Copyright and live streaming of sports broadcasting

The inception of live streaming technology has rapidly changed the way in which sporting events are transmitted. The unauthorised retransmission of live sports telecasts over the Internet has become one of the main concerns in sports media, where broadcasters have lost billions of dollars’ worth of sports broadcasting contracts and sponsorship deals. The scale of this problem has caused serious harm, both to sports rights-holders and to broadcasters. Legislative reforms are required in order to balance the public’s ever-increasing desire for convenient ways to view digital materials against the legal rights of the owners of the material, while also aiming to maintain a forward-looking perspective in an attempt to foresee potential technological advancements that may pose considerable challenges to the traditional copyright law. This article analyses how the concept of live streaming of live sports has changed the legal landscape.     

Fifty years of research on illegal enterprise: an interview with Mark Haller

This interview with professor emeritus Mark Haller, conducted in August 2010, discusses Haller’s career and his research on organized crime. Haller studied crime in Chicago and Philadelphia, in particular the business activities of Al Capone and Angelo Bruno and their respective associates, concluding that illegal businesses have to be distinguished analytically and empirically from fraternal organizations of criminals.     

Reassessing the Association between Gun Availability and Homicide at the Cross-National Level

This paper had two objectives. First, to examine the association between gun availability, gun homicide, and homicide in a manner that better accounts for potential simultaneity than previous cross-national research. Second, to examine the manner that the relationship between gun availability and violence is shaped by socio-historical and cultural context. The results lend little support to the notion that gun availability operates uniformly across nations to influence levels of violence. Rather, these results suggest that the nature of the relationship between gun availability and violence is shaped by the socio-historical and cultural processes occurring across nations.     

Sequenced allelic ladders and population genetics of a new STR multiplex system

The advent of PCR technology and use of short tandem repeat (STR) loci improves throughput and reduces costs whilst a high level of discrimination can be achieved. A new system, comprising seven STRs, was developed to compliment the existing systems. This paper describes the preparation of allelic ladders of the most commonly observed alleles of a new STR multiplex system (third generation; TGM multiplex); all alleles have been sequenced. Meioses studies estimated a mutation rate of 0-0.4% across loci. Statistical independence was investigated by employing exact tests; chi(2)-tests and excess homozygosity tests. The results demonstrated that the allele proportions do not differ from those expected and that there was no consequential dependence between loci. The discriminating power of the system was examined using 295 Caucasian, 140 Afro-Caribbean and 212 Asian unrelated samples, and was found to be approximately 1 in 50 million, 1 in 85 million and 1 in 20 million for each of these groups, respectively.     

A survey of extraction techniques for drugs of abuse in urine

Sixty nine participants in the United Kingdom national external quality assessment scheme for drugs of abuse in urine reported details of their sample extraction technique by questionnaire. Laboratories were categorised by differences in technique and their analytical test results compared for samples containing D-amfetamine 0.4 (4) and 0.8 (3) mg/l, morphine 0.4 (4) and 0.8 (4)mg/l, and benzoylecgonine 0.15/0.2 (2) and 0.45/0.5 (4) mg/l. Values in parentheses are numbers of samples. For amfetamine, there was no significant difference in the frequency of true positive results between liquid-liquid or solid phase extraction and the Toxi-Lab A system at 0.8 mg/l. Toxi-Lab A gave significantly fewer positives when operating below its specified threshold at 0.4 mg/l. Paradoxically, laboratories using >5 ml urine volume performed less well. Acidification of the extract before volume reduction gave significantly more true positives. For extraction of morphine, solid phase systems significantly outperformed both liquid-liquid and the Toxi-Lab A system at both 0.8 and 0.4 mg/l. No significant differences between extraction techniques were demonstrated for analysis of benzoylecgonine.     

(Sex) Crime and Punishment in the #MeToo Era: How the Public Views Rape

One of the core tasks of a well-functioning state is providing fair and adequate criminal justice. Recent events have raised concerns that the US exhibits a “culture of rape,” wherein victims are often disbelieved and blamed. Scholars have not yet examined how the public understands rape and how it should be punished, despite the important role that public pressure has played in the #MeToo era. We present an empirical conceptualization of rape culture to generate predictions for how various attributes of rape incidents affect the likelihood that they are perceived as punishable crimes. In a series of conjoint experiments, we demonstrate that details relating to the victim’s consent and credibility significantly decrease participants’ propensities to support reporting to police or to recommend a severe punishment for the perpetrator. The results show that emphasizing certain legally irrelevant features of rape strongly affect whether the public views an incident as severe or worthy of punishment.