New challenges for copyright protection - Co-Reach in IPR in New Media Workshop II

The Co-Reach IPR in New Media organised a workshop on ISP Liability in London on December 7, 2010 and an EU-China Copyright Policy meeting in Vienna from December 9-12, 2010. The Workshops come at the crucial time when new regulations are being crafted to tighten copyright protection in cyberspace.     

Analysis of the Optimum Currency Area for ASEAN and ASEAN＋3

This paper performs an analysis of the optimum currency area （OCA） for ASEAN （Association of Southeast Asian Nations） and ASEAN＋3 for the period of 2003-2012. The applied method is based on the model developed by Bayoumi and Eichengreen for the European countries. Regarding the two groups of study, the document contents the integration roots as well as some theories and empirical data about the currency areas. The obtained results based on the OCA indexes showed that nearly half of the country members have moved symmetrically, although the effect of the four independent variables was found different in each case. In conclusion, the monetary convergence is significantly influenced by the output disturbances and the trade linkages in both regions; while the size of the economy only becomes significant in ASEAN＋3 and the synchronic advantage is not contributing and even insignificant for ASEAN＋3.     

Comments to the CoE Convention 108 draft proposal on data protection

One year after the public consultation on the modernisation of the Convention 108, the Council of Europe issued the latest modernization proposal in March 2012 reviewed on the basis of the 27th Plenary meeting of the Consultative Committee of the Convention (from 29 November to 2 December 2012) and the 26th meeting of its Bureau (from 6 to 8 February 2012). Professor Graham Greenleaf and Mr. Nigel Waters on behalf of the Australian Privacy Foundation International Committee and a consortium headed by CLSR Editorial Board member Professor Sylvia Kierkegaard together with Dr. Elisabeth Thole, Professor Dr. Willem Grosheide and CLSR Professional Board Member Joseph V. DeMarco submitted separately their comments to the proposed text. Plenary meeting of the Consultative Committee of the Convention 108 will take place in Strasbourg from 19 to 22 June 2012, during when the draft text will be approved.     

Reviews

J. S. Prybyla, Market and plan under socialism: The bird in the cage, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1987, xv + 348 pp. p/b $18.95.

Thomas A. Wolf, Foreign Trade in the Centrally Planned Economy, Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1988, ix + 77 pp., $33.00.

Arie Bloed, The External Relations of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1988, xvi + 257 pp., Df1.135, US$66, £39.50.

Roger E. Kanet, ed., The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Third World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xi + 233 pp., £25.00 h/b.

Stevan K. Pavlowitch, The Improbable Survivor: Yugoslavia and its Problems, 1918 1988, London: C. Hurst & Company, 1988, 167 pp., £17.50 h/b., £7.50 p/b.

Ronald H. Linden, Communist States and International Change: Romania and Yugoslavia in Comparative Perspective, New York: Allen and Unwin, 1987, xviii + 201 pp., £28.00.

Olimpiad S. Ioffe, Soviet Civil Law, Law in Eastern Europe Series, no. 36, Dordrecht, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988, ix + 383 pp., £62.00.

M. M. Boguslavskii, Private International Law: The Soviet Approach, Law in Eastern Europe Series, no. 35, Dordrecht, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988, ix + 261 pp., £49.50.

Edward A. Allworth, ed., Tatars of the Crimea: Their Struggle for Survival, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1988, xvi + 396 pp., $52.50.

Timothy Edward O'Connor, Diplomacy and Revolution: G. V. Chicherin and Soviet Foreign Affairs, 1918 1930, Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1988, xx + 250 pp., $24.95.

Aleksander Kan, I Påvente av frigjeringa. Sovjetisk historieteori mellom Stalin og Gor‐batsjov, [Fråtysk ved Jostein Stokkeland] Det Norske Samlaget, Oslo, 1988, 304 pp.

Vladimir N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks after October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1987, xviii + 329 pp., $39.95.

Leopold H. Haimson, The Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries: Voices from the Menshevik Past, in collaboration with Ziva Galili y Garcia and Richard Wortman. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987, ix + 515 pp., $49.50, £37.50.

Allen K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, Volume II: The Road to Soviet Power and Peace, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, xv + 443 pp., £34.40.

Nurit Schleifman, Undercover Agents in the Russian Revolutionary Movement: the SR Party, 1902 14, London: Macmillan, in association with St Antony's College Oxford, 1988, xvii + 222 pp., £29.50.

Christopher Rice, Russian Workers and the Socialist‐Revolutionary Party Through the Revolution of 1905 07, London: Macmillan, 1988, xiv + 272 pp., £33.00.     

Environmentalism,pre-environmentalism,and public policy

In the last decade, thousands of new grassroots groups have formed to oppose environmental pollution on the basis that it endangers their health. These groups have revitalized the environmental movement and enlarged its membership well beyond the middle class. Scientists, however, have been unable to corroborate these groups' claims that exposure to pollutants has caused their diseases. For policy analysts this situation appears to pose a choice between democracy and science. It needn't. Instead of evaluating the grassroots groups from the perspective of science, it is possible to evaluate science from the perspective of environmentalism. This paper argues that environmental epidemiology reflects pre-environmentalist assumptions about nature and that new ideas about nature advanced by the environmental movement could change the way scientists collect and interpret data.     

GSR2005—Continuity of the ENFSI Proficiency Test on Identification of GSR by SEM/EDX

Abstract:  Within the framework of the ENFSI Expert Working Group "Firearms" a proficiency test on the detection and identification of GSR by energy-dispersive scanning electron microanalysis (SEM/EDX) is carried out in a 2 years term. The latest test was performed in 2005/2006 and was denoted as GSR2005 . Seventy-five laboratories from 28 countries participated in this proficiency test and submitted in total 83 independent data-sets. The participating laboratories were requested to determine the total number of PbSbBa containing particles on a synthetic test sample following their own laboratory specific methods of automated GSR particle search and detection by SEM/EDX. Furthermore size and position of the detected particles had to be reported by the laboratories and were evaluated statistically. The results were compiled by means of z -scores according to the IUPAC and EURACHEM guidelines—assessing individual laboratory achievements (inter-laboratory) as well as intra-laboratory performance—and were compared to the results of the previous proficiency test run GSR2003 ( 1 ). The comparison shows that there is a noticeable improvement in the method's detection capability.     

Open access to public documents – More secrecy,less transparency!

Prospects are grim for greater access to public documents. The recent initiatives of the Council of Europe to enact a new international convention on access to public documents and recent proposal by the European Commission to revise the law on public access would actually narrow the right of access. The proposed laws would allow governments and the EU Commission to increase its discretionary power to control the flow of information. The draft CoE Convention sets an overly-low standard and restricts information held in electronic databases if the information is not “easily retrievable” or does not “logically belong together”. Similarly, the proposed amendments to the EU Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents would exclude access to documents that do not appear on a register. This would give the EU Commission a wide discretion to share documents informally with a limited number of people, such as interest groups. The Commission's proposal would relieve the EU institutions of its current obligation to show concretely the harm that would occur as a result of disclosure when refusing access to documents. The new proposal has been criticised for subordinating transparency rules to data legislation. The proposals initiated under the Swedish leadership would be a step backwards for transparency.     

The courts,politics, and the ACLU

She is co-director of the Arthur Garfield Civil Liberties Program where she teaches and writes in the areas of family law, constutional law, and health law.