Global Technology Law and Policy

Global Technology Law and Policy: Spring 2021

Global Technology Law and Policy is an intensive seminar that is a collective initiative of the University of Ottawa, the University of Haifa, and Bocconi University with students from each university participating. This year’s course will take place online with all classes held on Zoom. The course focus for the year will be a comparative examination of intersection between COVID-19 and law, policy and technology. Key topics will include:

Misinformation, COVID-19 and Internet Platforms
Data Privacy and Security under Pressure in the COVID Age
COVID and the Classroom: IP, academic freedom and privacy
Legal issues – The Race to the Vaccine: from Invention to Distribution

As noted below, classes will feature lectures, group work, and guest lecturers. Students are asked to prepare for classes with brief readings, video lectures, and podcasts.

The final two days of the course will feature group presentations. Students should have received emails indicating to which group they have been assigned.

Course Schedule (Draft Subject to Change – as of April 19, 2021):

April 28, 2021 – Introduction, Misinformation and Platform Liability

10:00 – 13:00 (Ottawa), 16:00 – 19:00 (Milan), 17:00 – 20:00 (Haifa)

Readings:

Group exercise – please review in advance

Perry and Zarsky, Liability for Online Anonymous Speech: Comparative and Economic Analyses, 206-208, 211-216, 219-222, 228-231, 235, 237-241, 243-4, 247-250, 253-4.

Israel starts Covid vaccine drive as Facebook groups taken down, The Guardian (Dec. 20, 2020).

Facebook removes Israeli anti-vaccine ‘fake news’ groups, posts, JPost (Dec. 20th, 2020).

Mike Isaac, Facebook says it plans to remove posts with false vaccine claims.The New York Times (Feb. 8, 2021)

Audio/Video:

Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media

Guests:

April 29, 2021 – Misinformation and Platform Liability

9:00 – 13:00 (Ottawa), 15:00 – 19:00 (Milan), 16:00 – 20:00 (Haifa)

Readings:

Limor Shmerling Magazanik, “Five Thoughts about “Immunity Passports”, Linkdin, Jul 12th, 2020.

Tal Z. Zarsky, Social Justice, Social Norms and the Governance of Social Media, 35 Pace L. Rev. 138 (2014), p. 138-141, 143-154

Kate Klonick, The New Governors: The People, Rules and Processes Governing Online Speech, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 1598 (2018). Pages for reading 1625-1630, 1636-1642, 1650-1653, 1666-1668

Kate Klonick, Feature: The Facebook Oversight Board: Creating an Independent Institution to Adjudicate Online Free Expression, 129(8) Yale L. J 2418 (2020), Readings: 2422-2427, 2429, 2435-2438, 2442-3, 2456, 2475-2480, 2492-95.

Audio/Video:

How Should the Law Approach Social Media Abuses?

Guests:

10:00 am: Limor Shmerling Magazanik, Managing Director, Israel Tech Policy Institute

11:00 am: Jason Kee, Google

May 2, 2021 – COVID, Data privacy and security

10:00 – 13:00 (Ottawa), 16:00 – 19:00 (Milan), 17:00 – 20:00 (Haifa)

Readings:

ACRI Website, Success! ACRI Severely Limits Shin Bet Tracking (March 1st)

Jane Bambauer and Brian Ray, COVID-19 Apps Are Terrible—They Didn’t Have to Be, Lawfare, 1-7, 11-19, 24-28.

Amir, Israel’s SIGINT Oversight Ecosystem: COVID-19 Secret Service Location Tracking as a Test Case (November 30, 2020). University of New Hampshire Law Review, Forthcoming, 4-7, 12-20

The E.U perspective: Guidelines 04/2020 on the use of location data and contact tracing tools in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak, 3-4, 7-9, 11-12

Audio/Video:

Technion Panel: Contact Tracing

Guests:

10:00 am: Former Israeli Supreme Court Chief Justice Asher Grunis

11:00 am: Gil Gan-Mor (Director of the Social and Economic Rights Unit and of the Right to Housing Program)

