LexisNexis Best Paper Award for Prof Burkhard Schafer
Fri 26 February 2016
A paper co-authored by Burkhard Schafer won the LexisNexis Best Paper award at the IRIS conference 2016 this week.
The paper written by Burkhard Schafer and Walter Hoetzendorfer from the University of Vienna beat stiff competition at the 19th International Legal Informatics Conference in Salzburg, the largest conference on IT law in Europe.
In their paper, "The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King: – Religious and Political Affiliation in Online Games as Data Protection Issue”, they analyse whether religious or political beliefs expressed as part of an online game qualify for protection as sensitive personal data under the Data Protection Directive. Applying ideas by Huizinga, Arendt, Marcuse to the recent study of cyberspiritualiy by Geraci, they conclude that a strong case can be made to consider some forms of “game-born” religion worthy of protection.