IRI is busy in South Africa this week! Two of the highlights thus far have been meeting members of the law faculty at the University of Cape Town and Stanley Greenstein’s presentation at the Cape Law Society. Other good experiences include visits to numerous law firms with an interest in law and technology and a tour of the tech and design hub of Woodstock. After almost a week here, we are developing a good understanding of the South African law and ICT perspective: cloud computing, data mining, regulating ICT and the forth coming South African data protection legislation have been hot topics of discussion.
Bon voyage!
The editor of the month would like to wish the Law & ICT gang an educational study tour to South Africa.
Looking forward to running updates and reports from the trip.
Take care and bon voyage, guys!
Stipendium till bästa uppsatsen inom området juridik och IT
Svenska föreningen för IT och juridik (ADBJ, www.adbj.se) bildades 1981. Enligt stadgarna är ADBJ en oberoende ideell organisation, som inom området informationsteknik och juridik ger medlemmarna information och möjligheter till erfarenhetsutbyte. Föreningen verkar för att samhällsdebatten om informationsteknikens rättsliga problem skall kunna föras på saklig grund. Verksamheten bedrivs huvudsakligen i seminarieform, främst i form av avgiftsfria kvällsseminarier.
Årligen delar ADBJ ut ett stipendium till bästa uppsatsen inom området Juridik och IT. Stipendiet skall stödjer framtagandet av goda examensarbeten genom att belöna ett examensarbete inom området juridik och IT.
Stipendiet kan sökas av student eller handledare åt student för examensarbete som inte är äldre än ett år räknat från sista ansökningsdag.
Stipendiet utgår med 10 000 kronor till en stipendiat. Till stipendieansökan skall bifogas examensarbetet, ett yttrande från handledaren samt kontaktuppgifter till författaren av uppsatsen och handledare.
Sista ansökningsdag: Förlängt till 20 februari 2013.
Beslut om tilldelning av stipendiet fattas av föreningens styrelse.
Beslutet kan inte överklagas.
Ansökan och intyg skickas till: kansliet@adbj.se med ärenderaden ”Stipendium för uppsats” gärna i pdf-format.
IRI i media: Hösten hos Aktuellt
SVTs nyhetsprogram har gjorts om och ger nu mer utrymme för fördjupning. Under programpunkten Utblick har Aktuellt under hösten tagit sig an många av de stora policyfrågorna förknippade med internet. Jag har medverkat med kommentarer i tre program.
“Rätten att bli bortglömd”, som ingår som en nyhet i EU-kommissionens förslag till ny dataskyddsförordning.
Ökat antal krav på att mellanhänder, t.ex. Google, ska ta bort material från nätet.
Inför telekomkonferensen WCIT i Dubai.
Addressing Cyber Instability
The Cyber Conflict Studies Association (CCSA) released its full “Addressing Cyber Instability” monograph earlier this month. It is available for download at the CCSA website and will be coming out in paperback, hardback, and ePub in the future.
In addition to legal issues, the monograph covers various concerns in cyberspace such as strategy, military doctrine and organization, non-state actors, and critical infrastructure protection.
A collabortive effort from two years of research and dialogue, the monograph was authored by Matt Devost, Maeve Dion, Jason Healey, Bob Gourley, Sam Liles, James Mulvenon, Hannah Pitts, and Greg Rattray, and was edited by James Mulvenon and Greg Rattray.
Digital lives, personal archives, and nostalgia
As the year draws to a close, we often find ourselves reflecting on the past. While this may not be specific to “law and informatics,” author Will Self has written an interesting opinion article on the concept of nostalgia and how it may be affected by our digital lives.
Dubai
In addition to the WCIT-12, which kicked off today, another ‘law and IT’ event will be held this week in Dubai. Folks from IRI, together with others in SU’s Department of International Law and the Swedish National Defence College, will be hosted by the Modern International Study center in Dubai for a seminar entitled “International Legal Aspects of Cyber Security.” We look forward to an interesting event. Information on the seminar is found on the center’s website.
Of course, the WCIT-12 may be just as interesting. For those who want a general overview to this ITU event, see Wired.co.uk’s “A simple guide to the ITU’s World Conference on International Telecommunications” article. For some European opinions, there is a zdnet article and an older EDRI newsletter article. For some American perspective, see this op-ed and ARIN’s opinion (the American Registry for Internet Numbers manages distribution of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses). And finally, the main WCIT-12 web info from ITU, and lastly, if you want to delve into some of the nitty-gritty, there is WCITleaks, which has various “leaked” documents and proposals from some of the ITU member countries.
Accepting Acceptable Advertising
Once again the debate concerning advertising on web sites has come to the fore. For many people, advertising associated with the web sites they visit is seen merely as an annoying and rather intrusive element in the surfing experience. There are however plugins that have the function of blocking such advertising. An advantage of using such a plugin to block advertising is that the content of the actual web page being visited can be downloaded much faster. However, the major problem with this type of plugin is that it upsets the current Internet business model, namely that it is the advertisers who advertise their products on web pages and thereby pay for the web page’s “free” content.
A popular plugin for the Firefox web browser is Adblock, which as mentioned above, has the function of blocking all banner advertising. An interesting development is highlighted in the UK isssue of Wired by Duncan Geere, 27 October, 2012, http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/27/adblock-plus. What is interesting is that Adblock Plus 2.0 has now changed its default settings to allow adverstising that is deemed to be “less annoying” (text highlighted by the author). Admittedly the issue of what is annoying can be an extremely subjective issue. In the above article, reference is made to what can be taken to be acceptable advertising in the context of web pages. This is advertising that is , “static, text-only, does not obscure page contect, does not require a click to get rid of and can be easily identified as advertising” (as opposed to editorial content).
This move by Adblock Plus must be seen as a response to the plight of smaller Internet companies that rely on web-based advertising for their daily existance. This issue is was taken up by Ken Fisher, the editor of Ars Technica, in an article entitled “Why Ad Blocking is Devestating to the Sites You Love”: http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love/
So, whereas many of us may dislike web-based advertising and more especially the personal integrity aspects of directed advertising, it must be acknowledged that it is an important cog in the vast machinary of the Internet.
Last chance to register for the e12 Stockholm IT Law Conference!
There are a few places remaining at the e12 Stockholm Conference Internationalisation of law in the digital information society, to be held on 22-23 November.
The main sessions of the conference will cover the following issues:
I Data Protection in Global Networks
II Evolving Systems for Solving Conflict of Laws on the Internet
III Visualisation of Law
Theme: Internationalisation of Law in the Digital Information Society
Date: 21-23 November 2012 (21 Doctoral Workshop, 22-23 Conference)
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Website & Registration: http://www.juridicum.su.se/iri/e12/
The registration deadline is Friday 28th October. We hope to see you there!
Upcoming Research Forum!
The 1st Göttingen International Research Forum on Law and ICT/IP will take place at the beginning of November 2012. See the website for further information and the agenda.
Date: 7-8th November 2012
Location: Göttingen, Germany
Website: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/355566.html
