Newsletter

Week 44/2024

Veo la luna y veo el sol

Nikolaus Forgó

25 Oct 2024 — 5 min read

Balloons leading to the 10 years party of Geistwert, a very smart Viennese IP-lawfirm, I was kindly invited to.

NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song For the Week)

This week’s song is from a singer (or a band?) called Al Fredo.

YouTube:

I didn’t find much about him/them, apart from their music, as there are too many Alfredo-Pizzerias on this planet, but I like the melody - and there’s at least a translation of the lyrics.

Retrospect

#arsboni

We did a very relevant session with Prof Dr. Tanja Domej on SLAPP lawsuits. SLAPP stands for Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.

My main learnings were that the directive is very heavily influenced by US civil procedural rules and that this is clearly another (problematic) attempt to make the world a better place by hard law instruments put on top of quite diverse national legislations.

Digital Humanism

My Wednesday gig in the lecture series on digital humanism recorded and is online.

I appreciated, in particular, Michael Stampfer’s presence and contributions, Sophie Lecheler’s and Torsten Moeller’s interest in what I had to say and some very well informed questions from the audience.

6. Seestädter Gesundheitskonferenz

A Monday-evening gig at this nice conference lead me into Seestadt (1 hour bicycle ride from central Vienna). Seestadt is a very interesting and very large city development project trying, inter alia, to keep car traffic as low as possible - I wish I had the time and competence to look deeper into this.

The sunset was spectacular when I left right before riding back via Donauinsel in complete darkness (and still feeling safe!).

I had the privilege to discuss this (raher positive) report with Cecilia Alvarez, Director, Privacy Policy, EMEA, Meta, Martin Braun. CIPP/E, Partner, WilmerHale, Cathal McDermott, Senior Privacy Counsel, Microsoft and Frank Schemmel, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, CIPT, Senior Director, Privacy, Compliance and Public Affairs, DataGuard.

The panel agreed that the report is clearly more positive than reality, with specific issues in not harmonised views of DPAs, third country transfer, unclear relations with other European acts such as DA, DGA or AIA. The head of one of Bavaria’s DPAs, Michael Will was in the audience. He criticised that the data subject’s perspective was not represented on the panel and suggested that the next GDPR review should not be written by the Commission, but by academics and other stakeholders.

The venue - an old factory hall? - belongs to DataGuard and was nice with some fancy soft drinks I had never seen before.

Podcast Wo Recht lebt

Lukas Feiler and me appeared in the Verlag Österreich Podcast.

Wo Recht lebt. Der juristische Podcast des Verlag Österreich. Cover

We discussed the AI-Act, based on our joint commentary on the law. Extrajournal has a short article on this.

Other interviews in the series are with Katharina Pabel und Christoph Bezemek, Magdalena Pöschl and Michael Holoubek or Susanne Reindl-Krauskopf and Cornelia Koller. You might want to tune in - and you don’t need to fear that you will be flooded with content: our episode is number 8 after more than 3 year’s of the format’s existence.

Prospect

We have quite a lot of events in the pipeline such as:

25 Years LLM

Tuesday, at 18.00, we will have a huge party. Our LLM-program celebrates 25 years of its existence. Below an article on us from 1999 from the party’s website.

Please register (for free), it will be a very nice ceremony.

AI and Security - A multidisciplinary Approach

Please join us on November 18th as a conference trying identify security-related aspects of AI from a multidisciplinary perspective. R

For registration click here / Attendance is free of charge.

COMMUTE workshop: Predictive Medicine and Patient Rights: Balancing Risks and Benefits for Individuals and Society

This will happen on Wednesday, 13th November 2024, 9:00 – 10:30 at The Aula, Hof 1.11, University of Vienna Campus, Spitalgasse 2, A-1090 Vienna. COMMUTE is one of the research projects we are currently involved in.

This is a public event, free of charge. Please register here if you are attending in-person.

Online-Plattformen als Herausforderung für die Rechtsordnung

This is the closing event of another project, financed by a national funder. We will meet on December 18th for th eclosing conference.

Again, participation is free of charge, please register here.

#arsboni

In addition to two episodes I am currently preparing in the laundry, we will have two streamed sessions next week.

On Wednesday, October 30th, at 16.00, we will deal (again) with seizure of mobile phones under European law. We will, in particular, discuss a recent CJEU decision triggered by an Austrian case.

On Friday, November 1st, at 9.00 am we will discuss our art law clinic that is, in my view, a very nice success story of innovative teaching methods in law.

Look and Feel

Helmut Hanusch

There was a very moving Commemorative event for Helmut Hanusch in Vienna’s Schottenkirche that united his wife Kristin, his family, his friends and many colleagues. The church was full.

I could attend and received a memory portrait that I put in my bookshelve so that he looks at me every time I am at my desk at home.

Gisbert zu Knyphausen

I attended a concert - the first he gave in Vienna after six years - of Gisbert zu Knyphausen. It was a very nice event with many old songs and some new.

I had lots of retro-feelings with only a man and an acoustic guitar on stage and an audience of, perhaps, 400 people of all ages in WUK, with light effects and a self service bar as if it was 1985. If you don’t know him yet - here’s a playlist on Spotify - and I will most likely chose a NSFW from him soon.

Nick Drake's Tone

I stumbled across this YouTube video analysing in detail and convincingy why Nick Drake’s (at least to me) unique guitar play sounds as it sounds. Sometimes, the internet is still beautiful.