The future of..

On the 28th and 29th October 2008 the European University Institute will host in Florence the first edition of "The future of..." Conference on Law & Technology, organized by the InfoSoc Working Group in conjunction with the Law department of the European University Institute.

Such conference aims to be an original and ground-breaking symposium, attracting quality papers dealing with prospective studies and analyzes of legal developments and transformations expected in the future. Taking into account the present technological trends affecting society, the “Future of…” Conference challenges scholars to think and foresee the main problems and changes that Law will face and suffer in the upcoming future of ambient technologies, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, web 3.0, mixed realities (convergence between virtual and physical domains), autonomous software agents, artificial intelligence and many other features and elements.

The conference thus welcomes the contribution of scholars and researchers from anywhere in the world, whose interests and research are directed towards the assessment of the evolving relationship that might develop between law and technology. In particular, the contributions shall relate to the interplay of law and technology and the impact it may have on the future of the information society, with strong focus on the complementary and/or conflictual nature of technology, as it may be employed to enforce certain legal provisons, or, alternatively, to bypass the law to eventually replace the legal regime by technological means.

About the conference

In the future humankind will find itself in an incredibly automatic and intelligent new space, people will be surrounded by technologies that observe, monitor, analyse, interpret, simplify, anticipate and explain the world for us. Humanity will be immersed in a deep and permanent communicational status, living in a planet of machines, agents and automatic processes. A vast array of powerful interfaces, embedded in all kind of objects and gifted with some sort intelligence, will capture, scrutinize and process data about reality and nature surrounding us, as well as about every other human being living within. Such agents will recognize, react and respond, in an intuitive manner, to the presence and to the actions of different people and electronic objects. Human action and decision-making will be increasingly delegated to artificial agents, reality visible to the human eye will be super-imposed by electronic tags, digital identifiers and virtual entities, and the current network of computers and other terminals called Internet will be a network of digital people, sharing a half-fictitious half-real space that visionaries have been for long time prophesizing as cyberspace or metaverse and that is now coming to reality under the denomination of ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence.

The future will be dominated by interactive technologies, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, mixed realities (where the virtual and the physical realms will converge), ambient technologies, augmented reality, autonomous software agents, artificial intelligence and many other technological developments.

Bearing in mind that Law, since its inception, has been rooted in geographical defined spaces and devoted to the intricacies and workings of identified human initiative and action, this conference asks you to think and foresee what challenges, problems and changes this Future will bring to Law

More than prospecting on how the future will look like, this conference aims at collecting new ideas, concepts and theories of how Law will accompany such future, proposing a creative exercise of upcoming world description and a prospective analysis of how law will change and evolve.

Call for papers

The deadline for submission of detailled abstracts (min 3 pages) is: August 1, 2008
The deadline for submission of full papers is: September 15, 2008
The notification of acceptance is: August 15, 2008

The papers may only be submitted in line with the following guidelines:

  • The submitted papers must not have been already published or been already appointed for publication. In addition, the submitted papers may not have been previously presented and/or submitted to a conference elsewhere.

  • The paper must come with a title and an abstract.

  • The paper (including the abstract, references, as well as any additional tables, graphs, figures and/or annexes) must be sumbitted in its entirety as one single document.

  • The paper must be structured and formatted in strict conformity with the Style sheet specifications available here.

All submitted papers will be subject to peer-review in order to determine which ones will be included into the conference. We guarantee that the peer-review process will be carried out as a blind process according to which every paper will be assessed on a strictly anonymous basis.

Submissions should be sent to infosoc@eui.eu

Topics

The theme of the Conference encompasses a very broad spectrum of different issues and subjects. A list of examples for papers' themes and topics worth considering are:

  • Revisiting the concept of agency in the legal world
    What is the best approach to deal with new forms of agency such as the "artificial agency" of software agents? Is there a need for a new theory of legal personality in the framework of the digital environment? Should legal personality be extended to non-human agents?

  • Cyberspace jurisdiction, rethinking legal boundaries
    Given the ubiquitous and non fragmented nature of the Internet, several jurisdictional problems arise in different areas of the law. Is it desirable, notwithstanding its inherent difficulties, to try to transplant to the digital milieu the current analogical jurisdictional divisions based on territorial sovereignty? Or is it a better alternative to envisage a global order more suited to the initial aspirations of the Internet and to enhance that global project through international cooperation? (Judicial cooperation against cyber-crime, law enforcement in the Internet, etc)

  • The commodification of Information in the digital sphere
    Information has become one of the most valuable goods of the Information Society. How can information be protected in the digital environment? To what extent should it be protected? What are the effects of digital technologies on the production and the distribution of information goods?

