Human life is deeply affected and often reshaped by modern technology with ‘enormous potential of providing better conditions of life’ as well as ‘damaging and disastrous effects’. Human integrity, autonomy, freedom and dignity are in danger. Therefore, long-established moral values need to be reassessed, and technological progress being subject to law to face the threats and dangers posed by new technologies. The most jeopardised under those are the most basic and primary rights – human rights (p. 1). Although significant progress has been made in terms of regulatory technological advancement, some aspects constitute a rather unexplored area of research, and a new legal framework needs to be discussed (p. 2).

The reviewed book is structured in 15 chapters and divided into seven parts: general legal and philosophical aspects of the interaction between human rights and new technologies; freedom of expression in the online environment; intellectual property, competition rules and new technologies; biobanks, bioethics and human rights; reproductive technologies and human dignity; balancing privacy and security; and emerging issues.

The first part, on general and philosophical aspects, consists of two contributions. The first discusses the value and risks of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and concludes with considerations on constituting new human rights, such as the right to access the Internet as an ‘explicitly recognised fundamental right’ in international charters (pp. 11, 26). In the second contribution, the author eases the reader in the approach of ‘new community-based ethics’ as a consequence of nowadays crises. The participating citizen is the ‘subject of rights’ but even further the ‘subject of duties’, meaning to be not only a voting citizen but also a participating citizen (pp. 3, 27).

Part two, about freedom of expression, contains an article which tackles the issue of illegal or harmful content over the Internet. It is thus assessing the ‘pan-European level of development and implementation of blocking policies’ on the Internet (p. 47 et seqq.).

The first contribution of the third part, on intellectual property, competition rules and new technologies, discusses the context of intellectual property and human rights and how they are balanced, with regard to northern and southern perspectives.