The 24th International Legal Informatics Symposium deals with cybergoverance, i.e. the question of how this global virtual space should be regulated, by whom, with which rules and how compliance can be achieved.
In February 2020, the International Legal Informatics Symposium (IRIS) was themed "Responsible Digitalization." With the coronavirus pandemic just beginning at that time - IRIS2020 could with some bellyache nevertheless be held as scheduled and without COVID-19 cases - this topic has gained even more relevance almost overnight. From mandatory work from home to court hearings via video conferencing, the pandemic has led to a massive digitalization push in companies and government agencies.
But when everyone is in digital space and increasingly conducting transactions there, the question of how to regulate this space arises. Cyberspace is, after all, a virtual space, somewhere and nowhere; there is no other way to describe the physical reality of networks, routers and clouds. That's why this year's IRIS - which, by necessity, is almost largely virtual - is themed "Cybergovernance."
This year, the actual conference in February was still accompanied by an IRIS trimester, a series of webinars on the IRIS topics, held jointly with the WZRI Vienna Center for Legal Informatics, RI@ rechtsinformatik.ACADEMY and Weblaw.
Cybergoverance - we see this term very broadly as any form of regulation in cyberspace with effective trust building and behavior stabilization in the legal topics of e-person, e-transaction, e-document, e-dispute resolution and e-law enforcement in the legal areas of e-government, e-justice, e-democracy and e-civil society.
As usual, the conference proceedings include contributions on the practical problems and applications of legal informatics in addition to new scientific findings. The multimedial publication in cooperation with Editions Weblaw continues.
The conference volume is divided into the following thematic groups:
- General topic: Cybergovernance
- Corona Pandemic and Legal Informatics
- LegalTech / Legal Informatics Systems / AI & Law
- Security & Law
- E-Government / E-Justice
- E-Democracy / E-Participation / E-Lawmaking
- Legal theory / legal visualization / legal design / robolaw
- Privacy & Data Protection
- IP Law
- e-commerce
The organizers of IRIS21 are indebted to numerous individuals who contribute to making it possible to hold this academic platform of legal informatics. The many stakeholders are listed on the following pages under IRIS Organization. Special mention should be made of the Universities of Vienna (ARI Working Group on Legal Informatics in cooperation with the WZRI Vienna Center for Legal Informatics) and Salzburg (Wissensnetzwerk Recht Wirtschaft und Arbeitswelt), the program chair Erich Schweighofer and the co-chairs Franz Kummer, Ahti Saarenpää, Stefan Eder and Philip Hanke (publication chair); the local coordinator Maria Stoiber and the local organization team at the University of Salzburg led by Dietmar Jahnel and Peter Mader as well as the Vienna organization team.
The authors deserve our sincere thanks for their contributions, which were edited with the greatest possible care.
Conference proceedings are documentations of snapshots of science, namely of cherished meetings of the scientific community. The IRIS concept provides for the greatest possible dissemination of the results. In addition to the printed conference proceedings, the publisher Editions Weblaw simultaneously publishes an online version in the journal Jusletter IT (https://www.jusletter-it.eu). Numerous contributions that could no longer find a place in the printed edition are made available to interested readers in the online version. The previously published conference proceedings (from the year 2000 onwards) can be accessed in the Jusletter IT archive. Special thanks are due to the Weblaw team for their thoughtful and dedicated support of the publication process.
We hope that this conference volume in printed and electronic form will be received with similar interest as the conference volumes of previous years!
Brussels, Vienna, Bern and Rovaniemi, February 2021
Erich Schweighofer, Franz Kummer, Ahti Saarenpää, Stefan Eder and Philip Hanke
