The group’s exchanges take place at regular internal workshops and seminars. In principle, these events are only open for our members and are therefore not advertised on the website.
We also organize events that are more broadly open for external parties to participate. You will find any information regarding these events below and on the website’s homepage.
Next events:
Prof. Sarah Lamdan – book presentation “Data Cartels. The Companies That Control and Monopolize Our Information”
On the 20th of March (4-5 pm) we will have the pleasure of welcoming Prof. Sarah Lamdan as a guest on our DRAILS workshop series. She will present her latest book “Data Cartels. The Companies That Control and Monopolize Our Information”, followed by a discussion with attendees.
To participate, please register here.
Sarah Lamdan is Professor of Law at the City University of New York School of Law. She also serves as a Senior Fellow for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a Fellow at NYU School of Law’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy.
Her latest book, Data Cartels, revolves around the fact that, in our digital world, data is power. It brings us into the unregulated underworld of information hoarding businesses, where they reign supreme, using intimidation, aggression, and force to maintain influence and control over data. It demonstrates how the entities mining, commodifying, and selling our data and informational resources perpetuate social inequalities and threaten the democratic sharing of knowledge.
It is a reality today that just a few companies dominate most of our critical informational resources. Often self-identifying as “data analytics” or “business solutions” operations, they supply the digital lifeblood that flows through the circulatory system of the internet. With their control over data, they can prevent the free flow of information, masterfully exploiting outdated information and privacy laws and curating online information in a way that amplifies digital racism and targets marginalized communities. They can also distribute private information to predatory entities. Alarmingly, everything they’re doing is perfectly legal.
In this book, Lamdan contends that privatization and tech exceptionalism have prevented us from creating effective legal regulation. This in turn has allowed oversized information oligopolies to coalesce. In addition to specific legal and market-based solutions, Lamdan calls for treating information like a public good and creating digital infrastructure that supports our democratic ideals.
In this book, Lamdan contends that privatization and tech exceptionalism have prevented us from creating effective legal regulation. This in turn has allowed oversized information oligopolies to coalesce. In addition to specific legal and market-based solutions, Lamdan calls for treating information like a public good and creating digital infrastructure that supports our democratic ideals.
Jerome DE COOMAN – AI & detection of anticompetitive behaviours
On Thursday, March 30, 2023, from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM CET, Jerome DE COOMAN -will be our guest for a Drails online workshop.
As always, our events are free and allow participants to engage in discussion with the presenter.
To participate, please register here.
Artificial Intelligence (hereafter, ‘AI’) systems are widely adopted by public administrations. Competition law does not escape the rule. Recently, non-negligible efforts have been made in ex officio detection of anticompetitive behaviours (above all, bid-rigging) through AI-driven cartel screening. This is unsurprising. On the one hand, AI systems promise to address well-documented flaws in human decision-making, e.g., arbitrariness or bias. On the other hand, AI systems carry the potential to strengthen ex officio investigations. Collusive behaviours are, currently, mainly exposed through leniency applications, whose number is decreasing. It has been suggested AI-driven cartel screening constitutes a useful complement to leniency programmes. AI-driven cartel screening flags indicators of collusion that then trigger the need for further investigation. This increases the probability of detection that destabilises the collusive equilibrium and incentivises leniency applications.
This presentation does not discard the benefits of AI-driven cartel screening. It argues, however, that this algorithmic shift is not a silver bullet. First, as a data-driven solution, algorithmic predictions and recommendations are significantly affected by problems in the availability and quality of data they rely on. Second, limited explicability of some AI systems challenges the duty to state reason that will only be satisfied if public servants using AI system are able to disclose how the different parameters were weighted and to what extent that recommendation was decisive for their final decision.
None of these drawbacks constitute a dead-end. Although not applicable to EU competition law, the EU Proposal for an AI Act provides interesting (at least, embryonic) solutions, i.e., data quality (art. 10 AI Act), transparency (art. 13 AI Act), human oversight (art. 14 AI Act), and accuracy (art. 15 AI Act). Drawing inspiration from these requirements, the presentation seeks to assess how to ensure the improvement of competition law proceedings while safeguarding fundamental rights.
