Centre for Business Law and Practice kicks off 30th anniversary year with annual lecture
The very distinguished speaker, Professor Ignacio Cofone (Oxford University School of Law) discussed the highly relevant and current topic of 'How AI Requires Rebuilding Data Protection Law'.
The 30th anniversary event was opened by the Centre for Business Law and Practice (CBLP) Director Professor Duncan Sheehan and CBLP Deputy Director Dr Virág Blazsek, and chaired by Dr Igor Szpotakowski.
Dr Blazsek says:
The CBLP annually invites speakers who shape and influence research in their respective areas, making this year's lecture particularly special as the Centre celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2026.
Lecture synopsis
AI has broken the central premises of data protection law. Today’s systems create value from inferences rather than disclosed data, operate on relational patterns rather than individual records, and concentrate power in institutions that decide how people are classified and acted upon. Frameworks built on consent and individual control regulate what people give, not what is inferred; they treat data as individually controlled, not jointly produced, and they assume individuals can anticipate consequences that are opaque and context dependent.
Data protection should instead constrain the power to create and operationalise harmful inferences. This premise provides two paths.
The first reframes accountability around exploitation and non-material harms, shifting attention from formal compliance to what data practices do to people and social relations.
The second introduces a new way to think about personal data: plausible information as any claim about a person or group that is credible enough to be acted upon. The result of both paths is a model of regulation aimed at preventing exploitation in the information economy without relying on the fiction of individual control or the trope of regulation versus innovation.
About the speaker
Ignacio Cofone is Professor of Law and Regulation of AI at Oxford's Faculty of Law and Institute for Ethics in AI. He is also an affiliated fellow of the Yale Information Society Project. Ignacio’s research examines how law and regulation should respond to social and economic changes driven by AI; in particular harms produced by machine inferences.
His recent book, The Privacy Fallacy: Harm and Power in the Information Economy (CUP 2023), argues that AI requires restructuring privacy and data protection law based on duties of non-exploitation because basing these bodies of law on individual control has become ineffective. His current research examines how to remedy nonmaterial and relational AI harms and uses comparative analysis to design regulatory frameworks that promote accountable AI.
Technology, Governance and Intellectual Property Law Group
Besides student volunteers, several CBLP members contributed to the event, including Dr Ioanna Lapatoura. Both Dr Szpotakowski and Dr Lapatoura are members of the recently formed Technology, Governance and Intellectual Property Law Group (TGIPG) within the CBLP. In her opening remarks, Dr Blazsek noted that each year the Centre for Business Law and Practice seeks to shine a spotlight on one of its research groups. She says:
This year's annual lecture highlighted the recently established Technology, Governance and Intellectual Property Law Group, reflecting the Centre's commitment to advancing scholarship in this evolving field.
- Learn more about the Centre for Business Law and Practice here and the Technology, Governance and Intellectual Property Law Group here.
