On legal bubbles: some thoughts on legal shockwaves at the core of the digital economy
提出‘法律泡沫’理论，解释经济主体在个人数据驱动产业中基于法院支持假设投资，但法院后期调整规则保护更高权利，导致法律冲击波和经济后果。
Abstract For two decades, economic agents have been investing in the personal data-driven industry on the assumption that courts, the keepers of the legal systems, would have backed their claims, turning their technological control of personal data into legally protected property rights. Courts' backing has proved only temporary as they are now revising early solutions by constraining collection, use, and trade of personal data to protect the hierarchically superior rights. The theory of ‘legal bubbles’ rationalizes the economics underlying the legal shockwaves affecting the personal data-driven economy. ‘Legal bubbles’ tend to arise when economic agents invest in the economic exploitation of a new resource in a context of uncertainty and ignorance about the legal implications of innovative activities. These legal foundations may eventually turn out to be unstable as a result of courts' ex-post attempt to re-adapt them to the previously ignored implications of unconstrained commodification, with disruptive economic consequences.