Copyright\u27s Communications Policy

There is something for everyone to dislike about early twenty-first century copyright. Owners of content say that newer and better technologies have made it too easy to be a pirate. Easy copying, they say, threatens the basic incentive to create new works; new rights and remedies are needed to restore the balance. Academic critics instead complain that a growing copyright gives content owners dangerous levels of control over expressive works. In one version of this argument, this growth threatens the creativity and progress that copyright is supposed to foster; in another, it represents an enclosure movement that threatens basic freedoms of expression. Copyright, these critics argue, has wandered beyond its proper boundaries. They also contend that the balance must be restored. What all these arguments have in common is a focus on copyright\u27s authorship function. Copyright policy, in this view, is fundamentally about providing a balance of incentives for authors to effectuate one of several possible goals, such as progress of science, democratic governance, or the system of free expression. Few disagree that these are the goals; the main disagreement is over what means best serve these ends. Yet the recent history of copyright forces us to ask whether this debate can capture what is right and wrong with the law. Both sides point to the same problem: a tragedy of authorship caused by their opponents. Critics of copyright say that aggressive over-enforcement deters those who would borrow from others to create, such as music samplers, satirists, and filmmakers. Copyright\u27s backers warn, conversely, that piracy threatens the very livelihood of the artist and creative industries. The story of twin tragedies, however, creates an indeterminate debate. Both positions have difficulty demonstrating empirically, as opposed to anecdotally, that either overprotection or piracy has stilled the engines of creativity. Any putative change in copyright protection can both be defended as a necessary creative incentive and attacked as an unnecessary control

Implementation of the virtual teamworking concept into the simulation project life-cycle.

Simulation is a powerful tool that allows producing the best solution for a variety of design and operational issues in manufacturing systems. It provides the ability to assess the impact of various solutions without interfering with the real system. Applying simulation in the decision making process can significantly decrease the cost and risk of implementing a new solution, and at the same time speed up the process of analysing and finding the optimum solution. However, simulation projects usually are complex, and involve a number of people in the model's developing process. The simulation team is usually formed with specific roles for team members to play, such as project leader, model builder, data provider, customer, consultant, etc. However, the globalisation of business operations means that individuals involved in a large multi-site simulation project may be physically dispersed across the organisation and the world. For example, simulation experts may be based in one location and their service may be offered to business units scatted across the globe. This makes more difficult to collocate all project participants in one place at the same time and consumes extra effort, time and cost. Applying a virtual team methodology, supported by the modern Internet-based communication technologies, can overcome the described problems - reduce cost and project time in a large multi-site simulation study. This research investigates the implication of employing the virtual team concept to the simulation team, collaboration process and quality of project output. The analysis introduces the framework for creating the virtual simulation team and two step methodology with short, medium and long recommendations proposed. Then the developed methodology is validated by empirical experiment and simulation experiment. However, in order to carry on the real life experiment a WWW-based application to support the virtual simulation team was developed, and applied in the collaboration process. The experiments positively validated the methodology and provided data to check and optimise the developed application. The study is concluded by discussion of the final research results and future work