Digitalisation & Technological Innovation in Europe: Impact on Core Values, Regulation & Enforcement

4 November 2022 – Workshop: Future-proof Regulation and Enforcement for the Digitalised Age

10 February 2022 – Promises and dangers of influencing users’ behavior online

An interdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners will bring together perspectives to better define the promises and dangers of influencing users’ behavior online, and reflect on the necessary regulation in addressing emerging challenges. The event will include a keynote speech by Prof. Nicolo Zingales, followed by two stimulating panel discussions. This event is organized in collaboration with Utrecht University’s focus area Governing the Digital Society, The Utrecht Centre for Regulation and Enforcement in Europe (RENFORCE) and the Modern Bigness research group. See for more information.

17 November 2021 – Workshop on ‘Facial Recognition Technology: Challengers for International Collaboration & Governance’, organised by Strategic Interest Group (SIG) ‘Principles by Design’, UGlobe and RENFORCE. See for workshop report and interviews with participants 

7 April 2021, there was a Governing the Digital Society / RENFORCE talk with Michal Gal (hosted by Thibault Schrepel): "Do our Privacy Laws Strengthen the already Strong?"

8 February 2021 RENFORCE rencontre with Cristiana Teixeira Santos: "The legal requirements for consent and related dark patterns”. This webinar addressed the use of online tracking technologies (cookies and similar technologies such as browser fingerprinting), which requires websites to ask consent of EU user’s while they surf the web, most commonly through the use of consent banners where users express their choices to tracking. Even if the consent ecosystem has been refined in recent years and became the business model of consent management platforms (CMPs), at the very end, consent always needs to be compliant. But what makes a cookie consent banner compliant with the EU Law? What banners website publishers, CMPs, and other industrial players should build up to collect the subject's consent for processing personal data and be compliant by design and by default? The webinar presented both the legal and technical requirements for consent banners and described how banners are supposed to be implemented to be fully compliant with the ePrivacy Directive and the GDPR.

17 December 2020 Webinar: Disinformation: The EU Commission’s Response to the COVID-19 Infodemic and the Feasibility of a Consumer-Centric Solution. This webinar followed up on a blog post published by Ruairí Harrison on how the EU Commission has tackled the ever-evolving issue of online disinformation thus far. Ruairí opened the webinar with a presentation of this blog post, looking at the history of disinformation, how EU consumers were impacted by the Covid-19 Infodemic and what role these same consumers could have in future disinformation regulation. Ruairí finally analysed the possible short- and long-term solutions to online disinformation open to EU lawmakers ahead of the EU’s upcoming Digital Services Act. Bram Duivenvoorde  followed up on this with some reflections on the blog post and the topic more generally. To conclude, the presenters opened the floor to discussion and questions on this exciting, contentious issue.

1 December 2020, ‘Big tech firms: monopolies, gatekeepers or systemic actors?’ 
Webinar hosted by Thibault Schrepel. He invited Nicolas Petit, Professor of European Competition Law at European University Institute. Nicolas shared his thoughts on whether big tech firms are monopolies, gatekeepers, or systemic actors and explain why that’s not that simple. 

18 September 2020, Algorithmic Content Moderation – An online expert meeting -  Stefan Kulk will hosted a Governing the Digital Society online expert meeting on the use of algorithms for content moderation. A topic of great interest, especially now that pressure from the EU on platforms to moderate illegal and harmful content is rising and platforms like Facebook and YouTube already use algorithms to filter out content that for example qualifies as hate speech or copyright infringement.

13 February 2020, ‘The Wiretapping of Things’ seminar – Our first event started with a guest lecture by Dr. Eldar Haber based on his most recent paper "The Wiretapping of Things", followed by reactions from Machiko Kanetake, Veronika Nagy and Stefan Kulk as commentators from different disciplines. Inter alia, questions were raised whether the current legal framework that governs stored communication and wiretapping, originally designed for computers and telephones, is still relevant for these new technological developments, and what the solution might be. Moreover, discussed were both the consequences for society, as well as the responsibility of the collective and of individuals.

20^th of March 2020  Seminar with Vassilis Hatzopoulos (University of Athens) on Collaborative Economy 

19^th and 20^th of June 2019 – EuroDIG concerfence on “Cooperation in the Digital Age"  This conference was hosted by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy of the Netherlands in cooperation with ECP – Netherlands Platform for the Information Society, the Municipality of The Hague and SIDN – the .nl domain registry. Stanislaw Tosza was one of the key speakers in the conference panel on "Criminal justice in cyberspace – more of everything?". This panel, in particular, addressed the overall theme of criminal justice in cyberspace in three distinct areas of discussion: regulations, access to data, and technical aspects. The in-depth discussion on this topic can be found in a transcript online, or viewed in video form! 

11^th of June 2019 - Seminar on E-evidence in the U.K. and EU  On the 11th of June the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London hosted a seminar entitled "E-evidence - Developments in the U.K. and EU Criminal Law". One of the speakers was Stanislaw Tosza. The seminar was centered on the European Commission’s proposal on cross-border access to E-evidence and its effects in the U.K. and the EU more broadly. The speakers discussed the CLOUD Act and the recent regulations establishing a framework for interoperability between EU information systems in the area of justice and home affairs, which have already brought about human rights concerns. 

22^nd of May 2019 - Conference on Multi-Level Regulatory Systems 
Stanislaw Tosza spoke at a conference in Luxembourg entitled “Enforcement Challenges in Multi-Level Regulatory Systems: Mapping the Landscapes”. His presentation discussed the EU Commission e-evidence initiative, specifically regarding internet service providers as enforcers and defenders of fundamental rights. The presentation was part of a larger panel on "New challenges and proliferation of enforcers".