The EU approach to net neutrality: Network operators and over-the-top players,friends or foes?

This paper will mainly focus on the EU approach to net neutrality, notably the adequacy of existing and future EU rules to tackle the issue and the ongoing policy debate. It will also consider whether the market has effectively worked around the regulatory lacunae by looking into the relationships between the telecoms industry, as a regulated sector, and the over-the-top (OTT) players. In this regard, it will explore to what extent there is a real battle between telcos and OTTs or if both parties are already finding their own ways to overcome their (apparent) disputes.     

浅谈电视节目模式的著作权保护

随着互联网的发展和观众需求的日益多样化,全球范围内的电视节目模式许可交易日益增长,同时也产生了诸多法律纠纷,而电视节目模式的法律保护仍然存在立法空白。结合欧美法院判例和学术界的观点,本文对中美电视节目模式的法律保护现状、电视节目模式的侵权认定以及在现阶段如何对电视节目模式进行法律保护作出了初步探讨,得出结论是未来趋势应将电视节目模式作为汇编作品予以著作权法的保护,这也是建设社会主义文化强国,增强国家文化软实力的必要举措。     

The High Representative and directoires in European foreign policy: the case of the nuclear negotiations with Iran

ABSTRACT

The negotiations with Iran about its nuclear programme have seen the most protracted involvement of the High Representatives of the European Union in a high-profile policy case. This article traces the evolution of the High Representatives’ participation in the negotiations, from the first contacts with the E3 (Germany, France and the United Kingdom) in 2003 to the adoption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015. It focuses on the institutional role the High Representatives played in relation with the directoires leading the talks with Iran – first the E3 and, since 2006, E3/EU. In this context, it examines the personal and organisational factors that affected the influence each of the three High Representatives (Javier Solana, Catherine Ashton and Federica Mogherini) had in regard to the directoires. The analysis distinguishes specifically between the phases before and after the 2009 Lisbon Treaty. The article shows how similar personal qualities of the three High Representatives in terms of problem-solving and trust-building gave them political capital that enabled them to adopt a fairly constant role as bridge-builders within the directoires and between the directoires and other actors. The reforms of the Lisbon Treaty had only a minor impact.     

Chick lit politics in a post-truth era: tricksters,blessees and postfeminist girlpower in Angela Makholwa’s The Blessed Girl

The possibility of an emancipated politics in chick lit novels remains a contested question among postfeminist critics. Drawing on definitions of postfeminism as a transnational sensibility, this article examines South African chick lit in relation to what has been termed post-truth or trickster politics in the context of the rise of politicians, such as Donald Trump. I read Angela Makholwa’s novel The Blessed Girl as an example of African chick lit that features a blessee narrator, a young woman who lives a luxurious lifestyle financed by older men, who is deeply influenced by a Trumpian mode of self-making. By employing a trickster aesthetic and narrative strategies, such as unreliable narration and reader address, the novel, I argue, however also unsettles established parameters of neoliberal girlpower, moving beyond its assumed anti-politicalness, as well as a simple understanding of the blessee figure through either a lens of victimhood or amorality.     

Organic impurity profiling of fentanyl samples associated with recent clandestine laboratory methods

Nearly a decade ago, fentanyl reappeared in the United States illicit drug market. In the years since, overdose deaths have continued to rise as well as the amount of fentanyl seized by law enforcement agencies. Research surrounding fentanyl production has been beneficial to regulatory actions and understanding illicit fentanyl production. In 2017, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began collecting seized fentanyl samples from throughout the United States to track purity, adulteration trends, and synthetic impurity profiles for intelligence purposes. The appearance of a specific organic impurity, phenethyl-4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (phenethyl-4-ANPP) indicates a shift in fentanyl production from the traditional Siegfried and Janssen routes to the Gupta-patent route. Through a collaboration between the DEA and the US Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center (DEVCOM CBC), the synthesis of fentanyl was investigated via six synthetic routes, and the impurity profiles were compared to those of seized samples. The synthetic impurity phenethyl-4-ANPP was reliably observed in the Gupta-patent route published in 2013, and its structure was confirmed through isolation and structure elucidation. Organic impurity profiling results for illicit fentanyl samples seized in late 2021 have indicated yet another change in processing with the appearance of the impurity ethyl-4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (ethyl-4-ANPP). Through altering reagents traditionally used in the Gupta-patent route, the formation of this impurity was determined to occur through a modification of the route as originally described in the Gupta patent.     

