Information Society Law Center
Department of Legal Studies “Cesare Beccaria”
University of Milan, Italy
2023 1st ISLC ONLINE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
#ISLC-CONF2023
Call for Contributions
The Scientific Committee of the Information Society Law Center of the University of Milan, Italy, invite submission of contributions for the 1st annual Conference (ISLC-CONF 2023) to be held online on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, February 20, 21 and 22, 2023.
What is ISLC-CONF?
ISLC-CONF is a discussion-based academic conference.
How does the Conference work?
The Conference Committee will select 36 contributions, divided by thematic sessions. The authors will have thirty minutes to answer questions, from scholars around the world, about their proposal. Questions will be posed by the Research Fellows of the Center and by special guests.
The purpose is to activate a discussion – and new lines of research – on all the most innovative topics that link new technologies to social and legal issues.
I want to submit a contribution. Which topics could be addressed in the contribution?
The scholar is free to choose any topic that is related to the relationship between law, society, and technology.
Since the author will not be giving a traditional speech/presentation, but will be answering questions posed by other researchers, or will listen to challenges to his/her extended abstracts, we recommend choosing frontier topics, which require a debate whether the approach to the research is agreeable or not.
We would like to suggest, for example, the following topics:
- Global electronic surveillance.
- The cybersecurity emergency and the vulnerability of critical infrastructure, especially in healthcare.
- The ongoing information warfare (fake news and disinformation, information warfare).
- Cybercrimes and their evolution in the pandemic period.
- Privacy and data protection.
- The policies of Europe, Japan, China, the United States and other Countries on digital issues.
- Artificial intelligence, big data and discrimination.
- Platform liability and hate speech, hate content, terrorism and propaganda.
- The copyright directive, open data, open content and the limits of copyright in the digital age.
- Human rights and digital policy.
- The risks for the safety of cybersecurity researchers, liability issues related to illicit contents and dark web, mental health problems related to the consumption of propaganda/illicit content on the Internet.
- Digitalization and the future of work.
- Online misogyny, digital gender violence, forensics linguistics.
Rules on Submission
The Authors should submit an abstract and, if selected for the conference, an extended abstract.
Abstracts of 300-600 words should be submitted for the peer-review process. If the abstract is accepted for the Conference, authors should submit an extended abstract. The abstract should not contain any reference, either in the footnote or in the bibliography, that would identify the author.
Please indicate in the title of the abstract which session the proposal is for.
The “extended abstract” should have a maximum of 10 pages (30,000 characters, including spaces and multi-page notes), and must be sufficiently detailed to illustrate the innovative aspects of the proposal.
It need not contain introduction, state of the art, notes or bibliographic references. If bibliographic references are included, the list should be presented at the end of the document; the pages containing the list of references will not count towards the 10-page limit. It is important, on the contrary, that it contains clear ideas, and innovative research proposals of the author, and possible discussion points.
The six working sessions of the conference
The Conference will be divided into six working sessions, each of half a day (three hours).
February 20, morning (CET Time)
The first session (#cybersec) will focus on cybersecurity, surveillance, monitoring and facial recognition, and discrimination aspects. The abstracts and papers will be collected, and distributed to the reviewers, by Pierluigi Perri, who will also organize the discussion.
February 20, afternoon (CET Time)
The second session (#datagov) will have as its theme privacy, data protection, online reputation and identity. Abstracts and papers will be collected, and distributed to the reviewers, by Simone Bonavita, who will also take care of the organization of the discussion.
February 21, morning (CET Time)
The third session (#cybercrimes) will have as its theme cybercrimes, digital investigations, online hate, terrorism, hate speech and fake news and disinformation and the safety of cybersecurity researchers. Abstracts and papers will be collected, and distributed to the reviewers, by Giovanni Ziccardi, who will also organize the discussion.
February 21, afternoon (CET Time)
The fourth session (#harassment) will have as its theme minors, cyberbullying, cyberstalking, revenge porn. Abstracts and papers will be collected, and distributed to the reviewers, by Samanta Stanco, who will also be in charge of organizing the discussion.
February 22, morning (CET Time)
The fifth session (#regulations) will have as its theme European Union and international policies on digital, crypto and blockchain, the problem of platforms and their responsibilities, and intellectual property, AI and strategy, smart cities, green tech and climate change. Abstracts and papers will be collected, and distributed to the reviewers, by Paulina Kowalicka, who will also take care of the organization of the discussion.
February 22, afternoon (CET Time)
The sixth session (#legaltech) will have as its theme family tech, legal design, legal tech, responsible use of technologies by children and adults, media literacy. Abstracts and papers will be collected, and distributed to the reviewers, by Giulia Pesci, who will also be in charge of organizing the discussion.
The language of the abstract must be English.
The discussion around the extended version of the abstract will be held in English.
Please indicate in the title of the abstract which session the proposal is for.
Key dates
Short abstracts due: November 15, 2022, by 10 PM CET time, no exceptions, to:
informationsocietylawcenter@gmail.com
Notification of acceptance: December 15, 2022
Extended abstract submission: January 30, 2023, no exceptions, to:
informationsocietylawcenter@gmail.com
Research integrity and transparency
It is mandatory to indicate whether the research described in the submitted abstract has underlying public and private funding, so that the Committee can detect conflicts of interest or other barriers to submission.
Please email if there are any questions or concerns: informationsocietylawcenter@gmail.com
FAQ
Who can participate in this call?
Everyone. Scholars with a technical or legal background, Fellows of the ISLC Center and any other Research Center in the world can also participate.
Does a short abstract have to have a single author?
Yes. The event is designed specifically for the scholarly community to dialogue with individual scholars and engage with their ideas, so we only admit abstracts with a single author. The only exception may be an abstract with TWO authors but where the parts and ideas that each individual author has developed are clearly indicated in the first note of the extended abstract.
How do we select extended abstracts for ISLC-CONF?
The review of short abstracts will be blind: authors of the abstracts will be anonymous for the reviewer.
Abstracts will be reviewed, and choose, by the 120 Non-Residential, and Residential, Research Fellows of the Research Center.
How many extended abstracts will be accepted for discussion over the three days of the Conference?
36 extended abstracts (6 for each half-day working session) will be accepted.
Publication of the Proceedings
The Conference Committee will consider publishing the contributions in 2023 as conference proceedings.