Digital Platform Regulation (BLAW20002)

Undergraduate level 2Points: 12.5On Campus (Parkville)

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Overview

Availability
Summer Term
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This subject offers an overview on how law interacts with online digital platforms. It introduces students to different types of digital platforms and their business practices, as well as a selection of fundamental regulatory domains in the information economy.

In recent years online digital platforms have become a site of critical study. Early Utopian visions of the internet included open speech environments, anonymous interactions, and non-hierarchical networks. Today’s cyberspace, however, is deeply hierarchical, embedded in a surveillance and data-processing based economy, with work, social life, and commerce all channeled through increasingly powerful digital platforms. Online digital platforms now dominate activities like search, shopping, and social media, as well as coordinate offline activities like ride-sourcing and labour-hire. Some have suggested the massive power of digital platforms emerged under conditions of 'lawlessness'. Close analysis makes clear however, that law – its existence, interpretation, and enforcement – are all critical to how the digital economy is structured and how platforms monetize their position.

This subject explores different types of online digital platforms, the ways they monetize data, and how they exert power in the digital economy. Examples include controlling the visibility of websites, products, content, and people with ranking algorithms; renting access to repositories of intellectual property; facilitating double-sided marketplaces; and selling advertising. Understanding the platform economy means coming to grips with the development of large AI models, industrial scale data mining and refining, the monetization of user attention, and the ways platforms coordinate actors in multi-sided markets.

Through a selection of case studies highlighting ongoing regulatory controversies in different legal domains, this subject demonstrates how law both contributes to and limits the power and practices of platforms. Examples include how data protection and privacy laws shape consumer profiling and behavioural advertising; how accountability and transparency requirements regulate the visibility of ranking systems and other forms of algorithmic decision-making; how competition law manages monopolies and anti-competitive behaviour; and how labour law enables platforms to limit their obligations to workers.

Intended learning outcomes

On completion of this subject students should:



  • Have an understanding of the different ways that online digital platforms operate in the information economy
  • Appreciate how different legal ideas interact with of digital platforms, and how the interpretation and enforcement of law influences platforms' business practices
  • Understand how regulation has developed over the years to assist platforms to monetize their dominant positions

Generic skills

  • Capacity for self-directed learning, specifically the ability to plan work and use time effectively;
  • Cognitive and analytical skills;
  • Ability to speak about complex ideas in a clear and cogent manner;
  • Awareness of diversity and plurality;
  • Ability to write essays which develop structured argumentation;
  • Capacity to judge the worth of their own arguments.

Last updated: 9 April 2025

Eligibility and requirements

Prerequisites

None

Corequisites

None

Non-allowed subjects

None

Recommended background knowledge

It is strongly recommended that students have completed at least 100 points of undergraduate study before enrolling in this subject. Students are responsible for checking any course progression rules with their home faculty.

Inherent requirements (core participation requirements)

The University of Melbourne is committed to providing students with reasonable adjustments to assessment and participation under the Disability Standards for Education (2005), and the Assessment and Results Policy (MPF1326). Students are expected to meet the core participation requirements for their course. These can be viewed under Entry and Participation Requirements for the course outlines in the Handbook.

Further details on how to seek academic adjustments can be found on the Student Equity and Disability Support website: http://services.unimelb.edu.au/student-equity/home

Last updated: 9 April 2025

Assessment

DescriptionTimingPercentage

Two short writing exercises of 500 words each

  • 1000 words
During the teaching period25%

Reflective essay

  • 3000 words
2 Weeks after the end of teaching75%

Additional details

More information on the above assessment will be available to students via the LMS Canvas space for this subject.

Last updated: 9 April 2025

Dates & times

  • Summer Term
    Principal coordinatorJake Goldenfein
    Mode of deliveryOn Campus (Parkville)
    Contact hours30
    Total time commitment136 hours
    Pre teaching start date 9 January 2025
    Pre teaching requirementsStudents are expected to access and review the subject materials that will be available from the LMS subject page.
    Teaching period23 January 2025 to 7 February 2025
    Last self-enrol date10 January 2025
    Census date24 January 2025
    Last date to withdraw without fail21 February 2025
    Assessment period ends14 March 2025

    Summer Term contact information

    Teaching staff: 

    Jake Goldenfein (Subject Coordinator) 

    For undergraduate student enquiries, contact us

Time commitment details

136 hours

What do these dates mean

Visit this webpage to find out about these key dates, including how they impact on:

  • Your tuition fees, academic transcript and statements.
  • And for Commonwealth Supported students, your:
       -  Student Learning Entitlement. This applies to all students enrolled in a Commonwealth Supported Place (CSP).
     

    Subjects withdrawn after the census date (including up to the ‘last day to withdraw without fail’) count toward the Student Learning Entitlement.

Last updated: 9 April 2025

Further information

Last updated: 9 April 2025