Law, Technology, and Society: Editorial Introduction

-IJLT Editorial Board

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Over the past decade, legal scholarship in the area of technology has fixated considerably on technological disruptions – be it the rise of social media, deepfakes, generative AI, Big Tech, or online surveillance. Emerging technologies not only create blind spots in existing laws but also have an in-built socio-political impact, which can change the values guiding a society's laws. For instance, the copyrightability of works created by Generative AI – something in vogue in the legal world – is not a mere doctrinal issue because AI dislodges the assumptions and values underlying copyright law.

As put by Professor Kieran Tranter, much of the literature on law and technology follows a fixed ‘template’ – it identifies emerging technology as either harmful or beneficial, followed by pointing out the regulatory lag created by its introduction. This is followed by suggestions for legal reform to either restrain or facilitate the spread of such technology. According to Professor Thayyil, this approach perceives technology as a neutral instrument, ignoring the socio-political biases ingrained in it. By imbibing learnings from the law and society scholarship, he advocates for an approach where technology is studied as a “site to understand law and its normativities better – its governmental rationalities, violences, and (in)justices.” This requires a deeper reflection on the assumptions underlying laws on technology, and recognising law itself as a technology that represents non-neutral actors such as the State.

In this context, the Indian Journal of Law and Technology is hosting this two-part blog series on “Law, Technology, and Society” to consider the imbrications between technology and law not merely as a question of regulation but as opening a set of broader debates inflected by social, economic, and political questions.

The first article, "Law and Technology: Governance and Good Governance," by Professor Roger Brownsword, offers a broader theoretical framework for understanding the governance of technology. Moving beyond the regulation of emerging technologies, Brownsword proposes that law and technology should be seen as co-evolving governance projects. He critiques the insularity of legal scholarship and calls for a cross-disciplinary approach to addressing the foundational conditions for good governance in the age of technological disruption​.

In the second essay, "AI-Generated Art: A Challenge to Creative Integrity?," Subhajit Basu and Ankeeta Dutt critically explore the ethical dilemmas posed by artificial intelligence in the realm of copyright law. As AI increasingly takes on roles traditionally filled by human creators, the authors question how AI-generated content disrupts fundamental concepts of authorship, originality, and artistic integrity. A central concern raised is the use of copyrighted works as training data for AI models, often without the consent of the original creators, which not only violates copyright but also undermines the moral rights of artists. Basu and Dutt argue that the current legal frameworks, particularly India’s Copyright Act of 1957, are ill-equipped to address the growing ethical and legal ambiguities brought about by AI-generated works. They call for immediate reforms that not only protect the intellectual property rights of creators but also set ethical boundaries to prevent AI from exploiting the labour and creativity of human artists.

Together, these essays invite readers to rethink the role of law in managing technological change. Beyond the question of how law can catch up with technology, this series encourages a deeper inquiry into how the structures of law are themselves transformed by the technologies they regulate and how society must adapt to this ever-evolving dynamic.