Week 42/2026
Wer denkt schon an morgen
NSFW
This week's song comes from Annett Louisan. I like it because of its irony and the "naive" voice that fits so well to the topic and the irony. The video is funny too, with several blurred faces in it.
She will perform in Vienna on November 22nd and in Linz and Graz the days after.
Retrospect
re:publica
re:publica was an outstandingly nice conference with lots of interesting speakers from civil society, academia, politics. I summarized my impressions in a Youtube-short.
There's more on the conference on LinkedIn and Instagram, with posts from Leonhard Dobusch,Elisabeth Wagner, Mirjam Tercero, Meropi Tzanetakis and many others. The opening (and many keynotes) are on Okto.TV (including one with Dr. Till Kreutzer that I couldn't watch as it was in parallel with my own presentation), .
AI Advisory Board
The AI advisory board held a meeting on Monday. It was my first opportunity to visit the AI factory in Medienquarter St. Marx.
Dr. Jeannette Gorzala (here) and Dr. Henriette Spyra (here) posted about this.
Medien Recht Information
The conference, organised by Anna and Katja from the department, was very well received by the audience and a great success.
LLP Podcast
The Vienna Legal Literacy Project did an episode on judicial enforcement.
JusHAK
JusHAK is a form of secondary education aiming to educate students in law and busines related matters prior to University education.
It was my pleasure to speak at one of the teachers' seminars on agentic AI.
The venue was the ceremonial hall of JusHAK Schönborngasse in the 8th district - a very pretty example of Jugendstil architecture that I hadn't known before.
The school has more on the event on Facebook.
Technical Standards
Austrian Standards hosted an event on European standardisation strategies I was part of on Thursday. I learned that Europe has Seconded European Standardization Experts in India and China who both gave a rather serene picture about Europe's role in international standardisation processes.
In preparing my contribution I had a closer look into the Commission Proposal for a Regulation on European standardisation that had been presented eralier this week on October 6th. It was very interesting then to hear the presentation from Guillaume Roty, head of Unit at the Commission, on the draft. The proposal was received rather sceptically by audience and panels, some criticism is already online.
Interestingly, technical standards - according to the Commission's Q&A - will have to be freely available - so without copyright protection - but it's still remarkably unclear who will pay the bill in the future.
Here's the leading CJEU-decision on the matter (Case C‑588/21 P; "Malamud").
The audience was invited to participate in a brainstorming on what European standardisation would need in the future and provided the word cloud visible in the background of this picture:
Prospect
There's a quite busy week ahead of us:
Forum: Child Safety in Digital Environments
On Tuesday, 13th October 2026, 13:00 – 19:00, I have the privilege to co-host a large and important conference at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Festive Hall & Aula, Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2, 1010 Vienna.
Here's the program (that includes the minister in charge and distinguished experts from academia and practice, including senior staff from all relevant Austrian authorities).
Free entry, registration required, no stream.
Manz yearly Data Protection Conference
On Monday, October 12th, I am one of the speakers of this year's data protection conference.
Here's the program:
Registration still possible, paid event, no stream.
Adjudicating False Information: A Global Case Law Analysis
Ibrahim Sabra, Kseniia Guliaeva, Olga Startseva, and Anna Tauber from the department wrote a study together that I had the privilege to edit.
The paper is freely available and is put in further context on a website of Columbia University. It will be presented and discussed in a webinar organised by Columbia University on Thursday, October 15th, at 15.00 CET.
Apart from the authors, two discussants will be present:
- Leopoldo Maldonado Gutiérrez
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression - Anya Schiffrin
Director of Technology, Media, and Communications, Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs
Free registration is possible.
RUST
The RuSt (REcht und STeuern) - a very big conference dealing with business law related matters, celebrating its 30th birthday this year - is no longer in Rust, but in Loipersdorf this year. The program is very rich and dense.
I will speak there, with Dr. Niklas Schmidt, on Friday, 16th of October, in the morning.
The day before, on Thursday, my former student Dr. Axel Anderl and my colleague at the department Prof. Dr. Christiane Wendehorst will speak there as well.
Registration still possible, paid event, no stream.
#arsboni
There are two sessions ahead of us, one remote, on on site in the laundry. On Monday, at 16.00, I will speak online with Prof. Dr. Julian Krüper about his expert opinion for Deutscher Juristentag on whether and how law studies (in Germany) need to be reformed.
I will also welcome Sebastian Kneidinger, Policy Advisor at epicenter works and will interview him in the laundry on their very critical assessment of the recent draft law on administrative procedure ("Allgemeines Verwaltungsverfahrensgesetz") that aims to allow AI deciding independently under some circumstances. The draft is not in force yet, but has already been passed by the National Council and the Federal Council (on the 8th of October).
Look and Feel
Circus Roncalli
Although neither my kids nor I myself are still in the typical age for this, we enjoyed an evening in Circus Roncalli, right in front of Vienna's townhall a lot.
It's worth a visit. They are in Vienna until Sunday (and presumably sold out), but will then go to Linz and Innsbruck.
The Social Reckoning
I was kindly invited by Nana Siebert from Der Standard to discuss with her and others about social media platforms in a rather unfamiliar setting: a cinema, right before the premiere of "The Social Reckoning" - a film dealing with Facebook/Meta in general and Mark Zuckerberg in particular.
As far as i can tell, film critics are not too positive (Filmstarts, YouTube I, YouTube II) and I was not too impressed by the film either (the story is not new, the characters are wooden, the hinted-at love story is unnecessary etc.).
But I was very pleased to be allowed to discuss in this nice environment and to meet Fabian Scheck there, who reported about his idea of 21 days of voluntary smartphone abstinence. ORF has a 75 minutes documentary about the experiment with 72.000 participants that came out of this.
In the film, I liked Jeremy Strong playing Mark Zuckerberg. Although he's, in my view, overacting, it's still much his gestures, and even more, his voice, remind me of the original.
Here's the film's trailer:
Have a wonderful week and take care of yourself!
Kind regards
Nikolaus (Forgó)
