gikii

Sun, Sand and GikII VIII

It’s GikII time.

When robots, drones, autonomous agents, Facebook stalking, teleportation, 3D printing, MMORPGS, science fiction, computer games and superhero justice are discussed within the realms of the law and LOL cats, you know the time for the annual GikII workshop has arrived! Yes it’s time for GikII VIII – and a time to immerse ourselves in debates about cutting-edge technology, popular culture and the law.

This year GikII will be “in sunny, golden-sandy Southern city of Bournemouth with its sparkling sea and almost California-like-but-not-quite atmosphere. It will be held on 16-17 September 2013”

All the info you need is over here.

Posted on by mklang

Beating the crowds: A pre-emptive study of Teleportation Law

With a few days margin I finally got around to submitting my abstract for this years GikII which will be in London. The title is “Beating the crowds: A pre-emptive study of Teleportation Law”. This is among the coolest conferences as the people are smart and funny – and tend to explore the stranger sides of technology law.

The deadline is  August 13th 2012 – so there is still time for you to submit.

Here is my abstract:

Great strides are being made in the field of instantaneous transportation. Only recently (2006), physicists in Denmark and Germany passed gas over a distance of several hundred centimeters. Despite this great leap, scientists are still struggling with the concept of human teleportation.

To the cultural historian, however, the concept of teleportation (the shifting, usually instantaneously, of matter from one point to another without physically passing through the territory between the points) is well established. Teleportation appears in a plethora of sources: from the founding legend of the Kingdom of Champa to Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and in almost every episode of Star Trek.

This lack of progress among physicists creates a window of opportunity for jurists to ensure that the necessary legal fundamentals are laid out in preparation for the scientific realization. This will ensure that, at least in this area, jurisprudence is not caught in the steel trap of Wendell Holmes’ pessimistic dictum of the law being inevitably behind the times.

In order to ensure that only the (current) laws of physics are broken it is necessary to look at teleportation from the several perspectives. The goal of this paper is to prepare an initial study over the necessary areas of law needed to successfully carry out human teleportation. It will, inter alia, look at criminal law, intellectual property, illegal downloading, privacy, protection of personhood, human rights, medical law and immigration issues.

With this paper the author hopes to demonstrate the ways in which technological breakthroughs require a reappraisal of existing legal attitudes and a revaluation of their underlying norms.

Posted on by mklang

GikII 2012 Call for papers

My favorite conference is GikII. it wins in weirdness of topic, depth of research and thoroughly nicely people. The call for papers for this year is out now: Check it out here. This is technology & law taken to the edge!

It’s harder than it used to be to write a Call for Papers for GikII, the so-cool-it-hurts blue skies workshop for papers exploring the interstices between law, technology and popular culture. Back in the day,  you could dazzle the noobs just by mentioning past glories like the first paper on Facebook and privacy, Harry Potter and the Surveillance of Doom, regulation of autonomous agents according to the Roman law of slavery, edible technologies and copyright in Dalek knitting patterns. But nowadays we live in a world where we routinely encounter unmanned surveillance drones used to deliver tacos, in commercial asteroid mining with Richard Branson, 3d printers used to create human organs and the fact that Jeremy Hunt still has a job. Still, if any of these or the other many phenomena of the digital age in desperate need of legal attention are digging a tunnel out of your brain, then send us an abstract for the 7th Gikii workshop!  Maybe this year it will be your paper which contributes the seminal GikII meme following in the honoured footsteps of LOLcats, flying penises, and knitted Daleks.

Posted on by mklang

GikII speakers & presentations

This year I am fortunate to be the local organizer for the wonderful GikII conference. This is GikII’s 6th year and its first time in Sweden so its time to be extra proud. In the call for papers we included:

For 2011, this ship full of seriously playful lawyers will enter for the first time the cold waters of the north (well, further north than Scotland) and enter that land of paradoxes: Sweden. Seen by outsiders as well-organised suicidal Bergman-watching conformists, but also the country that brought you Freedom of Information, ABBA, the Swedish chef, The Pirate Bay and (sort of…) Julian Assange. We offer fine weather, the summer solstice and a fair reception at the friendly harbour of Göteborg.

