19 Oct 2015
The 8th Annual Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law Conference, hosted by the University Of Nebraska College Of Law, will be held October 29th and 30th at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill Hotel in Washington DC.
The conference discusses U.S. space legislation and cybersecurity policy. The conference will include presentations from the top lawyers and policy-makers at government agencies, such as FAA, FCC, NASA, US State Dept., US Cyber Command, and private corporations, including SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Planetary Resources, Boeing, Microsoft, and Comcast.
This year, the space law portion of the conference beginning on Thursday October 29th at 2:00pm will include panel discussions of current space legislation. Both the House (HR 2262) and the Senate (S 1297) this Summer passed legislation that would make significant changes to US commercial space legislation but now the bills must be reconciled before becoming law. The last major revisions to US commercial space legislation occurred over a decade ago. New technology and business models for traditional activities, such as communications and earth observation satellites, new activities beginning in earnest in the next year or so, such as space tourism, and additional activities planned to be brought to market in the next decade, such as on-orbit satellite servicing and asteroid mining, all necessitate an updating of US commercial space legislation. Choices that will be made in the legislation will impact the competitiveness of and investment in the US commercial space industry, one of critical importance to the US economy. Among the issues in the bills to be discussed include treatment of liability issues (both third-party and space flight participant), in-space regulatory authority, extension of the “learning period” for human space flight, encouragement of consensus industry standards, property rights and non-interference rights for asteroid mining, and streamlining licensing procedures for space activities. The first panel will focus on various US government agency views on these topics, while the second panel will involve a cross-section of industry views.
Directly following the space law panels all guests are invited to join our faculty and speakers for a networking reception with wine and appetizers at the conference site.
The following day, Friday October 30th, the cyber law portion of the conference begins at 8:00am with a networking breakfast buffet; the panel discussions on cybersecurity begin at 8:45am.
Despite its importance across many domains, cybersecurity is not a well-defined concept. The meaning and scope of cybersecurity problems, and the viability of potential solutions to these problems, differ substantially between, e.g., civilian, criminal, and national security institutions, between large and small businesses, between commercial, infrastructure, and consumer uses. The purpose of this event is to explore what different stakeholders mean when discussing “cybersecurity,” and in particular how these understandings relate to or conflict with one another.
Participants will be asked generally to share their perspective of what “cybersecurity” means -- what problems are encompassed by the term -- and why addressing these problems is difficult. We will pay special attention to discussing what can, and cannot, be done to address these problems, encouraging panelists to explore whether some potential solutions work well across multiple domains or, conversely, whether potential solutions in one domain are problematic to other domains.
Registration is free and available at http://law.unl.edu/annual-conferences
This event will not be streamed online.
Questions and concerns should be directly to the Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law Program’s Executive Director Elsbeth Magilton: Elsbeth.magilton@unl.edu or 402-472-1662.