Conversely, a researcher might define a law as affecting digital rights even if its scope was not limited to the internet and digitally networked spaces. For instance, an intellectual property law may deal with works produced in both analogue and digital media, but its sections or provisions dealing specifically with the internet or digitisation would qualify it as a law affecting digital rights. With that in mind, we could use Gill et al.’s 42 rights38 as a kind of checklist when analysing laws of any kind for their effects on digital rights. Finally, because law is constituted not just by static text but by interpretation, Greenleaf emphasises the importance of international law and soft law. In the case of data privacy laws, he specifically refers to the OECD Privacy Guidelines of 1981 and the Council of Europe Data Protection Convention 108 of 1981. From this approach, we can assess whether a law affects digital rights, or a specific digital right, based on the growing body of analysis of digital rights within international covenants and related human rights frameworks, such as the ICCPR and ICESCR, special rapporteur reports, and their derivatives, including the digital rights charters, data privacy and access to information frameworks mentioned above, as well as other frameworks such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, etc. We would add to that interpretation of law by courts and tribunals in case law and other types of precedent that would afford insight not only into how laws were being applied but also into how laws with no overt relationship to digitally networked spaces might be adapted or abused. We believed this triangulated approach would help researchers recognise a digital rights law when they saw it. Still, we knew that researchers could not and would not read every law on the books to decide whether or not they affected digital rights. With this in mind, we aimed to ease the search further by offering several entry points for their inquiries. Working from types of law developed for the existing laws in the dataset and category structures devised by Gill et al.39 and ARTICLE 19,40 we 38 Gill, L., Redeker, D., & Gasser, U. (2015). Op. cit. 39 Gill, Redeker and Gasser organised the 42 rights extracted from the 30 charters into seven categories: Basic or Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, General Limits on State Power, Internet Governance and Civic Participation, Privacy Rights and Surveillance, Access and Education, Openness and Stability of Networks, and Economic Rights and Responsibilities. 40 ARTICLE 19 used six categories of inquiry when analysing how the laws in the Internet Legislation Atlas (affected digital rights in seven Middle Eastern countries: constitutional protection, regulation of online content, regulation of media workers, regulation of internet intermediaries, surveillance and data protection, and access to the internet and net neutrality. See: https://internetlegislationatlas.org/#/about/ executive-summary#breakdown developed five categories41 into which we believed the majority of laws would fall: 1) legal foundations, 2) fundamental rights and freedoms, 3) governance of online and networked spaces, 4) sectoral laws, and 5) other laws. In the legal foundations category, we intended to collect laws that (1) form part of the foundation of the legal system and address universal rights, responsibilities, due process or, following Gill et al., other “general limits on state power,”42 and (2) contain provisions that refer or apply to how an individual can exercise their rights and freedoms in digitally networked spaces. Examples of laws that would fit in this category include constitutions, basic laws, penal codes and codes of procedure. We described laws pertaining to fundamental rights and freedoms as those laws and regulations that (1) establish norms for, enable or restrict the exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms – including the right to freedom of expression, privacy, freedom of religion and freedom of association – and (2) contain provisions that refer or apply to how an individual can exercise these rights and freedoms in digitally networked spaces. Examples are press laws or laws protecting or limiting the right to privacy, freedom of expression or to access information. The drive to establish new norms in the digitally networked sphere and to mitigate the negative potential of digital technologies – realised as computer fraud and identity theft, the circulation of child pornography, online harassment, so-called “revenge porn” and doxxing, for instance – has been the genesis of many newer laws and regulations explicitly for governing online, networked spaces, a category developed to collect laws such as data privacy and protection laws, anti-cybercrime laws, and net neutrality regulations. Here, we might also find laws or judicial decisions that acknowledge the new so-called right to be forgotten, a concept that did not exist before the internet. Digital technologies have had a pervasive effect on some industries and sectors, and the laws and regulations in these sectors are sometimes some of the first that deal with the new modalities of the online realm directly and in depth. To acknowledge this, we created a category for sectoral laws. Specifically, we sought laws and regulations that (1) update or establish norms that implicate digital rights in a specific sector, such as banking or health care, or for a specific group of people, such as government employees, and (2) contain provisions that 41 ADRD Research Guidance Document (see the Appendix to this chapter). 42 Gill, L., Redeker, D., & Gasser, U. (2015). Op. cit. Methodology / 13