File-sharing and downloading: goldmine or minefield?

Legal context: Major copyright owners have been slow to rise to the challengepresented by illegal file-sharing and downloading. In recentyears, they have scored a number of significant Court victoriesagainst file-sharers, but the recent decision in Promusicaev Telefónica, in which the ECJ held that the right tothe protection of industrial property does not necessarily outweighthe right to privacy, indicates that rights holders may benefitfrom a more creative and co-operative approach to file-sharing. Key points: The author provides an analysis of the Promusicae decision,along with a summary of the statutory position in the UK. Thisis also accompanied by a review of the recent internationallitigation landscape on file-sharing and a review of currentattitudes towards addressing illegal filesharing, includingrecent proposals from the British Government and the EuropeanParliament and new models of co-operation between rights holdersand file-sharing service providers. Practical significance: The Promusicae decision will disappoint copyright owners. TheECJ decision left it to Member States to determine whether thereshould be an obligation to disclose personal data in order toprotect copyright, so long as the interpretation of the lawattempts to reconcile the parties' competing rights and principlesand demonstrates proportionality. Copyright owners will, therefore,have to tailor enforcement strategies to individual Member States.This will hamper their ability to take action against individualinfringers efficiently. In addition to litigating against infringers,however, they may benefit from the new models of co-operationbetween copyright owners and file-sharing services which areemerging.     

Choosing disability: preimplantation genetic diagnosis and negative enhancement

This article examines the unusual circumstance of what the author has tentatively termed "negative enhancement". This term is used to describe those instances where individuals seek to use preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to achieve outcomes that, commonly, are socially not preferred. In a recent survey by the Genetics and Public Policy Centre, it was found that 3% of IVF-PGD clinics in the United States reported having provided PGD to couples who seek to select an embryo for the presence of a particular disease or disability, such as deafness, in order that the child share the characteristic with the parents. The idea of "negative enhancement" is, therefore, both a paradox and a useful means to describe the hidden assumptions behind claims that enhancement technologies can only lead us in one direction -- towards a race of blond, blue-eyed, able-bodied, intellectually magnificent and athletically superior beings. In Australia there does appear to be a consensus that PGD should only be used to select against serious disability. This inevitably raises the question of how we define disability and who is best placed to make decisions about the kind of kin we want to create.     

Love at First Sight

正If you rent an apartment in Beijing,you also rent the landlord or landlady for at least a year.It is somewhat like getting hitched,so it’s important you fi nd a good match because you have to deal with them in the long term.For me,it was love at first—or at least second—sight with the elderly couple who owns my apartment.It was quite an odyssey trying to fi nd the right apartment when I fi rst arrived in Beijing     

Trajectory Classes of Relational and Physical Bullying Victimization: Links with Peer and Teacher-Student Relationships and Social-Emotional Outcomes

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Bullying victimization is a prevalent problem in upper elementary school that predicts various detrimental outcomes. Increasing evidence suggests that...     

Making an Administrative Trustee Agent Accountable: Reason-Based Decision Making within the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism

Decisions within the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol are made by an expert body that acts as a trustee agent of the member states. Trustee agents help overcome the credible commitment problems of their principals and promise reason-based decisions. In contrast to traditional principal-agent settings, trusteeship relations are typically triadic. Beside the preferences of the principals and the trustee, decision criteria provide an external point of reference. They reflect the principals' long-term interest and define the trustee's decision rationale. The triadic structure helps protect the autonomy of trustees and allows for making them accountable for their decisions. Accountability mechanisms intend to ensure that a trustee's decisions are in line with established decision criteria. Against this backdrop, we explore the incentives created by the existing institutional arrangement for the making of CDM decisions and examine selected cases. We conclude that CDM arrangements provide a model for nonpartisan international regulation.