Law, the Sharing Economy, and Platform Technology Businesses

In this innovative book, Juan Diaz-Granados and Benedict Sheehy offer a meticulous examination of the legal foundations, structures and challenges, as well as potential solutions for the legal and regulatory issues posed by the rise of platform-based businesses. With examples drawn from the Sharing Economy, such as Uber and Airbnb, Diaz-Granados and Sheehy demonstrate how law facilitates and constrains the operation of these companies as they deliver convenient goods and services. They offer fresh insights into how and why these platforms disrupt existing legal norms, economic markets and social practices.

The authors’ analysis provides an innovative law-based model, the Platform Operator-User-Provider model (“PUP”), which forms a foundation for their evaluation. Using this model, they are able to identify and differentiate a variety of PUPs not previously understood, but which differentiation makes their analysis and regulation significantly clearer. They explore potential legal categorizations of the PUP’s actors and their relationships and propose a novel regulatory approach consistent with the PUP’s triangular structure. This novel approach balances private interests with the public good by addressing power imbalances in the Sharing Economy. It supports platform operators’ private interests while implementing publicly oriented regulations that favor consumers and workers in ways that see all of law's obligations fulfilled while delivering both the economic boon and the social promise of technology.

An essential read for advanced law students, academics, legal professionals, policymakers and judges, this book offers critical insights and useful analytical frameworks to understand the Sharing Economy’s platform technology businesses from a legal perspective.