Großer Saal of Konzerthaus at the 175th birthday party of Manz, right before the crowd arrives and starts eating. The picture was taken by accident - I was not drunk, though, and I like it. Some of the pictures that others took intentionally are on LinkedIn, for example here, here, or here.

NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song For the Week)

Thie week’s song is from Jana Mila, a Dutch singer/songwriter who wrote this beautiful, guitar-only song when she was 16.

YouTube:

Live:

Retrospect

AI

I had several gigs on AI regulation this week. One that I liked in particular was in St.Pölten at Arbeiterkammer with, inter alia, Prof. Marlies Temper and DDr. Erich Prem. A short summary is online.

A regional TV station covered the event and has a brief report.

#arsboni

On Monday, I spoke with DDr. Christian Schneider about pagers and paging services. I was quite fascinated about how little (legal and organisational) consequences are discussed after an event in which thousands of these devices exploded in Lebanon in a coordinated action possibly involving European (and Asian) companies.

Tuesday brought a conversation with the president of Austria’s Supreme Court (‘Oberster Gerichtshof’) who is also an academic, Prof. Dr. Georg Kodek, about his career and his views on legal professions. He emphasized, in particular, the importance of language for lawyers, urged students to go abroad and encouraged them to follow their passion.

Art Law Clinic

Hande Özkayagan Prändl had kindly organised an excursion into the ‘Kunsthistorisches Museum’ as part of our Vienna Art Law Clinic course - one of the most innovative teaching designs I have the privilege being a part of.

Dr. Karoline Panayotopoulos-Schweizer kindly guided us through the museum and gave an overview on legal matters the museum’s legal department deals with on a regular basis (and it’s not only restitutions and copyright).

I saw La Saliera again - that was stolen from the museum more than 20 years ago and is worth more than 50 Mio €.

BTW: The museum has a nice online-collection and YouTube-videos on some of their most prominent pieces such as ‘The Art of Painting’.

Prospect

#arsboni

I will have one remote session this week and (at least) one in the laundry.

On Tuesday, October 22 at 10.00 am I will meet Prof. Dr. Tanja Domej to discuss SLAPP-lawsuits under European law.

There’s an interesting Austrian case in context:

The other episode will be an interview in the laundry with Mag. Werner Tomanek, a well known criminal defence lawyer defending one of the persons accused of having planned a terrorist attac at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna. The accused denies these accusations, the case is politically very relevant as it was used by some as (another) example that chat-surveillance is a need in Austria.

6. Seestädter Gesundheitskonferenz

I am giving a keynote on Monday, October 21, at 17.35 at the 6. Seestädter  Gesundheitskonferenz on “Ist das überhaupt legal? Eine Kurzeinführung in Technikutopien, Technikängste und Verhinderungsstrategien”. Here’s the full programme.

IAPP in Munich - European Privacy Network

There’s an In-Person DACH and Luxembourg Joint KnowledgeNet meeting of IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals) in Munich on Oct. 24 2024 . I will be on a panel dealing with “The 2nd Report on the Application of the GDPR: Does the GDPR need a fix? If yes, why, what and how?”.

The programme is available here, participation is free for (at least) IAPP-members, there will be NO stream.

Foundations and Methods of Digital Humanism (2024W)

My gig at this lecture series , organised by Torsten Möller, Sophie Lecheler and Michael Stampfer is on Wednesday, October 23, at 16.45. Here’s the syllabus and there’s also a (long) introductory YouTube video on the series.

Look and Feel

Memorial Service Helmut Hanusch

Helmut Hanusch passed away a few days ago and will have his memorial service this week. Helmut was a uniquely important role model to many, including me. He was a dear friend, a mentor and advisor in so many siuations. I will always be grateful to him that he was brave enough to invest in the crazy idea of a young academic to set up from scratch the very first LLM.programme in IT-law at UNIVIE - more than 25 years ago. Since then I have had the privilege to learn so much from him - personally and professionally. He also played - together with his wife Kristin - a pivootal role in UNIVIE’s summerschool in Strobl, where he participated and shaped, in particular, the summer discourse.

© https://shs.univie.ac.at/sommerdiskurs/organisation/

I am missing him a lot - every day - and my warmest condolences go to Kristin. Here’s one of the many death notices.

And this is him with Birgit in St. Wolfgang in summer 2020.

175 Years Manz

The publisher Manz celebrated 175 years of its existence. Speeches were given by its current co-owner and CEO Susanne Stein

and the president of Austria’s Constitutional Court, Prof. DDr. Christoph Grabenwarter.

It was a huge party with, I would estimate, around 800 people in one of Vienna’s most traditional and best known concert halls, the “Wiener Konzerthaus” (that had been, as I learned there, co-founded by one of Stein’s ancestors).

It was remarkable to see how well connected and homogenious this group of somehow elite lawyers, most of them writing for Manz, is.

Daisy

was out for a long autumn walk with her best friend Sandy.

© Anna Forgó

Have a wonderful week!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)