Filip Lubinski

“In this digital age, big technology corporations hold positions of power. This statement, however clear it seems, can also immediately be problematized from many different angles. This special issue aims to both dissect what that statement means in different legal domains, and how to, if deemed necessary, counter the power of big technology corporations.

The context of this conference […] is provided by the ERC project on Modern Bigness, which proposes a specific conceptualization of this new kind of power, which finds its source in a complex interplay of economic success and financial resources with the novel phenomenon of data power, platformisation and network ecosystem effects. ‘Modern Bigness’ power manifests not just in the economic domain (the traditional focus of competition law), but also in the political, the social and the personal domain. Moreover, this power can show itself instrumentally, structurally and discursively. ‘Modern Bigness’-power is thus a complex, composite power that transcends traditional conceptions underlying the current regulatory framework(s). The Modern Bigness project focuses on competition law and other (market-)regulatory instruments as ways to counter the negative effects of this new kind of power.”