\>Blog

[Technology]

AI, elections and democracy

Dr Dirk Brand on 11 March 2024

Elections will be held in more than 60 countries, including the European Union, in the world in 2024 representing about 50% of the world’s population.  These countries include India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine, United Kingdom and the United States of America.  It is therefore a crucial year for democracy around the world, although the quality of democratic governance differs significantly between all these countries.  Nevertheless, the outcome of these elections is not only important for the respective countries, but it will impact the global political landscape.

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[Technology]

Form 4-get-it (Developments in the law relating to direct marketing)

Dérick Swart, Mari Louw & Erin Botha on 8 March 2024

On the 27th of February 2024, the South African Information Regulator, established in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA"), issued its first enforcement notice in relation to unsolicited direct marketing.  The notice was announced in a media statement by the Regulator and sheds light on the Regulator's view of how POPIA is to be complied with in this context.

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[Technology]

Regulating data governance

Dr Dirk Brand on 7 December 2023

While the regulation of personal data protection has increased over the past few years and is now well established in most countries in the world, regulating the use and governance of other data is still a fairly new phenomenon. 

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[Intellectual property (Disputes & watching services)]

Winning the battle; but not the war: A lesson in strategic litigation

Chris Brand on 16 November 2023

A pyrrhic victory is much less a victory, and much more a consolation with dire repercussions. Perhaps hyperbole considering the results in the case of Lidl v Tesco [2023] EWHC 873 (Ch), but a lesson none the less must be taken from this judgment. 

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[Technology]

The legal implications of transparency related to artificial intelligence

Dr Dirk Brand on 21 September 2023

Transparency, when used as an important principle in constitutional law, is used as a tool to support accountability and good governance.  Citizens want to see and understand the decisions of public officials, so that they can hold the officials and government accountable. Transparency is also a key principle found in most policy documents on ethical and responsible AI.  While the notion of ‘making visible and understandable’ seems similar, transparency is a much more complex matter when dealing with AI.

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[Technology]

Regulating the AI value chain

Dr Dirk Brand on 4 September 2023

Regulating artificial intelligence is very different to regulating tangible products such as a motor vehicle or consumer goods.  This is simply due to the nature of the technology.  The various attempts to define AI are an indication of the complexity of regulating the technology.  The definition in the EU AI Act is such an example: “a machine-based system designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy and that can, for explicit or implicit objectives, generate outputs such as predictions, recommendations or decisions, which influence physical or virtual environments”.  

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[Technology]

Recent changes to the legal regulation of fibre network deployment

Mari Louw (approved by Dérick Swart) on 22 August 2023

Due to the growing desire for fast and reliable internet access in South Africa, the demand for fibre has boomed in the past decade.  The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa ("ICASA") reports that fibre-to-the-home and fibre-to-the-building subscriptions have grown 4 231% between the years 2015-2021, compared to an increase of 61% for fixed line broadband subscriptions over the same period.

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[Technology]

Managing risks from software projects that involve blueprinting

Dérick Swart on 10 August 2023

The recently reported judgement of the case between Markit Systems and Fulcrum Group in the Gauteng High Court ([2023] ZAGPJHC 429) is like a movie I have seen play out many times over my career as a technology lawyer.  

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[Technology]

The European Union’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act in a nutshell

Dr Dirk Brand on 2 August 2023

In the global race to regulate AI, the EU has made significant strides to lead the way when the European Parliament adopted the EU AI Act on 23 June 2023.  It is not yet the end of the road for this new law, since the text must still be discussed with the other key institutions, namely the European Commission and the European Council.  These informal discussions, labelled as trilogues, have started and are aimed to be completed by the end of 2023, whereafter a two-year implementation period is expected.

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[Technology]

Courts rule on further cases that deal with electronic payments gone astray

Mari Louw (approved by Dérick Swart) on 31 July 2023

Business email compromise ("BEC") is a type of scam in terms of which a party's email is compromised and used to send fraudulent messages with the aim to have recipients act on false information, typically leading to the payment of funds into the bank account of the fraudster.

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