Balogh Zsolt György: First Page (IJ, 2008/1., (23.), 3. o.)

History and actual position of information and communication technology law in Hungary is a theme that affects me personally. This is why I beg the pardon of the reader for the subjective tone I use in this short article. I am involved into ICT law since 1988. The Faculty of Law of Janus Pannonius University - now it is the University of Pécs - has employed a new assistant lecturer for a new subject in that year. This discipline was called as "law and information technology". The task was very ambitious; to unfold the modern and positive content of this subject, to develop a new curriculum and teaching material, to joint the international cooperation of this field. This was a long way. After 20 years I am happy to look back the achievements.

Social impact of information technology and utilization of computers in legal profession has been also studied in Hungarian legal education by the end of 1980's although not particularly in Pécs but in other law schools. Prof. Dr. József Kovacsics has been settled the Department of Statistics in the Faculty of Law of ELTE Budapest. Beyond the discipline of statistics his workshop also focused on the research of information technology applications in public administration. The other important vanguard of Hungarian ICT law research was the Department of Public Administration in the Faculty of Law of University of Miskolc. The department headed by Prof. Dr. Tibor Kalas commenced research and development for data processing in public administration. At early 1990's the department - Prof. Kalas and his colleagues - developed the VIR, an integrated database system supporting the information requirements of local authorities. Also these early results and efforts may represent that law and information technology has several point of intersection as the statistics, demography, organization theory, public administration.

In the beginning of 1990's the Hungarian IT lawyers concentrated their efforts for the technical side of this relationship. To convince the pretty conservative community of Hungarian lawyers about the importance and benefit of information technology; this was the primary challenge of that time. Word processors, spreadsheets and other office applications were the first IT resources on the desktop of advocates. 1994 was a turning point in Hungarian legal history. In that year KERSZÖV Kft. launched the CompLex, the first widely accessible, full text, off-line legal database of Hungarian legal system. The CompLex has been triggered a revolution in legal profession. From this moment the legal material became electronically accessible and easy to survey for both lawyers and non-lawyers. There were no more doubts whether the IT should facilitate the legal culture for both legal science and practice.

From the middle of 1990's up to now another theoretical problem, the structural analysis of IT regulation has been claiming the attention of Hungarian IT lawyers. This is a kind of challenge like shooting at moving target. Both the global and national Hungarian IT industry is changing and enhancing quickly so the concerning regulation is not stable. More and more phenomena of modern life have got a relation to information and communication technology in consequence the scope of ICT law is widening. Recently we may refer the ICT law as the legal framework of information society. Development of information society is a sociological, economic and political paradigm and action plan for both the European Union as a community and for the member states individually. During the last years most of the Hungarian ICT law initiatives were interpreted in relation with the EU law.

The EU promulgated the COM/97/0623 that is the Green Paper on the convergence of the telecommunications, media and information technology sectors and the implications for regulation. This was the first high level declaration of the convergence and its impact on the existing legislative framework in the related areas.