 Hi everybody, my name is Amar Asher, I'm the Assistant Director of Research at the Berkman Client Center for Internet and Society and part of the Secretariat for the Global Network of Internet and Society Centers. And today I'm really excited to be speaking with Professor Jacques de Wara, who is a professor at the University of Geneva and also is the Director of their newly formed Digital Law Center. And today I'm so excited to speak with you because I know that we've been long-term collaborators, Jacques, and you've been part of the network of centers for a long time, but the Digital Law Center is a relatively new undertaking for you. So before we talk more about the Digital Law Center, would you like to just briefly introduce yourself? Yes, thanks very much Amar, it's great to see you virtually today. So I'm now a professor at the University of Geneva at the Law School and I teach intellectual property as well as contract law and also digital law. And I'm now in charge of the Digital Law Center, about which we may want to talk more in a few seconds, I guess. Great, so that's my first question for you. I would love to hear a little bit more about the Digital Law Center, how it came to being and what it's focused on and how you are operating it. Sure. So before I shall talk about the center, I first would like to indicate that I had a chance to work closely with the Berkman Klein Center and other members of the network of centers in the past. Before the center, our Digital Law Center was created and that's quite recent because it was made in the last months over the summer. The center that we've created is basically part of a university-wide initiative in order to foster digital activities at the University of Geneva. And one of the reasons why the university wants to engage more in digital activities is also because we're privileged to have this quite unique ecosystem in terms of global digital policymaking in Geneva. And as you certainly know, the IGF, for instance, has its secretariat here in Geneva and we have many other global digital policy makers and players located basically at our doors. Obviously, in the face in the time of COVID, that doesn't make a huge difference because we do everything virtually, but in a normal situation when we can promote face-to-face meetings, this is a huge asset and the university really wants to capitalize on that, which led basically to the creation of the Digital Law Center and we're basically continuing and developing activities that we've launched in the past in terms of education, research and also policymaking in various facets of digital law on which I guess we will come in a few minutes. Excellent. So that would be great to tell us more about what aspects of digital law that you are focused on right now or that you would like to focus on and how that might contribute to this ecosystem that you're in, both within Geneva but also within this broader ecosystem of internet and society centers because I know that many of our centers really do come from a number of different disciplines and obviously focused on many start, start at or exist at law schools but work cross-disciplinary and work across sectors as well as you work with both the private sector and the public sector in that sense. So we'd love to just hear a little bit more about some of those specific issues that you are currently looking at or that you'd like to be researching. So we've launched by way of illustration a project two years ago on cybersecurity and liability issues to see how the legal concept of liability can apply when faced with cyber attacks and cybersecurity issues and which has led to various publications and also events that we've organized at the university. And we have recently focused on one specific aspect of cybersecurity policy which is cyber-interest. So we've been working on a paper which was actually a mandate from the public government here in Geneva, the content of Geneva, which basically wanted to explore whether cyber-interest policy might be a relevant tool for small and medium enterprises to increase the level of protection in terms of cybersecurity. So that's one line of activity and for that specific project we realized basically that we had a lot of players located in Geneva and in other places in Switzerland which could also have a significant role to play in this discussion. And we always try as a matter of principle and that's the case also for that cyber-interest project to connect the dots so to say and make sure that we get interdisciplinary perspectives and also cross-border perspective because we all know that many if not all of these issues would need ideally to be discussed and so that the global level. Excellent, thank you. And I think that's a great cross-sectional issue in particular to highlight because of the ways that or the perspectives that I think something like cybersecurity really needs in order to address some of these problems. So it's not only legal perspectives but it's very much the technical perspectives and the governance perspectives that you have to address while trying to address while trying to solve challenges of cybersecurity. So I'd love to hear more about your plans for the next year. I know that it's the center as you mentioned was just formed in the past couple of months and that you have a lot of history of work that you've built on whether it be on issues of cybersecurity or digital law but what is it that you're most excited about coming up over the next year? So what we will continue and develop is to build on our growing community of digital law and digital policy experts over the next months and more specifically what we will organize again next year is our digital law summer school in the course of which we had the privilege to work with the Berkman Klein colleagues specifically on Chris Babitz and Chris I must say that here too has been an incredible support for us because he was here from the first year of the summer school which we launched back in 2014 and every year since then he has joined us. I mean that was this year done for the first time in a virtual way but otherwise Chris really came back every year and supported us in that process so we will certainly launch again our digital law summer school and also involve one more alumni and would be of course delighted to involve other colleagues and centers from the network and in connection to the digital law summer school what we will also do is to reorganize our digital law research colloquium which is an event which takes place during the summer school in the course of which young scholars have the opportunity to present their ongoing research project and get input and feedback from more from more senior