Now the conference is fast approaching and organization is steaming ahead. We have a schedule & information about the venue online. And check out these presentations!

This is going to be good! But then again, GikII always is.

Posted on by mklang

Call for Papers: GiKII VI

GikII VI, FREEDOM, OPENNESS & PIRACY?
26-28 June 2011
IT University
Göteborg, Sweden

Call for papers
Is GikII a discussion of popular culture through the lens of law – or is it about technology law, spiced with popular culture? For five years and counting, GikII has been a vessel for the leading edge of debate about law, technology and culture, charting a course through the murky waters of our societal uses and abuses of technology.

For 2011, this ship full of seriously playful lawyers will enter for the first time the cold waters of the north (well, further north than Scotland) and enter that land of paradoxes: Sweden. Seen by outsiders as well-organised suicidal Bergman-watching conformists, but also the country that brought you Freedom of Information, ABBA, the Swedish chef, The Pirate Bay and (sort of…) Julian Assange. We offer fine weather, the summer solstice and a fair reception at the friendly harbour of Göteborg.

So come one, come all… Clean your screens, look into the harder discs of your virtual and real lives, and present your peers with your ideas on the meaning of our augmented lives. Confuse us with questions, dazzle us with legal arguments, and impress us with your GikIIness. If you have a paper on (for example) regulation of Technology & Futurama, soft law in World of Warcraft, censoring social media & Confucius, the creative role of piracy on latter day punk or plagiarism among the ancient Egyptians – We are the audience for you (for a taste of past presentations see http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/gikii/ ).

Application process

Please send an abstract not exceeding 500 words to Professor Lilian Edwards (Lilian.Edwards@strath.ac.uk) or Dr Mathias Klang (klang@ituniv.se). The deadline for submissions is 15 April 2011. We will try to have them approved and confirmed as soon as possible so that you can organise the necessary travel and accommodation.

Registration

As with previous years, GikII is free of charge, and therefore there are limited spaces available, so please make sure you submit your paper early. Priority is always given to speakers, but there are some limited spaces available for students and non-speakers. Registration will be open shortly at http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/gikii/

Posted on by mklang

Gikii 2011 in Göteborg

Sharpen your pencils and polish your mice its soon time to submit abstracts for GikII 2011 which will run 26-28 June in Göteborg. The cfp is being tweaked as we speak and I am both honored and intimidated to be the local host of this great event – the sixth annual GikII.

For those of you who have not met the GikII check out last years call for papers:

GikII is a workshop concerned with exploring the legal interaction between popular culture, speculative fiction, and new technologies. It has been described unimaginatively as trail-blazing, innovative, fun and informative. We like to think of GikII as the legal workshop equivalent of a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, in other words, it is “like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick”. GikII is where the bravest, fun-est (not to be confused with funniest) and zaniest ideas about law and technologies are discussed. In some instances we explore technologies so new that in fact there is not even a term to describe them, while some other times we have discussed technologies long gone. We only ask that you are imaginative and think of your fellow travellers instead of yourself. GikII is all about giving legal scholars the opportunity to engage in blue skies thinking (variations of the visible electromagnetic radiation spectrum may occur depending on which planet you may currently inhabit). If you have a paper that is languishing at the bottom of your hard drive and is crying out to see the light of a USB stick, GikII is the place for you. We laugh in the face of tradition and make rude comments about scholarly convention.

Or why not browse the five earlier events at Edinburgh 2006, Oxford 2007, Oxford 2008, Amsterdam 2009, Edinburgh 2010

Posted on by mklang

Gikii 4 programme

Registration is now closed, but here is the programme for this year’s Gikii. The good news is that I am in the first session.