  • The role of ICT technologies as a tool for legal practice
    Legal practice has not been an exception to the pervasiveness of new technologies. However, from the Jurimetrics era to today's uses of computer applications in the legal domain a long path - not free from obstacles - has been covered. How and to what extent will daily legal practice be affected by future technologies? How has legal practice changed due to the introduction of new computing facilities (tools for supporting legal drafting, for legal information retrieval, for case management, etc) and how much more will it change? To what extent will legal reasoning and related cognitive processes be affected by the use of new ICT? What implications, advantages and dangers can be envisaged with the future rendering of legal processes and conflict resolution systems increasingly technical and automatic?

  • Emergence of new rights in the ICT domain
    With the upraising of vast and solid virtual communities in digital spaces recreating quasi-physical domains of action and behaviour can new cyber-rights be envisaged? With humanity spending and investing more and more time, resources and expectations in cyberspace (and with the increasing cleavage of the denominated “Digital Divide”, which keeps the gates of such cyberspace closed to a vast portion of humanity) can new internet rights be claimed and drafted into binding international treaties?

  • The future role and eventual re-design of IP Law
    Open Source Software, Open Content, and User Generated Content. Does copyright has a future in the digital environment? Will it be replaced by innovative business mechanisms?
    Digital Rights Management systems and the public domain: The role of the law in ensuring freedom of expression and free access to information.

  • The Future of Privacy, Identity and Anonymity in the digital environment and the adequate role of Internet Service Providers in that context: liability and immunities
    Should ISP be held responsible for the activities of Internet users? Should they be required to provide any information concerning the identity and the activities of all Internet users, or should they be responsible of preserving their fundamental rights and freedoms?

  • The future challenges for e-commerce
    The expansion of e-commerce requires the deployment of ubiquitous technological measures to ensure complete security for online transactions. What is the trade-off between Privacy and Identity Management and Trusted Systems?

  • Biotechnologies, ICT innovations and Identity, Dignity and Human Rights
    What impact can future biotechnological advancements applied to the human body have in people's identity? How should human enhancement technologies be conciliated with the respect for human dignity and human rights?

  • Any other topic that comprises a prospective study or analysis about a forthcoming evolution / change / creation in Law brought about by new technological developments.

Program

Tuesday 28th october 2008


9:00- 9:30- Registration.

9:30- 9:45- Welcome. Introduction. Professor Giovanni Sartor (EUI)

9:45- 10:30- Guest lecture: "The future of the trade in information - with a world history of the legal types of contracts for the transfer of information as an introduction"
Professor Jon Bing
Norwegian Center for Computers and Law
Faculty of Law, University of Oslo - Norway


Session I:
General issues. New dimensions in the technological environment: the role of the law and agency.
Chair: Professor Jon Bing (University of Oslo)

10:30- 10:55. "Re-designing the Role of Law in The Society of Information: Mediating between the Real and the Virtual". Massimo Durante (University of Turin) [download]

10:55- 11:20. "New Technologies and the Law: Precedents via Metaphors". Harmeet Sawhney, Venkata Ratnadeep Suri and Hyangsun Lee (Indiana University) [download]

11:20- 11:45- Coffee Break

11:45-12:10. Guest Intervention: "Achieving the Potential: a new American report on Internet development for e-governance".
Prof. Peter L. Strauss
Betts Professor of Law
Columbia Law School


Session II:
Public law, jurisdiction, boundaries.
Chair: Professor Giovanni Sartor.

12:10-12:35. "Cybercrime, Cyberterrorism and Jurisdiction - An Analysis of Article 22 of the COE Convention on Cybercrime". Armando A. Cottim [download]

12:35-13:00. "Children Protection Online: Uneasy Steps Towards a Balance Between Risks and Freedoms". Federica Casarosa (University of Trento) [download]

13:00-13:25. "Concept of żNetwork Neutralityż in the EU Dimension: Should Europe Trust in Antitrust?". Oles Andriychuk (EUI- Florence) [download]


13:25- 14:30- LUNCH

14:30-15:15. Guest lecture: "Relational Law and next generation of Web Services"
Professor Pompeu Casanovas
Institute of Law and Technology
Autonomous University of Barcelona

Session III:
ICT tools for the law.
Chair: Professor Pompeu Casanovas (Autonomous University of Barcelona)

15:15-15:40. "Peeping HALs: Making Sense of Artificial Intelligence and Privacy". Ryan Calo (Stanford Law School)

15:40-16:05. "The Open Revolution: Using Citation Analysis to Improve Legal Text Retrieval". Anton Geist (University of Edinburgh) [download]


16:05-16:30. Coffee Break

16:30-16:55. "A Roadmap Towards Tool-Supported Legal Risk Management". Tobias Mahler (University of Oslo) [download]

16:55-17:20. "Modelling European and Italian tax legislation with LKIF language". Giuseppe Contissa (University of Bologna)




