Program

The Internet, cellphone and video are essential to how we communicate now. Massive numbers of people put themselves on display in weblogs and on sites like Flickr, MySpace and YouTube. A “second life” is being marketed under the buzzword Web 2.0.

Huge quantities of data are available—often made public by the subjects themselves, though mostly with hardly a clue about the potential consequences of having done so. In the digital world, is it even possible to enforce our fundamental rights to the protection of our personal information and our private sphere? What exactly does it mean to have a fundamental right to information? How is the private sphere changing in the transparent world of digital media?

Ars Electronica and the Fundamental Rights Section of the Austrian Judges Association are jointly organizing this interdisciplinary symposium. Following an introduction to the subject by international experts, the first afternoon session is intended to heighten judicial consciousness of the need for legal protection in certain areas. On the second day, attention will shift to society’s current conception of the private sphere in the novel context of terrorism and Web 2.0.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007, Morning Session, Lentos Museum of Art

Moderator: Hans-Peter Lehofer

9:30 AM Opening Remarks

10 AM Useful Forgetting
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Department of Information and Infrastructure Policies, Harvard University

11–11:30 AM Coffee Break

11:30 AM Limits of Existing Legislation and Legal Precedents with Respect to the Demands of Life Online (Examples)
Joichi Ito, activist, entrepreneur, member of the board of directors of Creative Commons, ICANN and WITNESS, Japan

12:15 PM Current Developments on the European Level and the Latest Initiatives of the European Commission
Wolf-Dietrich Grussmann, EU Commission, Directorate-General for Information Society and Media, Brussels

1–2:30 PM Lunch Break (light buffet on-site)