Alternatives to EU Membership and the Rational Imagination

The domestic scenario following a Brexit vote is likely to be characterised by high stakes, uncertainty and fissile political debate. No off‐the‐peg arrangement touted for Brexit—be it Norwegian, Swiss, Turkish or Canadian—was designed to engage with such a context. Nor does it seem wise to rush to medium‐term commitments which might pre‐empt democratic politics and wise choices. Far more important will be the legitimacy of any institutional settlement governing this arrangement, which will provide the context for its revision and development and the space for democratic reflection over how these policies are to be governed. It will be suggested that here there is much insight to be gained from looking at regional arrangements beyond the EU.     

Debating rape jokes vs. rape culture: framing and counter-framing misogynistic comedy

ABSTRACT

Humor controversies can simultaneously reveal and obscure relations of power, as well as the rhetorical/political nature of jokes. US comedian Daniel Tosh ignited one such controversy in July 2012 when he directed a rape joke toward a female audience member during a live performance in Hollywood, CA. This paper consists of a two-part analysis of this humor controversy. First, we examine a televised debate following this incident, between a comedian and feminist, to map the dominant framing and counter-framing of rape jokes. We contend these positions are representative of two frames that repeatedly surface in response to controversial sexist humor: a dominant patriarchal frame and an oppositional feminist counter-frame. Second, we analyze the saliency of these two frames among college students to observe the way individual interpretations resonate with, challenge, and complicate those frames. In light of our findings, we argue the dominant framing/interpretation of rape jokes reinforce patriarchal and free-market ideologies, and deny real-world implications of misogynistic humor, particularly when comedians/audiences defend such jokes as harmless fun.     

Colonia Housing Conditions in Model Subdivisions: A Déjà Vu for Policy Makers

The informal self-help settlements in Texas known as colonias have received considerable attention as a public policy problem at both the state and federal levels. These settlements proliferated throughout the border region since the late 1970s and research has highlighted the extreme poverty, austere levels of infrastructure, exploitative land sale practices, and poor housing conditions that characterized these settlements. However, both scholars and policymakers have overlooked the continued spread of self-help settlements known as “model subdivisions,” which barring the presence of basic water, wastewater, and electricity services, are nearly identical to colonias. We present the results of household surveys conducted with residents in 24 model subdivisions in Hidalgo County, Texas, in June 2014. The results suggest that, unbeknown to legislators, many of the problems that characterized colonias are now being reproduced in hundreds of model subdivisions that have formed since the 1990s, and which now require concerted attention and intervention by policy makers.     

Paid military service at the intersection of militarism,nationalism, capitalism,and (hetero)patriarchy: escaping without leaving ‘manhood’

The variety of the political standpoints of governments that have initiated exempted military service for several times in Turkey is a sign of a general agreement on its legitimacy. However, Turkey is a country where conscientious objection is almost a taboo. I try to decipher the assumptions behind what is (il)legitimate, and their manifestations in the sociopolitical life from a gender perspective informed by the feminist theory. I argue that what lies behind these is the interconnection between militarism, nationalism, patriarchy, and capitalism. I show how they reciprocally support each other through a critical discourse analysis of the debate on legitimacy of paid military service and illegitimacy of conscientious objection. I conclude that the nature of these debates leads to a reproduction of the hegemonic definitions of manhood and womanhood, together with the reproduction of the masculinization of the political sphere at the expense of the exclusion of and discrimination against other identities.     

Networks and campaigns but not movements: collective action in the disciplining Chinese State

Popular protest, civil society organizing, and non-governmental organizations have become notable features in China’s socio-political development. A mounting body of research has documented both opening opportunity structures and remaining restrictions when it comes to collective action within the authoritarian state. However, given the wide range of definitions and interpretations that are at play in the literature, it can be difficult to distinguish between different forms of collective action and determine which actions represent actual movements. This article argues that a refocus towards the basic components that constitute movement action can provide more clarity and help explain the limitations, as well as the opportunities, that surround collective action within authoritarian states. To illustrate, the article studies the organizational growth, networking, and collective action that have occurred in connection with AIDS in China. It finds that political restrictions and other coordination challenges prevent the mobilization of actual social movements.