Copyright Ownership of Online News: Cultivating a Transformation Ethos in America's Emerging Statutory Attribution Right

Several federal district courts in 2009 and 2010 interpreted a relatively obscure provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to grant a potentially broad right of attribution to owners of copyright in creative works. The statutory provision prohibits removal or alteration of copyright management information. The law gives reason for both hope and fear for news organizations. On one hand, an attribution requirement is seen by some in the news industry as relief from negative effects of technology, including online news aggregators. On the other hand, news organizations already have been sued under the copyright management provision for their conduct in newsgathering. This article examines the copyright management information provision and concludes that transformation will be a key consideration in balancing the interest in attribution with preservation of newsgathering's reliance on access to and fair use of copyright-protected works.     

A Practical Guide to the Transfer of Trusteeships * By Richard Williams, Arabella Saker and Toby Graham

Earlier this month saw the publication of the widely anticipatedand much welcomed ‘Practical Guide to the Transfer ofTrusteeships’, produced under the stewardship of STEPand edited by the triumvirate of Richard Williams, Toby Grahamand Arabella Saker. The book has a spectacularly wide remit in addressing not onlymatters of English Law, but also the jurisdictions of the Bahamas,Bermuda, BVI, Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man,Singapore and Jersey. In     

Public attitudes towards the death penalty

Responses to a general question regarding the use of the death penalty were compared with the sentences that respondents chose in a set of scenarios describing homicide cases. The percentage of respondents who assigned the death sentence in one or more of the following scenarios was higher than those who favored the death penalty in the abstract question, but there were inconsistencies in the answers. A majority assigned the death penalty only for the most heinous offender described, and the figures were lower for other crimes, even clear cases of first degree murder. At the same time, a manipulation involving information about methods of execution did not affect answers. These results strongly suggest that the abstract questions typically used in public opinion polls do not accurately reflect the public's feelings about use of the death penalty in specific cases. More generally, research on public opinion regarding criminal justice policies should survey a variety of specific circumstances.     

The end of police prosecutions: Symptom of changing values in english criminal justice

This article contrasts the traditional English prosecutorial system, and its underlying values, with the new Crown Prosecution Service and the related values which have emerged from five years of official study and planning of prosecutorial reform. The traditional system reflected the English ideal of the amateur generalist. Under this system the police, acting as citizens, undertook most prosecutions, hiring legal assistance as needed. Ower the last twenty years, about three-quarters of the English police forces set up prosecuting solicitors departments. While these institutions give professional legal assistance to many police, they were purely local arrangements without statutory basis and legally similar to the traditional ad hoc arrangements. In 1986 the Crown Prosecution Service will be initiated. This is the product of a process of development which includes a Royal Commission, two governmental working parties, a white paper, a bill, and a managerial study. The result is a hierarchical structure of legal professionals independent of the police who will handle virtually all prosecutions. This prosecutorial structure exhibits the characteristics and values of modern rationalistic bureaucracy described by Max Weber. The adoption of these values in English criminal justice indicates the likelihood of change in other aspects of the system which rest on the conflicting traditional values.     

Determinants of Public Administrators' Use of Performance Information: Evidence from Local Governments in Florida

Performance management has been a focus of scholars and practitioners for more than 25 years, yet the use of performance information has not greatly expanded as a result of this attention. Acknowledging that performance measurement is not an end in itself but rather a means to enhance focus on results and value, this article evaluates the determinants of the use of performance information by local government administrators. An online survey was administered to local government employees involved in the 2015–16 Florida Benchmarking Consortium. Analysis of the data demonstrates that institutionalization of performance measurement has the strongest statistically significant positive association with the use of performance information, followed by the design adequacy of the performance measurement system.