An expert in private international law with a focus on information technologies, Dan Svantesson has worked closely and for many years with his colleagues from the Faculty of Law at Masaryk University. In late November, the university recognised his outstanding achievements in private law and IT law by awarding him the MU Bronze Medal.
“It is a great honour for me, as I hold Masaryk University in very high regard. I could not be happier,” Svantesson said shortly after receiving the medal. Neither he nor the conference participants knew about the award in advance.
Svantesson works at Bond University and, as he says, focuses on all kinds of cross-border legal issues related to the internet. “In the past, my main focus was on resolving conflicts between private parties in the international online environment, where actions crossed national borders. Today, I am increasingly dealing with issues between countries, particularly the topic of cyber peace.”
In his work on cyber peace, Svantesson draws on the criteria for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is awarded to a person or organisation that “has done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies or for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”. This year, he received a three-month fellowship to work at the Nobel Institute, which supports the Nobel Committee in selecting Peace Prize laureates. An article on cyber peace linked to Svantesson’s research for the Nobel Institute was published in the Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology. “I was very impressed by the editor’s professional yet genuinely helpful approach,” he noted. He has worked closely with Masaryk University for many years, especially with Radim Polčák, the vice-rector for development, legislation and information technologies, who also presented him with the Bronze Medal.
“I have been visiting Brno almost every year since 2004 and have watched how he has transformed the entire field of IT law in this country. I was a small part of that process too through our collaboration on various projects,” said Svantesson.
Beer law
Their latest joint project is the book Beer Law, published by Cambridge University Press and co-authored by four other scholars. It was this book that Svantesson and his colleagues launched after the surprise award ceremony.
“There are books about beer and there are books about law, but this is the first one to look at the phenomenon of beer through the lens of law,” Svantesson said as he opened the book launch. He added that the oldest traces of beer production – the fermentation of grain – may date back as far as 13,000 years BC, while the first legal rules regulating beer are almost 4,000 years old.
In other words, beer and other fermented drinks have been with us for a very long time. For thousands of years, beer has shaped the law – and the law has shaped beer. This was one of the impulses behind a publication aimed at the general public. Beer Law offers an entertaining and accessible account of the complex interaction between law and beer. Beer regulation goes back thousands of years, and beer laws have shaped society in obvious as well as unexpected ways. The book covers a wide range of topics, including health, intellectual property, consumer protection and unfair competition, contracts, competition law, international trade, the environment and taxation.
According to Svantesson, the idea for the book first emerged around ten years ago. “I bought an imported pack of beer in Australia that said: Japan’s number one beer. But when I opened the box, I found that the beer had been brewed in Thailand, so it was not really Japanese beer in the true sense of the word. I wrote an article about it, and it attracted far more attention than my academic texts,” he recalled.
He realised that this was a fun and interesting area involving real-life legal problems. As a beer lover, he then set out to write the book with his colleagues.
Some of his co-authors work at the same university, while others met in Brno at the Cyberspace conference. Each of them focused on specific legal aspects related to beer. Anthea Gerrard, who covered taxation, mentioned at the book launch that beer taxes are very attractive for politicians. She noted that Britain financed its war with Napoleon through beer taxes, while the Dutch funded an army fighting the Spanish in the same way. “At present, Germany and Bulgaria have the lowest beer tax, while Finland has the highest,” she said. Andreas Wiebe then presented curious cases involving beer names linked to trademarks or misleading consumers.
The book takes a closer look at beer, beer culture and beer laws with a focus on Belgium, Czechia, Germany, the Nordic countries, North America, the United Kingdom and Ireland. “There are not many areas in which us Czechs rank first in the world, and beer consumption is one of them. Another Czech original is the phrase ‘jdeme na jedno’, or ‘let’s go grab a beer’, which is about much more than beer, including having a chat and solving problems. That is what we describe in the book,” explained Vice-Rector Radim Polčák, outlining his contribution.
“We tried to write the book differently from the usual model, where everyone writes their own chapter and everything is then put together. We really wanted to write it jointly. We met online, of course, but we also got together in person a few times. Naturally, we drank quite a lot of beer along the way – all in the name of research,” Svantesson added with a smile.
The book also provides a detailed description of beer, brewing, beer as a product and the brewing industry, as well as an overview of some general lessons from beer regulation. And the research did not stop at theory: Dan Svantesson brews beer at home, and a few years ago he and Radim Polčák tried it on a larger scale in the Czech Republic. At the Thrills craft brewery in Velké Pavlovice, they produced the Pacific Pale Ale – a top-fermented ale with a higher level of bitterness and fruity notes. “It is one of the best beers I have ever had,” said Svantesson.
The twenty-third year of Cyberspace
Dan Svantesson also joined his colleagues at this year’s 23rd Cyberspace conference, organised by the Institute of Law and Technology at the MU Faculty of Law. Almost 300 participants from four continents registered for the event this year.
“This conference is more than an academic event – it is friendly and genuinely unique, even by European standards. We meet colleagues we have worked with for years, we teach at their institutions, collaborate on projects, and more. Cyberspace gives us the chance to explore and strengthen these partnerships in a very friendly atmosphere,” explained Pavel Loutocký, one of the conference’s main organisers.
This year’s keynote lectures focused on two main topics. The first addressed generative artificial intelligence in the justice system and was delivered by Burkhard Schafer from the University of Edinburgh. The second explored digital intimacy and sexting and was presented by Joris Van Ouytsel from Arizona State University in Tempe, USA. Both lectures were followed by a panel discussion.
The second day of the conference was divided into several parallel sections covering artificial intelligence, the internet and society, e-commerce law, intellectual property in the online environment, cybercrime, e-justice, and privacy and personal data protection.