inozemtsev, Editor-in-Chief of the Digital Law Journal.

The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply influenced people’s way of life. The need to comply with various social restrictions has posed new and previously unknown challenges to humanity. Internet here plays a significant role in helping to maintain people’s life as usual. As online behavior increases, many disputes arise therefrom grow simultaneously. It is proposed that international online disputes would be solved effectively if Internet technologies were referred to and adopted. Therefore, online litigation, a judicial method specially established to solve online disputes, provides an ideal alternative to the traditional litigation process in this regard. Such litigation can be operated through Internet courts (or cyber courts). Today the palm in their establishment belongs to China that has successfully introduce the world’s first three, and only, Internet courts. Thus, the Chinese experience has been chosen as the primary empirical support of the study on Internet courts. In this essay, a detailed review of the online litigation process will be analyzed using the example of the adopted rules and regulations for resolving disputes, as well as the judgements handed down by the Hangzhou Internet Court, the world’s first cyber court successfully resolving multiple online disputes over four years. The essay firstly reviews the current rules and procedures of Hangzhou Internet court; this would serve for a better understanding of how the world’s first Internet court is operated. After that, the essay discusses in what circumstances foreign courts can recognize and enforce Internet courts’ judgments. The essay ends up with giving personal recommendations on the future development of Internet courts to solve online consumer contract disputes.

Technical methods of intellectual property protection are reviewed and combined in the essay in the discourse of historical development — from man-made signatures of Renaissance artists to non-fungible tokens (NFT). The proliferation of NFTs is analyzed from the point of view of the commercial law: NFTs are discussed as objects that simultaneously have the characteristics of independence and a derivative nature in relation to intellectual property being the underlying digital asset. The self-sufficiency of NFTs as legal objects is provided by their commodity properties, which arise not only from the value of the underlying asset, but from the phenomenon of crystallization of the unique fixed version of the asset in a non-interchangeable and irreproducible token. The derivative nature of NFTs, figuratively correlated with the derivative contracts in financial markets, is manifested in the symbolization of intellectual property as an underlying asset and the loss (in full or in part) of its usual significance for a potential acquirer when placed in an NFT-image. Despite the variety and a specific evolution of legal approaches to the understanding of intellectual property, we can state a long-standing conceptual rejection by legal scholars from the simplest proprietary theories of transferring real rights constructions to intellectual property. However, some absolute property features of the NFTs, ensuring both internal and external legal aspects of the property, raise the question of a new legal life of “proprietarism” in the conditions of digitalization and information capitalism.

The expression of opinions on the Internet has a number of features in comparison with traditional means of information dissemination. Firstly, imposition of classical measures of legal liability can be difficult due to the peculiarities of cyber space: anonymity and erasure of jurisdictional boundaries. In this regard, a new mechanism of restrictions has appeared, which consists in the withdrawal of information that violates the law or the rights of other citizens from the Internet at the direction of state bodies. The trends in this area are the predominance of the administrative procedure for making decisions on the withdrawal of information from public access, and the use of vague and evaluative terms as grounds for restrictions. Secondly, in most cases, in the process of realizing freedom of speech, intermediaries are involved — companies that provide a public forum for millions of users. The activities of these companies are also associated with new mechanisms for restricting freedom of speech: from blocking content to deleting users’ accounts. Such companies have a dual responsibility: to monitor the placement of content in order to prevent abuse of freedom of speech and to prevent violations of freedom of expression with their own corporate rules. The purpose of this article is to identify, through the method of analytical jurisprudence, the problems that arise when restricting freedom of speech, implemented in the digital environment, and to establish the reasons for their occurrence. To do this, the author has carried out a review of Russian legislation and the practice of its application, as well as the practice of restrictions, applied by corporations, and an analysis of foreign literature.