Il minore come persona digitale. Regole, tutele e privacy dei minori sul Web

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to discuss and investigate the following theses: 1. the code, that is to say the software and the hardware cyberspace is made of, imposes a normative set-up both on Web collective and individual conduct. By that, law’s regulative task on Web can’t be denied; for instance, think about sanctions imposed by laws about copyright, contracts, slander and obscenity. Yet Internet represents a universe made of flows and frictions, unwilling to whatever top-down governance alien to its users. Code is performative: “what it says, it does”; 2. cyberspace is an ambivalent place, where many activities are laid on top of real world’s ones and many others are peculiar to it, showing its own plasticity. Technological innovation’s growth rate is still increasing, together with new insidious forms of invasion of people’s private life. It is still strong the temptation to waive one’s own rights only to enjoy the technological paradise we are offered. A new entity – digital person – makes its appearance on digital ecosystem, as technological outcome of classical person concept’s reconfiguration; 3. the development of 2.0 applications allows to put into connection people and their digital identities: individuals get involved in a digital swarm, forming links free from any territorial and simultaneous physical presence’s chains. Our privacy (in particular, that of the minors, born in the digital era) is progressively eaten away by our rising indulgency, apathy, unconcern and explicit support to measures, shown us as necessary and harmless. If it is yet untimely to say that privacy is almost death, new generations, whether they like it or not, are playing a leading role in a cultural praxis and in a primary socialization which is far from the concept of privacy; 4. the fourth thesis, summing up this note, investigates if it is yet possible or not to give space to new effective forms of governance, appointed to defend the digital person: its rights to dignity, habeas data and personal data privacy.