Jerome DE COOMAN
Jerome De Cooman is Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Nicolas Petit (European University Institute, Italy) and Prof. Dr. Pieter Van Cleynenbreugel (University of Liege, Belgium). His research focuses on whether, how, and when to regulate technologies (artificial intelligence in particular). As part of his Ph.D. research, Jerome pays very particular attention to the modernisation of competition law proceedings and the algorithmic shift in the fight against cartelisation.
Jerome is currently a Visiting Student at European University Institute studying the path dependence of regulations. Jerome is also teaching assistant at University of Liege since 2018 in EU Competition Law and EU law, (Big) Data and AI Applications courses. Since 2021, he is Administrative Manager at the Brussels School of Competition, Junior Editor for the Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies (YARS) at the Centre for Antitrust and Regulatory Studies (CARS, University of Warsaw, Poland), and Junior Member of the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA). Jerome holds a Master of Laws from the University of Liege (2017), a Master of Management Sciences from HEC-Liege (2018), and the Law, Cognitive & Artificial Intelligence Technology Programme Certification from the Brussels School of Competition (2019).
Our past public events:
L.L.D. Ulla-Maija Mylly – ‘interface between trade secret and access to information in the context of Artificial Intelligence Act’
On the 9th of February (1-2 pm) we had the pleasure of welcoming LL.D. Ulla-Maija Mylly as a guest in our DRAILS workshop series. She will discuss the “Interface between trade secret and access to information in the context of Artificial Intelligence Act”.
LL.D. Ulla-Maija Mylly joined Hanken School of Economics in May 2022 when she was appointed as Associate professor in Commercial Law. She is currently serving Hanken as Academy Research Fellow and working on her Academy of Finland funded research project on trade secrets and data-driven economy..
She was a TIAS postdoctoral collegium researcher at the Turku Institute of Advanced Studies 2017-2019. She did her first LL.M. at University of Turku and the second at Kyushu University, Japan (International Trade and Business Law). Ulla-Maija has earlier worked among others in various research positions at the Turku School of Economics, University of Turku faculty of law, and as a practicing lawyer. She is trained on the bench. August 2017 – July 2018 she was a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford Intellectual Property Research Center. For September – December 2022 she was a Visiting Researcher at King’s College London, Dickson Poon School of Law.
Ulla-Maija’s research interest covers copyright, patent law and trade secrets, and she has published research related to the fundamental rights as well. Mylly’s research interest lies on the underlying justifications for the regimes in question and potential differences these produce for interpretations. During the Academy of Finland funding period (2021-2026) Mylly will dissect the ambivalent nature of European trade secret protection between the intellectual property and unfair competition paradigms from the perspective of data-driven economy. The research will analyze ways to interpret the provisions of the Trade Secrets Directive in a manner that would be most suitable for the data-driven economy and to the needs of competition and innovation.
Ana Ramalho – legislative instruments overlap in the copyright law and its impact on the freedom to operate.
On the 27th February, 12.30-13.20 DRAILS hosted Ana Ramalho for a presentation on “the legislative instruments overlap in the copyright law and its impact on the freedom to operate”.
The EU legislative activity regulating the digital realm has been increasingly prolific. The overlap of instruments in the current legal framework has already been highlighted by previous research, for example, in relation to the European Media Freedom Act. One of the consequences of this overlap is the growing difficulty that market actors feel in defining their freedom to operate. This presentation will zoom in on a particular field – copyright law – and on how recent legislative developments, such as the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market and the Digital Services Act, interact. The presentation will highlight possible gaps, overlaps and inconsistencies, and the impact that those might have on the freedom to operate of market actors.
