New Challenges for Putin's Foreign Policy

This article evaluates Russia's foreign policy after Vladimir Putin's reelection as president in March 2004. New challenges, such as the intensification of terrorist activities in the Northern Caucasus, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the destabilization of Central Asia, and the refusal by some European states to attend the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of victory over fascism hosted in Moscow became important tests of Putin's strategy of great-power pragmatism. That strategy reflected a desire for Russia to be a normal great power and focused on cooperating with Western nations on a range of economic and security issues. This course had to be defended against criticisms at home in the context of intensified efforts by Western nations, particularly the United States, to influence developments in the former Soviet states. The article concludes by reflecting on some dilemmas that Putin's strategy is likely to encounter in the future.     

Latency – Time for lawyers to get up to speed?

While latency issues have always existed in IT systems, it is only in recent years that latency has become a significant focal point for both IT suppliers and customers. This paper will provide an overview as to how latency arises in IT systems, why latency is becoming important across a variety of business sectors and then explores some of the prominent legal issues inherent in contracting for low-latency solutions.     

Links and copyright law

For at least 15 years, there have been question marks over the legal permissibility of connecting one web resource to another by means of links. The purpose of this paper is to assess where we stand in terms of the legal state on the threshold of the new decade. The substantive argument in this paper is that, fundamentally, there are only two sorts of links. ‘Normal’ links facilitate access to subject matter that has been made available to the public and are visible to users as ‘activatable’ references. ‘Embedding’ links, by contrast, automatically incorporate online material and cause it to become a part of the embedding document. On the grounds of the cumulative judicial custom in the member states of the European Union, this paper proposes that normal links as such should invariably be deemed not to create a state of interference with copyright law. Embedding links, however, may constitute an infringement of the exclusive right of alteration, communication or reproduction enjoyed by the copyright holder, depending on the facts and circumstances.     

Learning from Contemporary Conflicts to Prepare for Future War

Recent and ongoing wartime experience has discredited much of the thinking that underpinned the “Defense Transformation” effort in the 1990s. If we are to be prepared for future conflict, it is vital that we learn from experience and adjust our thinking about war. It is time to develop idealized visions of future war that are consistent with what post-9/11 conflicts have revealed as the enduring uncertainty and complexity of war. These concepts should be “fighting-centric” rather than “knowledge-centric.” They should also be based on real and emerging threats, informed by recent combat experience, and connected to scenarios that direct military force toward the achievement of policy goals and objectives. We must then design and build balanced forces that are capable of conducting operations consistent with the concepts we develop.