NSFW

The week's song (Lind Holmen, past 11) is published as a YouTube vertical/short

and is terribly underrated there (less than 1000 views so far). It comes with a simple yet pretty melody and visual effects that look like from the 80ies.

As I learned from Lind Holmen's website, Holmen" stands for "the little island" in Scandinavia. She's going to perform in Zurich on 26/08.

The song is on Spotify as well, where I found it (or, more precisely, Spotify, where the song has more than 200.000 streams, found it for me).

She (rightly) celebrates this success on her Insta. The song's acoustic design reminds me - a little a least - of Laurie Anderson's masterpiece "Strange Angels" that accompanied me so well for so many years of my youth.

Retrospect

Sommerhochschule (Summer School) Strobl

I am currently living and teaching at the world's best summer school program in Strobl/Wolfgangsee. Also this year, it's a huge privilege to live here with 100+ students from all over the world. My job consists of two main parts. On the ne hand I may teach a course on "Law and Information Society in Europe". This is a two weeks course, bringing me into class for two hours a day, in front of a very international and inspiring audience of very talented students. on the other hand, I am involved in the "summer discourse" which is a three days intense program on the most pending problems of our time.

The moment I am writing this, I am rendering videos from this year's summer discourse as I am, again, recording the presentations (not the workshops, discussions and background talks - you need to come here to hear them).

It's an outstandingly inspiring setting, uniting academics, senior leadership from industry and public administration, all of them living together on campus and discussing (almost) around the clock. This year climate, energy, AI are part of almost every discussion.

We started Wednesday afternoon and will finish Friday night. The first agenda point was a highlight already. Dr. Anke Zimmer-Helfrich from leading German publisher Beck discussed about the impact of AI on legal publishing.

This happened under Chatham House rule so that I can't tell you what was said there. But I can say that it was very relevant, interesting, and, above all, complex.

I managed to publish three of the recorded keynotes so far. Ex-minister Prof. Dr. Martin Kocher, now governor of Austria's national bank, spoke about uncertainty,

Prof. DDr. Oliver Rathkolb discussed Economy of Fear

and Prof. Dr. Sylvia Kritzinger discussed resilience and democracy.

Claude (Opus 4.8) generated the thumbnails, using a background picture that comes from a human (me).

I will publish many more speeches in the next days to come, all of them highly relevant and interesting. What I can't share are all the many wonderful conversations during the seminars and coffee breaks and evening walks and the wonderful cultural events. We had a breathtaking chamber concert

with members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the leadership of Daniel Froschauer with soloist Lydia Rathkolb in Strobl's church .

Fundamental Rights

The Vienna Legal Literacy Project did an episode that I technically supported (from Strobe) with Prof. Dr. Konrad Lachmayer on fundamental rights.

Lachmayer spoke, inter alia, about his highly instructive website grundrechte.at.

Prospect

MRI (Media Law Information)

Our department (namely Anna and Katja) organises the Media | Law | Information conference for the second time this autumn, and we'd be glad to have you join us.

#MRI2026 will take place on Monday, 5 October 2026, from 1.30 p.m. in the top floor of the Juridicum at the University of Vienna (Schottenbastei 10–16, 1010 Vienna).

The conference brings together practitioners, researchers, and students working in media and information law. We're honored that DDr.in Krisztina Rozgonyi (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology), who works on platform governance and AI regulation and serves on the European Commission's AI Act Advisory Forum, will give the keynote "Between Challenge and Support: Legal Measures to Safeguard Media Diversity and Quality".

The keynote will be followed by a panel bringing together Harald Fidler (media journalist, Der Standard), Mag.a Evelyn Hemmer (media-policy adviser in the cabinet of Media Minister Andreas Babler) and Prof. Dr. Gábor Polyák (professor of media law and policy, Eötvös Loránd University). After the panel, a set of workshops will explore current questions at the intersection of media, law, and technology - details on the individual sessions will follow closer to the date.
Free entry, registration requested.

Look and Feel

One of the nice activities one can do here is to run around the Bürgelstein at the lake which I do every morning, listening to podcasts.

I want to recommend two today, both of them have somehow to do with AI.

Die Dunkelkammer has a follow up story on the data center in Kronstorf, explaining once again how difficult policy decisions can be

I also stumbled across a new podcast - Amann Unframed which is a weekly interview podcast hosted by Melanie Amann. She's a trained lawyer with a legal PHD. I appreciated a lot her conversation with Mario Voigt, prime minister in Thüringen.

Voigt was intensely criticised for his use of LLMs in speeches he delivered but that were written (in parts?) by AI, including a speech on the Holocaust. It is very interesting to hear how it is to explain what precisely one should or should not expect from a leading politician today and how LLMs can be properly used - there are lots of parallels with the conversation with Zimmer-Helfrich on appropriate use in the legal domain in this.

Have a wonderful week and take care of yoursel!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)