Digital Legal Lab Newsletter September

Hi! Thanks for reading the monthly Digital Legal Lab newsletter, where we round up the latest news & views from our cross-university research collaboration on digital legal studies. For more information, updates and events, please visit our website or follow us on social media.

What's new at the Digital Legal Lab

Last Reminder: Digital Legal Talks Paper Submission Deadline Tomorrow!

The Digital Legal Lab is excited to remind you about the fifth edition of Digital Legal Talks, happening on November 28-29, 2024 in Utrecht. The submission deadline for papers is tomorrow, September 15!

This year's conference focuses on Law and Digital Technologies, covering key topics like:

• Responsible data sharing and AI regulation

• Digitalization of justice systems

• Technology for law and legal practice

• Digital platforms and public interest enforcement

• Data protection and cybersecurity

Researchers, both junior and senior, are invited to submit extended abstracts (up to 1500 words) via Oxford Abstracts for presentation on November 28. Accepted papers will be announced on October 4.

Don't miss this opportunity—submit your work and be part of this exciting event!

The Digtal Legal Lab is proud to announce that our member, Gerasimos Spanakis, is participating in a groundbreaking study titled “Fixed and Adaptive Simultaneous Machine Translation Strategies Using Adapters”, alongside Yusuf Can Semerci, Johannes (Jan) C. Scholtes, and Abderrahmane Issam.

The study introduces innovative strategies using lightweight adapter modules, enabling a single translation model to support multiple latency levels. This advancement eliminates the need for separate models for different scenarios, delivering high-quality translations without sacrificing speed or efficiency.

By reducing computational costs and training time, while maintaining or improving performance across latency conditions, this paper marks a significant leap forward in real-time translation technology. For those interested, the pre-print of the paper is available online.

The Digital Legal Lab is eager to announce that our member, Anna van Duin, has recently co-authored a thought-provoking paper titled “Immaterial Damages in Collective Actions Under the GDPR: Back to the Core”, published in the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Burgerlijk Recht (NTBR), alongside Aart Jonkers, Jan Wassink, and Kirsten Meiring.

The paper explores the role of collective actions in claiming immaterial damages under the GDPR, focusing on the efficiency and effectiveness of class actions compared to individual proceedings in cases of large-scale commercial privacy violations. The authors argue that collective actions provide a more effective and efficient approach for addressing these violations, aligning with both the Dutch Act on Collective Damages (WAMCA) and GDPR, and ultimately offering better access to justice and adequate compensation for affected parties.

The paper is available in Dutch for those interested.

Hadassa Noorda, Assistant Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Amsterdam and member of the Digital Legal Lab, along with Jeevan Hariharan, co-authored an article titled “Imprisoned at Work: The Impact of Employee Monitoring on Physical Privacy and Individual Liberty”. The paper, set to be published in the Modern Law Review, explores how contemporary employee monitoring practices, such as keystroke logging and geolocational tracking, extend beyond informational privacy concerns.

The authors argue that monitoring also infringes on physical privacy and, in extreme cases, can curtail individual liberty to the point of resembling imprisonment. They discuss the legal ramifications of these practices, touching on employee consent and workplace freedom.

The full paper can be accessed on SSRN.