Dr. Ana Ramalho is Copyright Counsel at Google. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at Maastricht University, where she founded the Indie Art Legal Clinic (a pro bono legal advice service for artists and cultural entrepreneurs) and was awarded several grants and prizes, including the Fellowship from the IP Institute of Japan and the World Universities Network Research Mobility Award. Ana holds a PhD in Copyright and European Law from the University of Amsterdam (2014), a Research Master in Intellectual Property Law from the University of Lisbon (2008), and an LL.M. in Intellectual Property and Competition Law from the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (2007). She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of World Intellectual Property. She has been a guest lecturer and/or speaker at several foreign Universities and institutions. Ana’s most recent publications include a book on intellectual property protection for AI-generated creations (Routledge, 2022), and a co-edited book on International Perspectives on Disability Exceptions in Copyright Law and the Visual Arts (Routledge, 2021).
Dr Guido Noto La Diega – Internet of Things and the Law: Legal Strategies for Consumer-Centric Smart Technologies
On the 16th of January (12 – 1 pm), we had the pleasure of welcoming Dr Guido Noto La Diega as a guest in our Drails workshop series. They will be presenting their latest book, “Internet of Things and the Law: Legal Strategies for Consumer-Centric Smart Technologies”. Our Drails’ member and friend, Gaëlle Fruy, acted as discussant on the occasion.
Internet of Things and the Law: Legal Strategies for Consumer-Centric Smart Technologies is the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the legal issues in the Internet of Things (IoT). For decades, the decreasing importance of tangible wealth and power – and the increasing significance of their disembodied counterparts – has been the subject of much legal research. For some time now, legal scholars have grappled with how laws drafted for tangible property and predigital ‘offline’ technologies can cope with dematerialisation, digitalisation, and the internet. As dematerialisation continues, this book aims to illuminate the opposite movement: rematerialisation, namely, the return of data, knowledge, and power within a physical ‘smart’ world. This development frames the book’s central question: can the law steer rematerialisation in a human-centric and socially just direction? To answer it, the book focuses on the IoT, the sociotechnological phenomenon that is primarily responsible for this shift. After a thorough analysis of how existing laws can be interpreted to empower IoT end users, Noto La Diega leaves us with the fundamental question of what happens when the law fails us and concludes with a call for collective resistance against ‘smart’ capitalism.
Dr Guido Noto La Diega is an award-winning Scotland-based Sicily-born academic with a passion for law and technology. They are Associate Professor of Intellectual Property and Privacy Law at the University of Stirling, Faculty of Arts and Humanities. At Stirling, Noto La Diega leads the Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Network SCOTLIN (Scottish Law and Innovation Network); is Deputy Chair of the Faculty’s Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee; and carries out research at the Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance, and Privacy (CRISP). Currently, they are leading the AHRC-DfG-funded international research project ‘From Smart Technologies to Smart Consumer Laws: Comparative Perspectives from Germany and the United Kingdom’, in partnership with the universities of Osnabrück, Warwick, and Bonn. Outside of Stirling, Noto La Diega is Member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on AI and Data in Education and Training, Fellow of the Nexa Center for Internet and Society, Research Associate at the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies, and Co-Convenor of the Open Section of the Society of Legal Scholars, the oldest and largest society of law academics in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Noto La Diega’s main expertise is in Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, robotics, and blockchain. Their work is animated by the conviction that the law should be pivotal to human-centric, and socially just sustainable technologies.
Aurore Troussel – The normative power of dominant digital platforms
On the 12th of October, we had the chance to host Aurore Troussel for a workshop dedicated to the presentation of her research on the normative power of dominant digital platforms.
The event was organized in collaboration with the research project PROSEco.
The normative power of dominant digital platforms
The past decades are characterized by the meteoric rise of digital platforms. Simultaneously, the number of scandals involving platforms increased and raised growing concerns about the unchecked power of these companies. Beyond the conventional threats posed by platforms and identified by the literature (e.g., platforms’ monopoly, fake news, personal data breaches, etc.), platforms are transforming our relations to the law and the regulation overall. This phenomenon is more subtle than the above-mentioned glaring issues, however it is at least equally important in relation to the rule of law. The analysis of the balance of powers between governments and digital platforms shows that a competition between States’ regulation and platforms’ regulation emerges. This phenomenon is of particular importance and needs to be documented. To understand how digital platforms are regulating cyberspace, it is necessary to analyze their architecture, tools, and behavior. This presentation sheds some light on the normative power of dominant digital platforms by providing an overview of their governance tools.