May 3, 2021 – COVID, Data privacy and security

10:00 – 13:00 (Ottawa), 16:00 – 19:00 (Milan), 17:00 – 20:00 (Haifa)

Readings:

OECD, Dealing with digital security risk during the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, 3 April, 2020

Scassa, COVID-19 Contact Tracing: From Local to Global and Back Again

CIFAR, Society, Technology and Ethics in a Pandemic

Audio/Video:

Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 44, Michael Birnhack on the Israeli Use of Cellphone Tracking to Combat the Spread of Coronavirus

Guests:

10:00 am: Mona Nemer, Chief Science Advisor of Canada

11:00 am: Supreme Court of Canada Justice Russell Brown

12:00 pm: Amit Ashkenazi, Legal Counsel, Israeli Cyber Bureau

May 4, 2021 – Legal issues – the race to the vaccine

10:00 – 13:00 (Ottawa), 16:00 – 19:00 (Milan), 17:00 – 20:00 (Haifa)

Global Digital Encounter 12: The Race for the Vaccine: from Invention to Effective Vaccination – IP as a Tool or a Toll?

Readings:

Matt Apuzzo, Selam Gebrekidan and Monika Pronczuk, Where Europe Went Wrong in Its Vaccine Rollout, and Why, NY Times

Katherine Ellen Foley, Covid-19 is spurring unprecedented collaboration among vaccine manufacturers, Quartz 2021

Anja Lunze, Patent pools: an easy licensing option for Covid-19 drugs and Sars CoV2 vaccines?, Taylor Wessing

Case Study, DNA Hepatitis B Vaccine: International Vaccine Institute, Korea

Audio/Video:

GDE, Encounter 3 International IP and Access to Pandemic Treatments

May 5, 2021 – Legal issues – the race to the vaccine

10:00 – 13:00 (Ottawa), 16:00 – 19:00 (Milan), 17:00 – 20:00 (Haifa)

Readings:

CIGI, The Antidote to Vaccine Nationalism

Case M.8016 – SANOFI PASTEUR / VACCINES OF SANOFI PASTEUR MSD Commission decision pursuant to Article 6(1)(b) of Council Regulation No 139/20041 and Article 57 of the Agreement on the European Economic Area

The Israel/Pfizer Agreement

Assaf Harel, Big data and the pursuit of herd immunity: Israel’s COVID-19 data-sharing agreement,IAPP

Audio/Video:

Law Bytes podcast, Episode 81: Why Isn’t Canada Supporting a Proposal to Help Developing Countries Gain Access to COVID-19 Vaccines‪?

Guests:

11:00 am: Roberto Caso, University of Trento and President of the Italian Association for Open Science (AISA)

May 6, 2021 – COVID and the classroom

9:00 – 13:00 (Ottawa), 15:00 – 19:00 (Milan), 16:00 – 20:00 (Haifa)

Readings:

Eugene Volokh, Censorship by Zoom and Other Private Platforms”: The UC Academic Freedom Committee’s Concerns, The Volokh Conspiracy (Feb 4th, 2021)

Chiara and Ducato, Rossana and Giannopoulou, Alexandra and Schneider, Giulia, Remote Teaching During the Emergency and Beyond: Four Open Privacy and Data Protection Issues of ‘Platformised’ Education (November 13, 2020). OpinioJuris in Comparatione, vol. 1 (2020)

Audio/Video:

Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 47: Brewster Kahle, Chris Freeland and Kyle Courtney on the Internet Archive National Emergency Library

Guests:

9:00 am: David Mirchin, Partner, Meitar

10:00 am: Rossana Ducato, University of Aberdeen, School of Law

11:00 am: Brewster Kahle and Chris Freeland, Internet Archive

12:00 pm: Patricia Kosseim, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario

May 9, 2021 – Student Presentations

10:00 – 13:00 (Ottawa), 16:00 – 19:00 (Milan), 17:00 – 20:00 (Haifa)

Group 1: Misinformation and Platform Liability

Group 2: COVID, Data Privacy and Security

May 10, 2021 – Student Presentations