Is There a Solution to the Orphan Works Problem? Exploring the International Models

Aspects related to copyright and orphan works become a real obstacle for cultural institutions wishing to undertake major projects for the digitisation and on-line availability of their collections. Although some countries have already established models to try to solve the problem of orphan works, others are still discussing possible options. The paper explores the current situation of the schemes in place internationally to deal with the problems associated with orphan works and how these are being applied by cultural institutions regarding the digital dissemination of their collections. The methodology consisted in a systematic review of the research results as an exploratory analytical technique for the collection of relevant information. Results highlighted that global situation is uncertain and none of the formulas studied enables full and effective digitisation and digital dissemination of the world’s cultural heritage. Further advances are necessary for the creation of diligent search procedures

CREATe 2012-2016: Impact on society, industry and policy through research excellence and knowledge exchange

On the eve of the CREATe Festival May 2016, the Centre published this legacy report (edited by Kerry Patterson & Sukhpreet Singh with contributions from consortium researchers)

The Google Book search settlement: A law and economics analysis

Beginning in December 2004 Google has pursued a new project to create a book search engine (Google Book Search). The project has released a storm of controversy around the globe. While the supporters of Google Book Search conceive the project as a first reasonable step towards unlimited access to knowledge in the information age, its opponents fear profound negative effects due to an erosion of copyright law. Our law and economics analysis of the Book Search Project suggests that – from a copyright perspective – the proposed settlement may be beneficial to right holders, consumers, and Google. For instance, it may provide a solution to the still unsolved dilemma of orphan works. From a competition policy perspective, we stress the important aspect that Google’s pricing algorithm for orphan and unclaimed works effectively replicates a competitive Nash-Bertrand market outcome under post-settlement, third-party oversight.Book Rights Registry; Competition Policy; Copyright; Fair Use; Google Book Search; Library Program; Orphan Works

Gamma-ray Bursts - A Puzzle Being Resolved

For a few seconds a gamma-ray burst (GRB) becomes the brightest object in the Universe, over-shining the rest of the Universe combined! Clearly this reflects extreme conditions that are fascinating and worth exploring. The recent discovery of GRB afterglow have demonstrated that we are on the right track towards the resolution of this long standing puzzle. These observations have confirmed the relativistic fireball model (more specifically the internal-external shocks model). The prompt optical emission seen in GRB 990123 have demonstrated that GRBs involve ultra-relativistic motion. The breaks in the light curves of GRB 990123 and GRB 990510 and the peculiar light curves of GRB 980519 and GRB 980326 disclosed that these GRBs are beamed. I examine these recent developments and discuss their implications to the models of the source. I argue that the current understanding implies that GRBs signal the birth of stellar mass black holes.Comment: A 28 pages review of recent developments in GRB physics. An update to astro-ph/9810256 (Physics Reports 1999 314 575). To appear in related froms in the Dave Schramm memorial volume, in the proceedings of the Gr\"aft{\aa}vallen workshop `Gamma Ray Bursts: The First Three Minutes' (Ed. Juri Poutanen), and in the proceedins of the VIII International Workshop on "Neutrino Telescopes" (Ed. Milla Baldo Ceolin

Adolescents: Orphaned and Vulnerable in the Time of HIV/AIDS

This paper calls for greater attention to orphaned and vulnerable adolescents by agencies working in this field

Cultural Environmentalism and Beyond

This article is part of a symposium issue entitled Cultural Environmentalism @ 10, occuring on the tenth anniversary of Prof. Boyle\u27s book, Shamans, Software, and Spleens. In this article Prof. Boyle offers his thoughts on the failings, limitations, occasional promise, and possible future of the ideas discussed in the symposium including both the work on cultural environmentalism and the surrounding ideas on authorship, the rhetoric of economic analysis, the structure of intellectual property scholarship, and the jurisprudence of the public domain

With Enough Eyeballs All Searches Are Diligent: Mobilizing the Crowd in Copyright Clearance for Mass Digitization

Digitization of 20th Century cultural heritage is severely restricted due to the real or potential subsistence of copyright and related rights. Under the laws on orphan works introduced in many countries, items whose copyright status is uncertain may possibly be lawfully digitized, on condition that a “diligent search” of the copyright owners has been performed. However, carrying out diligent searches on large collections is a lengthy and expensive process, which may discourage institutional users from embarking on large-scale digitization. While the problem of performing diligent searches has been so far approached in a “centralized” manner by individual institutions, the article suggests a de-centralized approach based on crowdsourcing certain phases of the diligent search process. The proposed solution may alleviate the problem of the high costs of diligent search, and may ultimately enable cultural heritage institutions to take full advantage of the orphan works legislation. Suitability of the crowdsourcing solution to the cultural heritage sector is discussed and challenges to implementation are identified

Constraint programming for type inference in flexible model-driven engineering

Domain experts typically have detailed knowledge of the concepts that are used in their domain; however they often lack the technical skills needed to translate that knowledge into model-driven engineering (MDE) idioms and technologies. Flexible or bottom-up modelling has been introduced to assist with the involvement of domain experts by promoting the use of simple drawing tools. In traditional MDE the engineering process starts with the definition of a metamodel which is used for the instantiation of models. In bottom-up MDE example models are defined at the beginning, letting the domain experts and language engineers focus on expressing the concepts rather than spending time on technical details of the metamodelling infrastructure. The metamodel is then created manually or inferred automatically. The flexibility that bottom-up MDE offers comes with the cost of having nodes in the example models left untyped. As a result, concepts that might be important for the definition of the domain will be ignored while the example models cannot be adequately re-used in future iterations of the language definition process. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that assists in the inference of the types of untyped model elements using Constraint Programming. We evaluate the proposed approach in a number of example models to identify the performance of the prediction mechanism and the benefits it offers. The reduction in the effort needed to complete the missing types reaches up to 91.45% compared to the scenario where the language engineers had to identify and complete the types without guidance