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The End of the 2022 Conference Season

The End of the 2022 Conference Season

For the excellent scholarship to flourish, one needs both hard work in the solitude of a library and openness to critique and feedback from a diverse group of peers. Hence, as is customary in academia, the team of the Private Law of Data Project spent the summer of 2022 both intensely writing and touring the most significant conferences in the field. In this post, we recount a summary of these endeavours.

We kicked off the season with Katarzyna Wiśniewska’s trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, where on May 26-27, 2022 she was a speaker at the Early-Career Researcher Workshop on Multidisciplinary Research Methods in EU Law, organized by The University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Europa Institute. During the event, sixteen young scholars researching EU law reflected on what can multi- and inter-disciplinary methods contribute to research into EU law and policymaking, how does this methodological diversity shape the (re-)thinking of EU law, how do methodological disputes, debates, and problems define and constrain research in this area, how can a critical reflection on methods advance research into EU law and policymaking and, finally, do more 'traditional' legal methods still have a place in modern research in EU law and how can they contribute to advancing our knowledge today. The event also provided an opportunity to discuss the project's preliminary results in the form of a draft paper "The Impact of the Digital Content Directive on Online Platforms' Terms of Service."

 

On June 16-17, Przemysław Pałka was in Brussels, Belgium, where he took part in the Conference organized by the European Data Protection Supervisor, titled The future of data protection: Effective enforcement in the digital world. The event brought together the most important players in the GDPR game, including prominent policymakers (Margrethe Vestager, Věra Jourová, Birgit Sippel, Karen Melchior, Axel Voss, Juan Fernando López Aguilar), regulators (Marie-Laure Denis, Ulrich Kelber), activists (Ursula Pachl, Max Schrems), industry representatives (Julie Brill, Microsoft; Jane Horvath, Apple; William Malcolm, Google), and academics (Orla Lynskey, Paul De Hert, Michael Veale). Our PI moderated the panel titled “Is digital sovereignty the new GDPR?” where he discussed some of the project’s most controversial results. You can read his post-conference reflections here.

 

Then was our turn to host! On June 24-25, in Krakow, Poland, our Project organized an international seminar titled “Reimagining the Future of Law,” bringing together the scholars of law and tech from the Una Europa universities. We had a chance to take a glimpse at the frontier of research pursued in Berlin, Edinburgh, Helsinki and Leuven, as well as to present our work and open it up for discussion. The event hosted the following panellists and their respective topics: Michał Araszkiewicz ("Imagine there's no law (and no need for it)"), Olia Kanevskaia ("What's new in standardization landscape?"), Małgorzata Kuśmierczyk ("Algorithmic Bias in the Light of the GDPR and the Proposed AI Act"), Beata Mäihäniemi ("The role of behavioural economics in shaping remedies for excessive data gathering by gatekeepers"), Marta Maroni ("The project of digital constitutionalism"), Daria Onitiu ("Defining human oversight to shape notions of responsibility and liability regarding medical diagnostic systems"), Przemysław Pałka ("What is Data? Towards a Legally Useful Ontology"), Radosław Pałosz ("An Alien Body: GDPR’s Principles and the Market Economy"), Bettina Rentsch ("Operationalizing Social Space - a look into the crystal ball of Private Law"), Katarzyna Wiśniewska ("The Impact of the Digital Content Directive on Online Platforms’ Terms of Service") and Raphaële Xenidis ("Two round holes and a square peg: An alternative test for algorithmic discrimination in EU equality law"). The event was organized together with the Future Law Lab, with the financial support of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange.

 

Between 3 and 8 July, the team researchers – Katarzyna Wiśniewska and Radosław Pałosz – attended the 30th Biennal World Congress of the International Association for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy: "Justice, Community and Freedom." Katarzyna presented a paper based on partial results of the empirical work done in the project, titled "The Impact of the Digital Content Directive on Online Platforms’ Terms of Service," being able to discuss it with the worldwide auditorium. Radosław presented the possible application of ethnographic research to legal research on virtual worlds in the paper "Ethnographic research in EVE Online – how to regulate the metaverse?" research as a part of his PhD Project. Of course, the panels were not the only attraction of the Congress. Our researchers also had the opportunity to travel a little around Romania and, before all – meet alumni from other countries, building so valuable net of contacts.

 

In the meantime, July 4-5, Przemysław Pałka was in Wrocław, Poland, at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the International Society of Public Law. The previous editions of the conference took place in Santiago, Chile (2019) or in Hong Kong (2018), and the next year’s meeting will convene in New Zealand, so we could not resist the opportunity to discuss the project’s results with the leading scholars of tech regulation and fundamental rights from all around the world. Our PI presented three papers in Wrocław, including those critiquing the ELI/ALI’s "Principles for a Data Economy" and the proposal for the AI Act, as well as offering a constructive vision for the "Democratic & Polycentric Content Moderation."

 

After a hard and heavy engagement with the public law perspective came the time for the sociolegal approach, and so on July 13-16, Pałka went to Lisbon, Portugal, for the 2022 Global Meeting on Law and Society. There, with scholars from both the US and the EU, our PI discussed to the "mental costs" paper, an earlier version of which has been presented in Boston, USA, before sending it out for peer review. Mental costs – spoiler alert – will be the subject of the ERC Starting Grant Applications, one of the project’s deliverables, so keep your fingers crossed and stay tuned!

 

 

August was the time for intense writing. Our teams took refuge in the solitude of various writing retreats to fine-tune the papers you will (hopefully) be able to read soon.

 

On September 1-2, Katarzyna Wisniewska participated in an International Empirical Legal Studies (ELS) Conference 2022 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She discussed "The Impact of the Digital Content Directive on Online Platforms' Terms of Service" paper among scholars of empirical research on EU law. The arduous process of tagging the contractual patterns of online platforms was already coming to an end, and happily, its results have been recognized by major professionals in the field.

 

 

 

As the Project has shared its results in Krakow and Wrocław already, we could not have skipped the chance to also present in Warsaw, Poland. On September 10-11, Przemysław Pałka took part in the Digital Law & Policy – Proportionality Principle In IT Regulation Conference, presenting a draft titled "The Politics of Data Policy: Proportionality of Goals or Means?" It has been a great opportunity to promote our outcomes with, and receive feedback from, a diverse group of law & tech scholars from all around the world, and representing all perspectives, practical and theoretical, private- and public-law oriented. We are also proud to acknowledge that this amazing event has been organized by Jan Czarnocki, the Project’s Affiliated Fellow.

 

And speaking of Law and Tech: the grand finale came with the 25-Anniversary Conference of the Information Society Project, held at Yale Law School in New Haven, USA. There, Pałka presented the paper titled "An Alien Body: Purpose Limitation Principle in the Market Economy." Americans, traditionally sceptical of the GDPR, have provided amazing feedback and a set of valuable insights for the last stretch of this paper’s preparation for publication. 

 

 

With the new academic year in Poland starting this week, we are getting back to the more sedentary lifestyle as well. However, do not despair: this is not the end of the Project’s dissemination and critical discussion effort. Next week, we return to our flagship Tuesday meetings in Polish as well as begin a new venture: Thursday’s online Seminar in Data Law in English. We hope to see you there!