people so that's certainly what we want to do that's for let's say education and research and in terms of policy we will certainly continue to work on that topic that I mentioned earlier in terms of cyber insurance and to continue and increase our activity about cyber security topics but of course we will also be very interested to follow and be active about interesting developments in terms of digital policy making taking place in Europe specifically with respect to data governance and data law which as you certainly know is really very fast moving modes so to say in terms of upcoming European regulations or projects so we've also been working on that and we'll certainly continue to do so in the future and that topic in particular on data governance is one thing that I've certainly been hearing a lot from other network of centers centers as a real topic of interest especially over the next five years as there is a complex environment of regulations emerging as there's new scholarship emerging around data governance and new questions about data governance so I'm glad that you brought that up as a topic and then as well I've also been hearing more from different centers about this particular modality of summer schools and I know that University of Geneva and you in particular have been running these for a very long time now and have established a really wonderful example and template one that I think has been replicated in a number of spaces around the world so for instance I was just speaking with a network of a new network of centers colleague in Ghana who is doing internet sort of internet governance summer schools and winter schools and so this is something that I think has been a real feature of the golden network of internet society centers where centers have been able to organize these programs and involve other collaborators from other centers like you were saying professor Chris Babitz who is involved in your center I think that's one of the most unique features of the network that's happened over the last couple of years finally I would love to just ask you about ways that people can collaborate with you I know that the summer school is one it sounds like you have a really exciting agenda for the digital law center what are what are the ways that you would like to invite others within the network of centers to collaborate with you but what are possibilities to do that I think I really want to start by emphasizing what you just said and the importance of us also to share the potential best practices that we developed over time about the summer school and about other activities that we have I think it's critical if I think more broadly and more fundamentally to to educate as broadly as possible and as as clearly and as efficiently as possible about global digital policy issues and would be certainly delighted to see how we could cooperate with other centers in order to to share our experience in terms of education and in that respect one thing that I would also love to explore with with other centers is to make sure that we can somehow find ways to make our local ecosystem in Geneva accessible to the members of the centers so as I was saying earlier I think we we are privileged to have this interaction with many of the global policy makers and it will obviously be great if we could facilitate the interactions between other members of the center and this global community also to make sure that there is a strong and mutually fruitful ties and interactions which can be created which can only lead to positive results so that we as academics and I speak for myself at least can better understand the policy implications of certain issues on which we're working and conversely we hope that the policymakers can perhaps have a better understanding of certain of the underlying issues that we economics may have explored in in more details than policymakers can do in view of the constraints that they hurt they face so I really hope in a nutshell that the digital law center can somehow facilitate this interaction between the local Geneva based international community and the members of the network of center I love that as a particular theme of the network of centers which is making the local global and making the global local that's very much I think in the spirit of how we've thought about the development of this network and facilitating this network where it's about peer connections amongst nodes within the network but it's also very much about the network as a whole and how do we actually use this basis of the network to highlight and elevate and learn about local issues and connect to local ecosystems such as the one in Geneva and how do you also bring that outwards and I think that the digital law center is such a wonderful representation of of that nexus where both can happen and you can have sort of perspectives from outside Geneva come in and and share them with you whether it be through formats like summer schools or on education or on policy issues but then you can also share that knowledge more broadly with the rest of the network of centers as you have been doing for the past many many years so I really love that as a point and as a theme for as we talk about the network of centers and its role within this broader space finally is there anything else that you would like to share or add to this conversation um just um a quick note of of gratitude for what you and and all the the colleagues at the berkman client center have been doing over the years I had the chance to spend some times in Boston in Cambridge a few years ago and I think this is absolutely fascinating what you've done with of course the other centers involved in the network of centers and I think it's really critical and I think also in terms of geopolitical situation I think it's critical for us to come together and try to come up with global views and trans interdisciplinary views transversal views on many of these issues that's basically concern everyone on the planet so I think it's it's fantastic and I'm really grateful and honored to be part now of this network of centers we're very much missing you and Cambridge along with many of our other collaborator collaborators who often traveled through Cambridge during these um months of the academic year so it is difficult to not have that in person but at least we have the second best thing which is to be able to connect in person in real time over over video so I'm grateful at least for that and for the excuse to have a reason to talk with you as well so thank you again um Jack it's always wonderful it's always a pleasure so I appreciate you being part of this conversation series thank you thank you I thank you thank you great thanks