The necessary balance between regulation and innovation

The Internet started out as a story of freedom. It seemed to be the end of frontiers, the beginning of a world where everyone could have their say. Today, what remains of that season is a somewhat naive memory. Digital space is in the hands of a few private individuals who decide who speaks, who disappears, who is rewarded by algorithms. It is a new power, which is not imposed by force but by the logic of data, and which penetrates everyday life with the naturalness of a habit. Constitutionalism, which was born to curb the State, is thus faced with an unexpected task: to put limits on powers that have no boundaries and no longer respond to a public idea.

This is where Digital Constitutionalism. Thinking democracy in the time of the Ai comes from. The idea is simple, but perhaps not trivial: fundamental rights cannot remain locked in constitutional texts, they must also apply where opinions are formed and power is exercised today, i.e. online. The book speaks of a 'digital constitutionalism', a way of bringing the principles that guided the birth of modern democracies - freedom, dignity, responsibility - back into the world of algorithms.

The comparison crosses the two sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, an almost religious faith in the marketplace of ideas and the First Amendment dominates. Europe, on the other hand, carries with it the memory of its historical wounds and a culture of freedom that does not part with limits. It is from this terrain that instruments such as the GDPR, the Digital Services Act and, today, the Ai Act are born. On paper, they are born not to curb innovation, but to give it a human context. To regulate does not mean to stop: it means to make it sustainable. In practice, the risk is instead that, far from having found a balance between regulation and innovation, the concrete effect of European regulation is to translate into an unsustainable heaviness of the norm that can crush European innovation.

The book constructs a kind of map of digital power. Four cardinal points: space, that is, sovereignty in cyberspace; values, different between the two traditions; subjects, the large platforms that behave as authorities; and finally remedies, the responses of law. In this perspective, constitutionalism changes geometry: no longer just vertical, between state and citizens, but also horizontal, between private individuals who influence collective freedom. It is a cultural shift before being a legal one.

But the question is how to regulate without extinguishing the creative drive. And above all, how to prevent Europe from being left out of the game. Because if it continues to write perfect rules but does not invest, does not take risks, it ends up resembling a referee who whistles and no one listens. Rules are needed, of course, but also the capacity for action, innovation, and a concrete presence in the major technological choices. Rules alone are not enough if those who write them are not in the game.