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BIO:
Our speaker this month is Ed Cavazos. Ed Cavazos is a technology attorney and the managing partner of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman’s Austin office. His practice focuses on intellectual property and cutting-edge issues in the internet, e-commerce, video game, and software industries. He routinely advises his clients on licensing and technology transactions, IP disputes, data rights and privacy issues. He has been involved in a wide variety of high-profile legal matters, including assisting on the Steve Jackson Games lawsuit against the U.S. Secret Service while still a law student, successfully defending tech companies against patent and copyright trolls, and representing some of the earliest entrepreneurs developing NFT and Metaverse-related business models. As one recent example, Ed represented Larva Labs (the developers and IP owners of the CryptoPunks NFT collection) in the March 2022 sale of its underlying IP right to Yuga, the owners of Board Ape Yacht Club, in one of the most notable transactions in the nascent NFT industry. For the past three decades, Ed has been a thought-leader on the intersection of law and technology. His 1994 book, Cyberspace and the Law (MIT Press) was one of the first texts exploring internet legal issues and over the years he has written a number of law review articles exploring similar issues. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he is currently teaching “The Law of Software, Video Games and Interactive Entertainment.” Ed was one of the founders of EFF-Austin in the early 1990’s and has, since then, served in various officer, board and advisory board roles.

TALK SUMMARY:
New technology has always posed a unique challenge for our legal system. Digital technologies in particular have been transforming society at an unprecedented pace, and the law struggles to keep up. The Internet, virtual worlds, the blockchain, distributed finance and similar technological innovations stress our current legal precedents and often pose questions to which there are few good answers to be gleaned from established legal doctrines. In a free-form and interactive conversation, Ed will explore where the law gets it right and where it gets it wrong when addressing the digital revolution and, most importantly, what may be coming next. Along the way, he will share his experiences from over 30 years of legal and academic work at the forefront of new and disruptive computer-mediated technologies.

HOW TO ATTEND:
Capital Factory is located at 701 Brazos Street, on the 16th floor of the Omni Hotel. Once on the 16th floor, there should be a sign at the front desk directing you to our meetup. If there is no sign, and no one is on duty at the desk, we are usually in the room to the left of the front desk.

Talk will be livestreamed at https://www.youtube.com/user/austintechlive and will later be archived at https://www.youtube.com/user/effaustin. The talk may also be attended via EFF-Austin’s Zoom account with the link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81671268323 and the passcode 573615. Questions for the speaker from virtual attendees may be submitted via the livestream, Zoom room, or our twitter account, @EFFaustin.

Parking for the Omni Garage can be validated at the Capital Factory front desk, reducing the cost from $18 to $7. Details: https://capitalfactory.com/parking/