Week 27/2026

It's somewhere here

Summer sky above Vienna at 9pm

NSFW

Welcome in the second half of 2026! Summer is in full swing, the summer term is coming to an end, students are leaving and UNIVIE was so kind to host a nice summer party with some 80ies music on Campus.

The heat is scaring, in particular when taking into perspective that it's rather likely that it's - again - one of the coolest summers we will see in our lives. This week's song fits perfectly to all this and it is also one of the many beautiful songs Nick Cave sang at Burg Clam on Sunday (see below for a concert report).

Here is a live-version (bad sound, probably a bootleg) with lots of red light:

and one with lots of children on stage - in purple - the color of lent in Christian tradition.

Retrospect

Talking about AI

I can't stop talking about AI and law at the moment, and some of my talkis published, e.g. an interview in the recent edition of Österreichische Ätztezeitung (Paywall)

and one in GÖD-Aktuell (for members only).

I will also appear in Sarah Samer's podcast Lawpreneur as we had a nice chat on AI and legal education earlier this week

The TV interview with Dr. Katja Mayer in "Wiener Wissen" will appear on Sunday via Krone.at,

as well as my audio only podcast interview there.

Brno

We had a nice meeting with our colleagues from the Institute of Law and Technology at Masaryk University and from Research Institute in Brno.

Hannah, Klaudia, Žiga from the department, our guest researcher Mahar Omah, Dr. Miriam Tercero and old friend Dr. Christof Tschohl from Research Institute were among the speakers under the guidance from Prof. Dr. Dr. Matěj Myška, Ph.D. and his team.

We covered, in particular, issues of medical data protection and IP on AI generated content. We also learned about the law school's history, including the school's main building to be used by GESTAPO during the occupation.

APA Science

I ranted about art. 50 AI-act adressing "deep fakes" at APA on Wednesday and learned from Timo Steyer (RTR) and Verena Krawarik and Sophia Marecek (APA) that metadata is becoming even more important in professional photo journalism. RTR is hosting a webinar on art. 50 next week, on July 2nd, as well.

I was, once again, quite annoyed about the difficulties to find basic legal information on recent European Legal Acts from official legal sources. For example, the best reference I know so far for the Digital AI Omnibus synopsis is the private website of a law firm. The random postponement of parts of art. 50 (art. 50 sec. 2 delayed until December 2026) while others will have to be applied as originally foreseen on August 2nd this year is also just - exhausting, in particular in the summer heat with everybody rushing to get things done "just in time".

Access to Innovation and Cross Border Health Care for Childen and Adolescents

O.k.ids, under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Ruth Ladenstein organised a very interesting conference in Schloss Schönbrunn I was a tiny part of.

I learned a lot about cancer in children in Austria and statistical analysis of the cases, in particular in the presentation of Dr. Monika Hackl from the cancer registry at Statistics Austria

and on the planned European Biotech Act that - again - suggests to change, inter alia, art. 9 GDPR.

Prospect

Re:publica Vienna

Re:publica has been a relevant (and huge) net politics conference in Berlin for meny years. Speaking there is an achievement on its own. This year, the format is expanding and will take place in Vienna as well. I am honored to be one of the keynote speakers at the first Viennese edition. Moment Magazin has more on this via LinkedIn. Call for participation is open until June 30.

#arsboni and LLP

Wheras this week was relatively calm, next week will be superbusy with 5 scheduled episodes (I think that's a new record ...).

On Friday, June 30, at 19.00 CET the Legal Literacy Project will do episode 32 on drugs and law.

Tuesday, June 30th, will bring two episodes. At 9.00 am Martin Tomus and the Viennese moot court team will speak about their experiences at the Monroe E. Price Media Law Moot Court. This year's team qualified - as the first Viennese team ever - for the International Rounds in Oxford and was awarded Best Memorials in Europe so that nobody in the whole competition had handed in better written arguments.

On the same day, at 15.00 CET, we will welcome Rumman Chowdhury. She gives/gave a keynote on The future of intelligence at the DIGHUM 26 conference on June 25th. The episode will be cohosted by Dr. Katja Mayer. Katja is a scholar in Science and Technology Studies (STS), works at the University of Vienna in Austria and at the Center for Social Innovation and serves a programme chair for dighum 2026.

Wednesday, July 1st, at 19.00 will be fun, as there will be another episode of the LLP-podcast I will technically support, but, this time, I will also be the guest. I will be interviewed on data protection (and haven't received the thumbnail yet).

Last not least, Thursday, July 2nd will bring an interview with Quint Haidar Aly at 15.00 CET. Quint has critisised the (never ending) non-debate on the (non-)reform of German Law studies in a recent article quite frankly.

Look and Feel

Nick Cave

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds played an outstanding concert in Clam - a place where I had never been before.

I appreciated this a lot, the atmosphere, the sound engineering, the focus he had, and also the irony he showed. I was quite impressed by his ability to deliver new and very different interpretations of his own old(er) songs such as the Weeping song that sounded very, very different from all versions I know.

Here's an older version

and here one of the newer ones

The best version I heard online and that was closest to Clam is on Arte (and can't be embedded here) - but it's still without the haunting sound of a bell he used in Clam.

FM4 has a long review of the Clam-concert and people like Christian Kern or Judith Pühringer reported on Facebook about their experience.

If you missed it: He will perform in other European cities (Berlin, Waldbühne! Montreux! Pula!) in summer and Arte has a full concert (beautiful video and sound here!) with him on YouTube.

Hate Speech, Klenk and Bohrn Mena

Although I find it almost physically unbearable to read all the tons of too much personal/private information about this conflict on Social Media, including all kinds of personal allegations, it's also a very, very interesting example how difficult media and platform regulation is. Die Dunkelkammer has very long interviews with both parties. I recommend to listen, in particular, to Klenk's version of the story showing lots of legal arguments that might show why liability privileges were once invented (although this is probably not what he wants to say).