About Aurore Troussel
Aurore Troussel is a PhD student in law and innovation at the University of Montreal and HEC Paris. Her thesis focuses on the normative value of computer code and digital platforms. Aurore works as an affiliated researcher at the Cyberjustice Laboratory (Canada), where she mainly works on the development of machine learning algorithms for the analysis of court decisions. Aurore also works for the SMART Law Hub, a research laboratory in law and artificial intelligence hosted by HEC Paris and Institut Polytechnique. Aurore is qualified at the Paris Bar and specializes in data protection and competition law. She holds a master’s degree in European business law from Panthéon-Assas University and an LLM in law and international management from HEC Paris. During her training, Aurore had several professional experiences, including internships at the European Commission (competition law), in international law firms (Norton Rose Fulbright and Steptoe & Johnson), and in lobbying. In addition, Aurore worked as a legal counsel for an online dispute resolution start-up (justice.cool) for one year.
Presentation of the book ‘The Economics of Platforms – Concepts and Strategy’ – by its author: P. Belleflamme.
On the 15th of June, we had the chance to host Paul Belleflamme for a workshop dedicated to the presentation of its last book: The Economics of Platforms.
Book description
Digital platforms controlled by Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tencent and Uber have transformed not only the ways we do business, but also the very nature of people’s everyday lives. It is of vital importance that we understand the economic principles governing how these platforms operate. This book explains the driving forces behind any platform business with a focus on network effects. The authors use short case studies and real-world applications to explain key concepts such as how platforms manage network effects and which price and non-price strategies they choose. This self-contained text is the first to offer a systematic and formalized account of what platforms are and how they operate, concisely incorporating path-breaking insights in economics over the last twenty years.
About Paul Belleflamme:
Paul Belleflamme graduated in economics at the University of Namur (1991), where he received his doctoral degree in economics (1997). He also holds a Master of Arts in Economics from Columbia University (1992). In 1998, he became lecturer in economics at Queen Mary, University of London, where he obtained a Post Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP) in November 2001. Since September 2002, Paul is professor of economics at UCLouvain, where he is attached to the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) and to the Louvain School of Management (LSM). Between January 2017 and August 2018, Paul took a leave of absence from UCLouvain so as to acquire new experiences; during that period, he was professor at AMSE (Aix-Marseille School of Economics) and visiting professor at Kedge Business School.
Paul’s main research area is theoretical industrial organization, with a special focus on innovation in the digital economy (which is also the main topic of his blog, www.IPdigIT.eu). Paul has published widely in leading economics journals and, with Martin Peitz, is the author of Industrial Organization: Markets and Strategies (Cambridge University Press, 2010 and 2015). Paul is a fellow of the CESifo Research Network. He is associate editor of Journal of Economics, co-editor of E-conomics and managing editor of Regards Economiques. He also served as associate editor of Information Economics and Policy, and of Review of Network Economics.
Liability for Defective Products in light of Connected Devices
On the 21st of April 2022, DRAILS member Gaelle Fruy presented her research on “Liability for Defective Products in the Light of Connected Devices“
Connected devices are now ubiquitous and their use is widespread among consumers. The risks of damage caused by these emerging digital technologies are real and therefore raise the question of the applicability of the Directive 85/374/EEC (“the Product Liability Directive”). Certain inherent characteristics of these technologies bring out the limits of key notions in the current defective product liability regime (such as the definitions of “product”, “default”, “producer”) and question whether the concept of “putting into circulation” remains relevant. A reform at the European level is under way and should be completed in the third quarter of this year. The presentation aims at outlining the risks related to the use of connected devices for consumers and explaining the limits of the current legal framework while commenting on the amendments considered by the European Commission.
Negotiating the legal status of AI systems in the EU
On the 24th of March 2022, our colleague Diana Mocanu presented her latest paper on the negotiation of the legal status of AI systems in the EU.
