Week 48/2025
in circles we go
NSFW
This week's song is from Leslie Clio, a German songwriter, asking the most relevant of all questions.
ARD has a documentary on her living with an AHDS-diagnosis (that might be geoblocked, though)
Retrospect
DEMGES
The Commission "Demokratie in digitalen Gesellschaften", chaired by Prof. Dr. Barbara Prainsack and Dr. Astrid Mager had a two days colloquium at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. I went home with many insprirations and recommendations for, in particular, two very relevant articles: Lisanne Bainbridge, Ironies of Automation (that is so popular that it even has a Wikipedia-article) and Linsey Mcgoey, The Logic of Strategic Ignorance, both contribute to understand why regulating AI is so difficult.
Commute
Commute brought me to Luxembourg for a very interesting workshop on ethics of AI in neurodegenerative diseases mainly coordinated by Olga and Rodessa from the department.
The project's coordinator Prof. Dr. Martin Hofmann-Apitius masterfully chaired a panel debate on "Panel: AI as Clinical Expert – Legal and Ethical Implications on the Future of Medical Authority". It was also an interesting opportunity to meet sister projects such as point that aims to improve post Covic-19 care.
I did a short walk on campus during a coffee break and admired the industry monuments on site.
The morning walk from the hotel to campus with this year's first hoarfrost was nice too.
#arsboni
Dr. Nils Haag was in the laundry speaking about deficit in enforcement of IT-security laws.
Dr. Filip Paspalj reported about his PHD-journey and lessons learned there.
The Legal Literacy Project Vienna did an episode on collective labor law with Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Prameshuber.
LLM Graduation
The LLM-programmes in tax law, real estate law, tourism and law and information and media law celebrated a joint graduation ceremony in UNIVIE's big hall. Vice-dean Prof. Dr. Franz-Stefan Meissel and Vice-Studienpräses Dr. Dr. Julia Wippersberg delivered very kind speeches
and the new masters listened before (hopefully) celebrating a nice party. I was very proud of "my" students, touched by all the kids and relatives attending and grateful to everyone involved, in particular Markus, who is such perfect program manager.
Digital Humanism College
The Vienna Doctoral College on Digital Humanism had its Kick-Off in Urania on Wednesday. Vice-Rector Baccarini was among the opening speakers.
Prospect
Digital Omnibus
The Commission - yet again - brings so much new material that I will have more work than anybody can do in the next years to come. The goal is - oh, the irony! - simplification of IT-law, the outcome will be even more complexity.
Proposals COM(2025) 837 final and COM(2025) 836 final bring more than 200 pages new text and a staff working document of comparable length.
I shared a few first impressions on Linkedin here and here and here. I am not the only one seeing this rather critically, see for example Dr. Axel Spies on LinkedIn or Prof. Dr. Hanna Ruschemeier in Verfassungsblog.
Others are more positive, my department colleague Prof. Dr. Christiane Wendehorst, for example, saying: "This is a long-awaited step in the right direction that deserves our support."
Cyberspace Conference
Masaryk University Brno hosts the yearly Cyberspace Conference on November 27th and 28th. This is a very interesting conference with 300 participants from all over the world and all over different disciplines. Saturday comes with thirty (!) workshops in 6 streams. One of them will be on "Legal dimensions of the use of synthetic data in research" and will be run by the department. I will have the privilege to chair this session.
Registration still possible, no stream.
Cross Border Evidence Gathering
Tuesday, 25/11, afternoon will bring an international criminal law symposion at Juridicum's top floor.
with an interesting panel composition.
Registration (probably) still possible, no stream.
Liechtenstein
Thursday, November 26, will bring me to Private University Liechtenstein for the first time. I will speak at a GDPR-Seminar.
Registration still possible, no stream.
#arsboni
I will do a laundry-session with Thomas Schreiber on shrinkwrap.legal. That's a very nice browser-app, summarizing Austrian court decisions directly in the Austrian legal information system RIS. I will also do a live session originally scheduled for this wee on Monday,24/11, at 14.00:
On Friday, November 28, at 16.00 CET, I will speak with Prof. Dr. Gerrit Hornung on AI licence clauses in authors' agreements.
Hornung is, together with Prof. Dr. Michael Grünberger, author of a position paper dealing with AI clauses in publication contracts.
Trigger for this are attempts of Beck-Verlag to get its authors to sign additional clauses in their contracts. Grünberger wrote a substantive text against this idea in September.
Look and Feel
Empire of AI
I am currently reading Karen Hao's Empire of AI
It's about Open AI and Sam Altmann, mainly anecdotical, no surprises, easy to read. A well fitting addition are some of the documentaries shown by Arte on AU, such as this one
and this one
Platform Liability
Falter Radio has a very interesting, rather detailed and legalish podcast episode between Florian Klenk and Armin Wolf on platform liability.
Both give me (some, critical) credit for using the metaphor that a platform should be seen as a fleamarket where the organiser doesn't take responsibility for whatever happens there. That's very kind, but I didn't invent this, I am only old enough to remember. The story goes way into the 90ies, for example in Fonovisa, Inc., Plaintiff-appellant, v. Cherry Auction, Inc.; 76 F.3d 259 (9th Cir. 1996), and in early debates on section 230 or in Lockheed Martin Corp. v. Network Solutions, Inc., 194 F.3d 980 (9th Cir. 1999) of the Communications Decency Act.
Daisy
is getting better and better in hiding herself.
Have a wonderful week!
Kind regards
Nikolaus (Forgó)
