[Commlist] CfP: Internet Fragmentation and Censorship. Are we heading to Splinternet and Cyber Sovereignty?

Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) Faculty of Law
in cooperation with
University of Bucharest Faculty of Law and University of Zenica Faculty 
of Law

*Internet Fragmentation and Censorship.*
*Are we heading to Splinternet and Cyber Sovereignty?*
*International Scientific Conference*
*March 22-23, 2024 Budapest, Hungary*

*CALL FOR PAPERS*

CfP link: https://tinyurl.com/cfpelte <https://tinyurl.com/cfpelte>

A divergence between cyber libertarianism and cyber paternalism 
characterised discussion topics related to internet governance in the 
1990s. Decisions on content regulation issues seemed to have been 
settled in the US with the Communication Decency Act Section 230 and 
Europe with the notice-and-takedown system of the E-commerce Directive. 
However, the era of privatised freedom of expression (Balkin, 2018) 
faced several challenges from the mid-twentieth century onwards, from 
Christchurch and troll farms to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. For a 
few years now, internet regulation has become a vital issue on the 
political agenda in all parts of the world, characterised in the US by 
the need to amend CDA230 (Snider, 2023) and the 'dragging' of giant tech 
mammoths before the Senate; in Europe, the process of adopting the 
DSA-DMA-EMFA package of regulations (Barata, 2022), while in China, for 
example, it is characterised by the ongoing development of the Golden 
Shield and the Great Firewall based on cyber-sovereignty (Schultz, 
2021), and in Russia by the wish to disconnect from the international 
internet network (Nachbar, 2022). The increasingly undemocratic 
practices of these latter rogue States can be attractive to many other 
countries, and the export of such solutions started (Bennet - Naim 2015).

Governments around the world are increasingly resorting to restricting 
the internet (Bischoff, 2023), often for illegitimate purposes and 
always with disproportionate impacts on the public (UN 2020), while 
global norms have shifted dramatically towards greater government 
intervention in the digital sphere (Freedom House, 2021). The technical 
and legal solutions to these can range from denying user access through 
filtering technologies and unlawful bandwidth throttling to collateral, 
excessive and wholesale blocking by States (Gosztonyi, 2023). 
Independent observers and States gave very different reasons for the 
restrictions of access to content (AccessNow, 2023; NetBlocks, 2023).

*Important dates*
*Deadline for abstract submission: December 15, 2023*
Notification of acceptance for the conference: January 10, 2024
Submission of final paper: March 15, 2024
Conference dates: March 22-23, 2024

*Confirmed keynote speakers*

  * Joan Barata (Cyber Policy Center, Stanford University)
  * David Frautschy (Internet Society)
  * András Koltay (Pázmány Péter Catholic University)


*The conference seeks submissions that address a wide range of topics 
related to internet shutdowns and Splinternet, including but not limited 
to:*

  * Internet shutdowns around the world
  * Internet connectivity and the right to know
  * Internet access as a basic human right
  * Internet censorship
  * Network sovereignty, digital sovereignty, cyber sovereignty
  * Internet governance and legislation: questions of the Splinternet
  * Fragmentation of the network and the law
  * Filtering and blocking websites by governments
  * Legal and illegal reasons for content restrictions
  * The views of technology companies
  * Internet content moderation
  * Options for resistance to restrictions
  * Tech literacy and cyber awareness

No charges will be added for the authors of the papers for the publication.

For further information, please contact Dr. Gergely Gosztonyi, PhD 
((gosztonyi /at/ ajk.elte.hu) <mailto:(gosztonyi /at/ ajk.elte.hu)>) or Dr. Elena 
Lazar, PhD ((elena.lazar /at/ drept.unibuc.ro) 
<mailto:(elena.lazar /at/ drept.unibuc.ro)>)



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