Not for designers: on the inadequacies of EU design law and how to fix it

Design rights represent an interesting example of how the EU legislature has successfully regulated an otherwise heterogeneous field of law. Yet this type of protection is not for all. The tools created by EU intervention have been drafted paying much more attention to the industry sector rather than to designers themselves. In particular, modern, digitally based, individual or small-sized, 3D printing, open designers and their needs are largely neglected by such legislation. The use of printing machinery to manufacture physical objects created digitally thanks to computer programs such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software has been in place for quite a few years, and it is actually the standard in many industrial fields, from aeronautics to home furniture. The change in recent years that has the potential to be a paradigm-shifting factor is a combination between the popularization of such technologies (price, size, usability, quality) and the diffusion of a culture based on access to and reuse of knowledge. We will call this blend Open Design. It is probably still too early, however, to say whether 3D printing will be used in the future to refer to a major event in human history, or instead will be relegated to a lonely Wikipedia entry similarly to “Betamax” (copyright scholars are familiar with it for other reasons). It is not too early, however, to develop a legal analysis that will hopefully contribute to clarifying the major issues found in current EU design law structure, why many modern open designers will probably find better protection in copyright, and whether they can successfully rely on open licenses to achieve their goals. With regard to the latter point, we will use Creative Commons (CC) licenses to test our hypothesis due to their unique characteristic to be modular, i.e. to have different license elements (clauses) that licensors can choose in order to adapt the license to their own needs

Essays on economics of education and skills.

148 p.La presente tesis doctoral plantea tres ensayos de economía aplicada mediante métodos cuantitativos al campo de la economía de la educación y la economía de las competencias y el empleo. El primer ensayo trata de responder a la cuestión de por qué el País Vasco experimentó una fuerte caída en la encuesta de aprendizaje PISA en el año 2015 con respecto a la edición anterior de 2012. Los resultados muestran una multiplicidad de factores: un aumento de las tasas de repetición, un aumento de la proporción de alumnos que realizan la prueba en un idioma distinto al del hogar y un aumento de problemas de conducta del alumnado reportados por los directores de centro. El segundo ensayo evalúa el impacto que tuvo la reforma de elección de escuela distrito único en la Comunidad de Madrid en 2013, que otorgó un mayor número de opciones de elección de escuela a las familias. A través de datos administrativos nunca explotados, se encuentra que las familias reaccionaron positivamente a la reforma ejerciendo una mayor movilidad y desplazamiento fuera del distrito a los centros educativos. En particular se encuentran diferencias notables por nivel educativo de los padres y origen nacional de los alumnos. Finalmente se estima una leve caída de la segregación social (según nivel educativo de los padres) y fuerte aumento de la segregación por origen nacional. Los resultados están asociados a la red de escuelas concertadas y a la composición social de los centros educativos de destino.El tercer ensayo analiza por primera vez las diferencias en tareas (a través de la encuesta PIAAC) en el empleo en un grupo de 20 países usando información precisa sobre el contenido de trabajo para cada trabajador. Se analiza la relación entre dichas tareas y características individuales y del trabajo, y a su vez, la relación entre dichas tareas y los salarios, asumiendo un modelo de auto-selección basado en ventaja comparativa. Los resultados muestran que los países más avanzados (como Nueva Zelanda o Gran Bretaña) muestran mayores niveles de tareas no-rutinarias y aquellos menos desarrollados (como Lituania o Turquía) muestran mayores niveles de tareas rutinarias. Se observa que el uso de tecnología en el empleo es un factor clave para entender dichas diferencias y que estas diferencias permiten predecir diferencias de salarios entre y dentro de las ocupaciones. Finalmente, nuestras medidas de tareas basadas en PIAAC son validadas al ser comparadas con la medida O*NET estándar en la literatura

Industrial Structure and Child Labor: Evidence from the Brazilian Population Census

This paper uses micro data from the 1980, 1991 and 2000 population censuses to investigate the role of changes in the industry mix in accounting for the differential trends in the incidence of child work (ages 10-15) across Brazilian states. We find that exogenous compositional changes account for around 20% of the observed fall in child employment in rural areas.Child labour, shift-share analysis, Brazil

Management in the Gulf and Caribbean: mosaic or melting pot?

Does \u27\u27managing large pelagic fishes mean the same thing across the diversity of maritime jurisdictions, governance arrangements, economies, languages, cultures, scales of operation and other features of the Gulf and Caribbean region? It would be surprising if it did. Yet international fisheries management urges this mosaic of management to become a melting pot; at least integrated, even if differentiated. This paper examines some themes underlying whether a mosaic or melting pot is the most apt metaphor for where we are, and are headed, in attempts to manage large pelagic fishes in the region. We pay particular attention to the multi-dimensional concept of scale. Included are the scales of management units, fisheries authorities, management outcomes, harvest and postharvest enterprises, and the interdisciplinary perspectives that can be brought to bear on fishery problems and solutions. We are also interested in linkages, because linkage is connected to the scaling-up that is important in a region with many small countries and territories. Even if the management of large pelagics starts as a mosaic, coherent patterns of sub-regional and regional interactions can conceivably be nested and linked to improve the integration, and hence effectiveness, of management interventions ... at least in theory

Impact of EU duty cycle and transmission power limitations for sub-GHz LPWAN SRDs : an overview and future challenges

Long-range sub-GHz technologies such as LoRaWAN, SigFox, IEEE 802.15.4, and DASH7 are increasingly popular for academic research and daily life applications. However, especially in the European Union (EU), the use of their corresponding frequency bands are tightly regulated, since they must confirm to the short-range device (SRD) regulations. Regulations and standards for SRDs exist on various levels, from global to national, but are often a source of confusion. Not only are multiple institutes responsible for drafting legislation and regulations, depending on the type of document can these rules be informational or mandatory. Regulations also vary from region to region; for example, regulations in the United States of America (USA) rely on electrical field strength and harmonic strength, while EU regulations are based on duty cycle and maximum transmission power. A common misconception is the presence of a common 1% duty cycle, while in fact the duty cycle is frequency band-specific and can be loosened under certain circumstances. This paper clarifies the various regulations for the European region, the parties involved in drafting and enforcing regulation, and the impact on recent technologies such as SigFox, LoRaWAN, and DASH7. Furthermore, an overview is given of potential mitigation approaches to cope with the duty cycle constraints, as well as future research directions