In it as we shall see, she discusses the ‘status question’, which concerns the matter of qualifying and categorizing artificial intelligence (AI) systems in legal terms. This question is what the presentation and eponymous article seek to contribute to answering, by proposing negotiation as the method by which an optimal answer to such a question can be arrived at. The parties involved in the negotiation and the terms being negotiated are also penned out, in an attempt to frame the apparently unsolvable theoretical debates into a practical issue of procedural creativity by situating that answer in the EU’s current context, especially with regards to the AI Act proposal.
The impact of deployment of AI technologies in the field of creative industries for copyright and related rights
On the 17th of February from 12.30 to 2pm, the first DRAILS conference of 2022 took place.
Three of our Members – Sari Depreeuw, Alain Strowel & Luc Desaunettes-Barbero – presented their research on AI and copyright in the cultural sector. Over the last few years, AI solutions have indeed been deployed in the cultural and creative sectors to assist or complete the process of creation. The reliance on AI technologies for or during the creative process might yet challenge copyright and/or related rights. Questions arise concerning the use of protected inputs for developing AI technologies or concerning the protection afforded to creative contributors in relation to the outcome of the AI-powered process. Based on several examples, the presentation provided an overview of the current issues and discussed how they could be addressed at the EU level.
Beyond explainability: justifiability and contestability of Algorithmic Decision Systems
On the 1st of June 2021 the 10th and last DRAILS conference planned for the academic year took place.
It was an opportunity to engage in a discussion with Prof. Daniel Le Métayer and Clément Henin based on their paper: “Beyond explainability: justifiability and contestability of Algorithmic Decision Systems”.
In the paper, they point out that explainability is useful but not sufficient to ensure the legitimacy of algorithmic decision systems. They argue that the key requirements for high-stakes decision systems should be justifiability and contestability, highlighting the conceptual differences between explanations and justifications, providing dual definitions of justifications and contestations, and suggesting different ways to operationalize justifiability and contestability.
The article has lately been published in the prestigious AI&Society.
Présentation des recherches de la Chaire Intelligence artificielle responsable à l’échelle mondiale de l’Université d’Ottawa
Le 19 mai notre dernière conférence publique a été l’occasion d’une présentation des recherches menées au sein de la Chaire Intelligence artificielle responsable à l’échelle mondiale de l’Université d’Ottawa.
Céline Castets-Renard (Professeure titulaire à l’Université d’Ottawa, Faculté de droit civil, titulaire de la Chaire Intelligence artificielle, responsable à l’échelle mondiale) et Éléonore Fournier-Tombs (Coordinatrice de la Chaire de recherche sur l’IA responsable dans un contexte mondial à l’Université d’Ottawa) ont présenté leur projet concernant les « Usages de l’Intelligence Artificielle dans la lutte contre la covid-19 au Sénégal et Mali »
Anne-Sophie Hulin (Post doc au sein d’ANITI [France] et de l’Université d’Ottawa) présentera un projet de recherche qu’elle conduit sur « les Fiducies de données ».
Open talk around the EU Regulation of AI
With D. De Cicco and C. Helleputte
On the 4th of May DRAILS organized an Open talk around the EU regulation of #AI, presented by DRAILS members and cybersecurity, data, and privacy experts Diletta De Cicco and Charles Helleputte.
For an overview of the subject matter, see the very helpful infographic that they prepared :
New Laws of Robotics – Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI
With F. Pasquale
On the 1st of April DRAILS was pleased to host its second public event: a discussion around the newly published New Laws of Robotics – Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI with none other than its author, Frank Pasquale, Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, NY.
Anatomy of an AI System
With R. Bellanova
On the 19th of January, our colleague Rocco Bellanova (USL-B et UvAmsterdam), gave a public presentation focussing on Crawford and Joler’s project from 2018 titled Anatomy of an AI System and published by AI Now Institute and Share Lab. This is a research and artistic project which produced a quite compelling work on “The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources”. It is available at https://anatomyof.ai.
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