Sebastian Felix Schwemer

Sebastian Felix Schwemer

Associate Professor

ORCID: 0000-0003-4326-9328

 

 ON LEAVE UNTIL OCTOBER 2024 👨‍🍼👋.  

  

Sebastian is Associate Professor in IT Law and Law and New Technology and Director of the Centre for Information and Innovation Law (CIIR) at the University of Copenhagen and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Oslo's Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law (NRCCL). 

Sebastian is interested in the regulation of & by technology.

His research focuses on this intersection of regulation, technology and society – especially related to information on the Internet, intermediaries, decentralized systems and automation (buzzword bingo: algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, NLP). Sebastian continues to work on issues around digital copyright, platform regulation, content moderation, algorithmic governance and enforcement, and is intrigued by the use of computer science in the legal field.

Sebastian is involved in various strategic education projects related to technology such as Teknosofikum, KU2023 Digitalisation of the Core Curriculum, or the University of Oslo's Centre on Experiential Legal Learning (CELL). He is also involved projects focussing on legal innovation such as the Legal Innovation Lab Oslo (LILO).

Sebastian is recipient of the prestigious Tietgen Prize (2018). In 2020, he advised the European Commission in relation to the revision of the e-Commerce Directive (Digital Service Act). Outside academia, Sebastian has been active in the technology ecosystem and is inter alia one of the initiators of the #CPHFTW Foundation and Techfestival Copenhagen. 

Sebastian is frequently speaking at conferences such as RightsCon, EPIP, or GigaNet and featured by national and international media outlets such as WIRED UK, The Verge, MIT Technology Review, Techcruch, Politico, DR, Politiken, Tagesspiegel, Deutschlandfunk, ORF, Neue Zürcher Zeitung and others. 

Follow Sebastian on Twitter for updates

 

 

Random side-notes: 

👾 Was not allowed to buy computer games as kid (so I learned programming and did tech stuff 👨‍💻)

🌍 Zero flights since 2018 (but lots of 🚅)

🏔 Happiest in ⛷❄️ (tricked to believe Denmark has winter in 2010 😂)

 

 

Current research

LEGALESE (Innovation Fund Denmark)

Co-PI/work package leader working on bias detection and removal, transparency, privacy and other legal questions related to the natural language processing (NLP) of (Danish) legal texts in a GrandSolution 2020 project on legal information retrieval, financed by the Innovation Fund Denmark. More information

ReCreating Europe – Intermediaries (Horizon 2020)

Part of WP 6 on Intermediaries looking at Copyright Content Moderation and Removal at Scale in the Digital Single Market: What Impact on Access to Culture? More information

Legal Innovation Lab Oslo (LILO)

More information

Teknosofikum

Teknofikum is a free course for higher-education teachers aiming at expanding the potential of technology in higher education through professional development, where interdisciplinarity is at the core. More information 

Thinking AI (4EU+)

Bringing together Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of AI; teaching project together with Sorbonne University, University of Milan, and University of Heidelberg. More Information

 

Concluded projects

2020: Legal analysis of the intermediary service providers of non-hosting nature (European Commission)

Study commissioned by the European Commission in relation to the Digital Services Act. More information

2017-2019: "The role of intermediaries/domain registries in content regulation" (Innovation Fund Denmark)

This industrial research project is co-financed by the Innovation Fund Denmark and the Danish Internet Forum. For more information on the project see here (in Danish).

2017: Study on legislative measures related to online IPR infringements (European Union Intellectual Property Office)

See the final study here.

2013-2016: "Licensing of copyrighted-content for the Internet"

Copyright is territorial. But is the Internet? In Europe, licensing and access practices do not reflect the digital narrative, in which endusers demand ubiquitous access. Before this reality, the territorial nature of copyright and its business models collide with the borderless nature of the Internet and the political goal of a Digital Single Market.

This PhD project probes the regulation of two different online markets, which have recently been subject to scrutiny by the EU legislator: the audiovisual and the music sector. The thesis puts the regulatory and non-regulatory initiatives, which support the facilitation of cross-border access to content, in the context of Better Regulation, the multi-governance approach by the European legislator. In addition to legal research, it looks to economic theory in order to benchmark the different solutions in terms of accessibility and transaction costs.

Keywords: Law and Economics, copyright licensing, collective management, online streaming, geo-blocking, competition law, better regulation, business model specific regulation, Digital Single Market

JEL classifications: K11, K29, L86, O34

 

Research groups (selection)

 

Talks and presentations

You can find most of Sebastian's presentations on his activities page or a selection over at Slideshare.

 

Teaching

Sebastian teaches subjects related to law and technology and is delivering guest lectures and supervising students within related research fields (recent topics include e.g. liability for autonomous vehicles and robots; tranfer of personal data to third countries, music licensing, the use of personal data by app developers, information society services and Airbnb and Uber, protection of computer games).

Sebastian is involved in several strategic projects at the Faculty and the University-level related to technology and digitalisation.

Internet Governance & Platform Regulation (University of Copenhagen): 2021 (fall) –not offered–
 IT law (University of Copenhagen): 2021 (spring), 2020 (fall), 2020 (spring)

Legal Technology: Artificial Intelligence and Law (University of Oslo): 2024 (spring), 2023 (spring), 2022 (spring), 2021 (spring) 

Internet Governance (University of Oslo): 2023 (fall), 2022 (fall), 2021 (fall), 2020 (fall)
Information law (University of Copenhagen): course director 2023 (fall), 2022 (fall), 2021 (fall), 2020 (fall), 2019 (fall), 2018 (fall), 2017 (fall)
Entrepreneurship (in collaboration with IT University of Copenhagen): 2021 (spring), 2020 (spring) 
Step into innovation-programme Climate-KIC (European Institute of Innovation & Technology & Universitat Politècnica de València): 2015 (fall), 2014 (fall)
Law, Science & Technology in the Digital Society (University of Copenhagen): 2014 (fall) (GitHub, Slideshare)
EU Intellectual Property Law and Policy in a Global Context (University of Copenhagen): 2014 (spring)

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