Wednesday 29th October 2008


9:30- 10:15. Guest lecture: "Protecting the "self": prospective thoughts on privacy and human personality in an era of ambient intelligence"
Antoinette Rouvroy
Information Technology & Law Research Centre
University of Namur - Belgium

Session IV:
The personal sphere in the tecnological milieu: Liberty and privacy.
Chair: Ryan Calo

10:15-10:40. "Liberty in a Ubiquitous Computing World". Scott Boone (Appalachian School of Law)

10:40-11:05. "The Myth of Odin's Eye: Privacy vs Knowledge". Paolo Guarda (University of Trento) [download]

11:05-11:30. Coffee break

11:30-11:55. "Property in Personal Data: a European Perspective on Instrumentalist Theory of Propertization". Nadezda Purtova (Tilburg Institute for Law)


Session V:
Biotech.
Chair: Antoinette Rouvroy (University of Namur)

11:55-12:20. "Genetic Enhancement and Autonomy". Wojciech Zaluski (Jagiellonian university, Krakow) [download]

12:20:12:55. "Whither the bio-legal regime". Louise Doris (EUI- Florence)


13:00-14:30. LUNCH

14:30-15:15. Guest lecture: "Digital Wars: Digital Rights Management vs Open Models".
Professor Roberto Caso
Factulty of Law, Department of Legal Sciences
University of Trento


Session VI:
Intellectual property. Copyright, patent law.
Chair: Professor Roberto Caso (University of Trento)

15:15-15:40. "The legal status of software interoperability information". Federico Morando (Bocconi University) [download]

15:40-16:05. "Digital Libraries and Silent Works". Maria J. Iglesias (Centre de Recherche Informatique et Droit - Namur) [download]

16:05- 16:25- Coffee break

16:25-16:50. "Let Them Be Peers: The Future of P2P systems and their impact on Contemporary Legal Networks". Ugo Pagallo (University of Turin) [download]


16:50-17:30. General discussion and closure

Venue and Accomodation

The Future of.. conference on Law and Technology will be hosted by the European University Institute in the beautiful settings of San Domenico di Fiesole (Florence).

On Tuesday October 28th, the conference will be held in Villa la Fonte (Conference Room) at the following address:
Via delle Fontanelle 10
I-50014 San Domenico di Fiesole
Italy

Note: To get to Villa la Fonte from the bus stop in San Domenico, turn right immediately after the bus stop into via delle Fontanelle. Villa la Fonte is approx 500m down the road on the right.




On Wednesday October 29th, the conference will be held in Villa Schifanoia (Sala Europa), at the following address:
Via Boccaccio 121
I-50133 Firenze
Italy

Note: To go to Villa Schifanoia from the bus stop in San Domenico, cross the road where you get off the bus and turn to the left into Via Boccaccio. Villa Schifanoia is on the right-hand side after about 150 metres.


More detailed information on how to get to the site of the conference can be found at:
http://www.iue.it/About/HowtoReach/

Concerning the accomodation, please find below the indication of three hostels close to the European University Institute:
Casa Don Secchiaroli
Villa La Stella
Hotel Villa Bonelli

Important dates

August 1, 2008: Deadline for submission of detailled abstracts

August 15, 2008: Notification of acceptance

September 15, 2008: Deadline for submission of full papers

October 28 and 29, 2008: "The Future of..." Conference on Law & Technology

Program Committee

Professor Giovanni Sartor

Marie-Curie professor of Legal informatics and Legal Theory

European University Institute of Florence

Professor of Computer and Law

University of Bologna


Professor Jon Bing

Norwegian Center for Computers and Law

Faculty of Law, University of Oslo - Norway


Professor Giovanni Pascuzzi

Faculty of Law, University of Trento, Italy


Professor Giovanni Ziccardi

School of Law, University of Milan, Italy


Dr. Antoinette Rouvroy

Information Technology & Law Research Centre

University of Namur - Belgium


Professor Pompeu Casanovas Romeu

Institute of Law and Technology

Autonomous University of Barcelona


Dr. Maria Lilla' Montagnani

Department of Law

Bocconi University, Milan


Professor Roberto Caso

Factulty of Law, Department of Legal Sciences

University of Trento


Andrea Glorioso

European Commission

DG Information Society and Media


Professor Severine Dusollier

Information Technology & Law Research Centre

University of Namur, Belgium


Professor Anja Oskamp

Dean of the Faculty of Law

Department of Computer Law

VU University Amsterdam


Avv. Giuseppe Mazziotti (Phd, EUI)

Senior Associate

Nunziante Magrone Studio Legale Associato


InfoSoc Working Group:

- Norberto Andrade

- Primavera De Filippi

- Meritxell Fernandez

- Mario Viola

Publication

Papers submitted and presented at the Conference will be published in a special edition of the European Journal of Legal Studies (EJLS)

Registration

Registration to the conference is free: no fees are required, but please register in advance to help us with the logistics.


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