17 September

09:15-09:30 Opening

09:30-10:45 First morning session (3): Doomsday

  • Christopher Lever, Fortun@e 500: A Consideration of the Contract Law Consequences of Cache Poisoning
  • Clive Feather, Resilience of the PGP “web of trust” and the disruption of criminal networks (no abstract)
  • Mathias Klang, Strangelove and Salami: An illustration of the unintended consequences of technical solutions

10:45-11:15 Coffee Break

11:15-12:30 Second Morning session (3): Digital Identities and Legal Life After Death

  • Burkhard Schafer, ZombAIs and family law: technology beyond the grave
  • Lillian Edwards, Death 2.0
  • Wiebke Abel, Shawn H.E. Harmon, Future Tech: Governance & Ethics In The Age Of Artificially Enhanced Man (Or ‘Beware The Zombais At The Gate’)

12:30-13:30 Lunch (on location)

13:30-15:15 First Afternoon session (4): Robots and Interfaces with Humans

  • F.E. Guerra-Pujol, Blade Runner, Time Scarcity and the Optimal Lifespan of Robots and Clones’
  • Miranda Mowbray and Burkhard Schafer, EAT ME
  • Dr Richard Jones, ‘CyberTags: The third generation of electronic offender-monitoring systems’

15:15-15:45 Coffee Break

15:45-17:30 Second Afternoon session (4): Copyright: Take A Bite!

  • Bernt Hugenholz, ‘A Future of Levies: The Taxification of Copyright’
  • Ot van Daalen & Iris Kieft, Towards new methods for resolving the conflict between copyright and the free flow of information
  • Nicolas Jondet, France: the land of the Linux? The case of DRM interoperability and reverse-engineering

19:30 Sponsored conference diner.

18 September

09:15 Opening

09:15-10:30 First morning session (3): New Media Harms

  • Andrea Matwyshyn, Intended Data Beneficiaries
  • Arno R. Lodder, Is it possible to control personal information that was uploaded by others without the intention to harm or infringe?
  • Caroline Wilson, Twit or Tweet? Legal Issues Associated with Twitter and other Micro-Blogging Sites”

10:30-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-12:30 Second Morning session (4): Making and Sharing

  • Maarten Brinkerink, Inge van Beekum, Incentives and Constraints for Dutch Public Broadcasters to Adopt Creative Commons Licensing
  • Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, Creative Commons licenses incompatibilities : when sharing needs to be rationalized
  • Steven Hetcher, Location, Location Still Matters: Pop Stars, User-Generated Popular Culture & The Dislocation Of Non-Location
  • Ray Corrigan, Protecting the public domain: a five point plan’

12:30-13:30 Lunch (on location)

13:30-15:15 First Afternoon session (4): The World Explained

  • Andrés Guadamuz, Luddism 2.0, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Web
  • Peter K. Yu, The Crossover Point
  • Chris Marsden, Net Neutrality as a Debate About More Than Economics

15:15-15:45 Coffee Break

15:45-17:30 Second Afternoon session (4): Fundamental rights

  • Joris van Hoboken, Search Engine Censorship: New Metaphors for the Suppression of Findability
  • Judith Rauhofer, “Get out of my head, bloodsucker!” Notions of surveillance in the vampire mind
  • Martin Jones, Sousveillance: The Emergent Digital Eye Witness
  • TJ McIntyre, Won’t somebody please think of the children!?
Posted on by mklang

I'm a Gikii

It’s soon time for the Gikii 4 conference which will be held in Amsterdam during 18-19 September – this year it is organized by the Institute for Information Law (IViR). I am particularly happy since I will be attending with a paper of my own.

The program for the conference is here. Just to give you an idea of the type of stuff presented there here are a couple of papers being presented (full list here).

Luddism 2.0, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Web

ZombAIs and family law: technology beyond the grave

“Get out of my head, bloodsucker!” Notions of surveillance in the vampire mind

EAT ME

Robot Law?

Future Tech: Governance & Ethics In The Age Of Artificially Enhanced Man (Or ‘Beware The Zombais At The Gate’)

As you can see from this short list Gikii is definately on the bizarre side of technology law.

Posted on by mklang