Technological Protections in Copyright Law: Is More Legal Protection Needed?

Providing legal protection against the 'hacking' of technological locks used to protect copyrighted works recently has been the subject of an international treaty (the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty), a European Community Directive (the Information Society Directive) and major copyright legislation in the USA (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). By making hacking illegal, these legal protections fortify the technological protections employed by copyright owners to reduce infringement of their works. While copyright owners may use technological protections to compensate for the increased infringement potential in a digital world, technological protections can also be used to obtain far greater protection than the law would otherwise grant the copyright owner. In this article, Professor Loren argues that attention needs to be shifted from providing legal protection for technological protections, to providing legal protections against the overzealous use of these technological protections by content providers. She argues that laws should be enacted, and perhaps even treaties should be signed, that would prohibit the use of technological protections to impermissibly invade certain use rights recognized by a country's copyright laws.     

Money madness. Are private psychiatric hospitals resorting to kidnapping in their quest for paying patients?

In their zeal for lucrative insurance reimbursement, some private psychiatric hospitals seem to have gone over the edge themselves. A number of these institutions, critics charge, use outright coercion to commit and retain patients. Now some formerly abducted "recruits" are fighting back with lawsuits.     

A Classification Tree Approach to the Development of Actuarial Violence Risk Assessment Tools

Since the 1970s, a wide body of research has suggested that the accuracy of clinical risk assessments of violence might be increased if clinicians used actuarial tools. Despite considerable progress in recent years in the development of such tools for violence risk assessment, they remain primarily research instruments, largely ignored in daily clinical practice. We argue that because most existing actuarial tools are based on a main effects regression approach, they do not adequately reflect the contingent nature of the clinical assessment processes. To enhance the use of actuarial violence risk assessment tools, we propose a classification tree rather than a main effects regression approach. In addition, we suggest that by employing two decision thresholds for identifying high- and low-risk cases--instead of the standard single threshold--the use of actuarial tools to make dichotomous risk classification decisions may be further enhanced. These claims are supported with empirical data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study.     

Saleem Shah

This article describes the important ways in which Saleem Shah contributed to the improvement of delivery of forensic mental health services in state mental health systems throughout the nation. In addition, it describes his impact on the development of forensic mental health law, policy, and services internationally, especially in China and the former Soviet Union.     

Protection and Dignity in Johannesburg: Shortcomings of South Africa's Urban Refugee Policy

Since the end of apartheid, South African cities have becomedestinations for refugees and asylum seekers from across Africa.In line with its constitutional commitments to human rightsand dignity, South Africa has enacted a refugee policy intendedto maximize freedom and protection by promoting refugees' temporaryintegration into local communities. In doing so, the law guaranteesfreedom of movement, access to many social services, and rightsto compete in labour and housing markets. This article arguesthat because refugees and asylum seekers are effectively unableto convert these legal entitlements into effective protection,South Africa has failed to meet its domestic and internationalobligations. This argument draws particular attention to institutionalfailures in determining refugee status and issuing recognizableidentity documents; denial of essential social services; andabuse at the hands of law enforcement agents. It concludes bysuggesting a positive obligation for the state to counter thefull range of obstacles that prevent asylum seekers and refugeesfrom securing effective protection.     

Reproducing plantation society: Women and land in colonial South Carolina

Some women in colonial South Carolina inherited, possessed, and sold real property. This article examines how and why women took on roles as landowners. Such practices were part of a range of innovative strategies designed to hand down plantation capital to the next generation. High mortality rates in the region challenged white families as they sought to establish their children within the planter class. Recent scholarship on women in South Carolina has identified instances in which “female planters” wielded control over land and slaves, temporarily assuming authority otherwise reserved for men. Tracing the presence of female landowners in land records, plantation advertisements, and court records reveals that although women made up only a small minority of landowners, they performed an important role in transmitting land and bringing it into production. Unlike their counterparts in other slave societies, white women in the Lowcountry were engaged directly in managing the domestic economies of plantation businesses. Even the archetypical female planter, Eliza Lucas Pinckney, conceived of her influential experiments with indigo production as an extension of her primary, domestic responsibilities as a planter's daughter and as a planter's wife. Such intensive and extensive domestic experience accounts for the unusually active roles South Carolina women undertook as family agents tasked with reproducing plantation society.     

PLANNING AND PARTICIPATION IN CITIES THAT MOVE: IDENTIFYING OBSTACLES TO MUNICIPAL MOBILITY MANAGEMENT

The dual processes of rapidly transforming cities and administrative decentralisation demands that local government address human mobility as a means of countering urban poverty. Despite this imperative, local authorities are often poorly equipped to address the needs of poor and transient residents. Through an examination of four South African municipalities, this article helps to identify three critical factors working against effective responses: poor data and conceptual bias; institutional ambiguities and budgeting processes; and, ironically, participatory planning. Although any one of these could serve as a basis for an article, by taking them together, we better summarise the challenges' scope and outline areas for further research and policy intervention. The article concludes by considering these findings' practical and scholarly implications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.