A paper written jointly by the Edinburgh CREATe team has been awarded third place in the Lexis Nexis best paper award at the International Legal Informatics Symposium (IRIS), being held this year in Salzburg, Austria. The paper by Smita Kheria, Daithi Mac Sithigh, Judith Rauhofer, and Burkhard Schafer titled ‘( Mis)appropriation Art? Copyright and Data protection implications of “CCTV sniffing” as art‘ analyses the legal implications of performance art using CCTV cameras. The paper will be published in the proceedings.
Already in its 14th year, IRIS has been established as the largest and most important academic conference on computers and law in Austria and Central Europe.
The leading topic of IRIS2013 was Abstraction and Application.
In law, abstraction should give a focused view on the essential, i.e. the concrete elements and their characteristics receive a certain conceptual meaning. Generalization and their formal representation are the basis for the multi-layered representation of the law (text, commentary, legal ontologies, logical structures, etc.).
The application is an application software programme to solve user problems. The application is the practice of theory and abstraction. The software can be very complex reflecting its importance in the knowledge society. The app is an application for smart phones and tablet computers (e.g. RIS: app to search in the consolidated version of the federal law).
While the abstraction has a very long tradition, the application and the app are a recent development. Complex processes should be supported by means of a user-friendly smart phone application, which in turn requires an abstraction (and simplification). In law, the challenge of the app is presenting complex search queries and documents in a simple and user-friendly form.
One of the goals of the IRIS2013 is to highlight the interaction between abstraction and application in law and to find appropriate practical solutions. Contributions for other topics are also welcome!
The IRIS conference is well known for its interdisciplinary approach and the involvement of administration, business and civil society.
Conference language is German but partly also English. Of the 6 tracks, one will be in English.