The Digital Technology Boomerang: New Intellectual Property Rights Threaten Global “Open Science”

There is a serious threat that ill-considered government support for expanding legal means of controlling access to information for the purpose of extracting private economic rents is resulting in the 'over- fencing of the public knowledge commons' in science and engineering. Such a new 'tragedy of the commons' would bring adverse long-run consequences for future welfare gains through technological progress, and re-distributional effects further disadvantaging the present economically less advanced countries of the world. Radical legal innovations in intellectual property protection that seriously jeopardize the effective conduct of open, collaborative science have been introduced by the little noticed European Database Directive of March 1996. This initiative forms an emblematic and substantively significant aspect of the broader set of transformations in intellectual property rights institutions that have been initiated in response to the economic ramifications of rapid progress in digital information technologies. The EC Directive poses numerous contentious issues in law and economics that will create ambiguities for business and non-profit activities in this area for years to come. The terms on which those issues are resolved will materially affect the costs and organizational feasibility of scientific projects that are of global reach and importance, especially those that depend heavily upon the collection, management and analysis of large volumes of observational data that cannot be regenerated. This paper sets out the economic case for the effectiveness of open, collaborative research, and the forces behind the recent, countervailing rush to strengthen and expand the scope of intellectual property rights protection. Focusing upon innovations in copyright law and the sui generis protection of hitherto unprotected content, it documents the genesis and analyzes the economic implications of the EC's Database Directive, and related legislative proposals (H.R. 3125, H.R. 354 and H.R. 1858) in the US. Several modest remedial proposals are advanced to mitigate the adverse impact of 'the digital technology boomerang' upon open science.intellectual property rights, copyright, sui generis protection of expressive material, economics of information-goods, open science, 'fair use,' scientific databases

Bilateral Control with Task Learning and Adaptation to Environment

The Motion Copying System permits to save an operator task in terms of position and force references for the action reproduction whenever the operator isn't available or to train new users. This thesis analyzes the MCS design and limitations, the Bilateral Control System on which the MCS is based, and proposes a model to adapt the saved task to new environmental conditions

Vestibular modulation of spatial perception

Vestibular inputs make a key contribution to the own sense of spatial location. While the effects of vestibular stimulation on visuo-spatial processing in neurological patients have been extensively described, the normal contribution of vestibular inputs to spatial perception remains unclear. To address this issue, we used a line bisection task to investigate the effects of galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) on spatial perception, and on the transition between near and far space. Brief left-anodal and right-cathodal GVS or right-anodal and left-cathodal GVS were delivered. A sham stimulation condition was included. Participants bisected lines of different lengths at six distances from the body using a laser pointer. Consistent with previous results, our data showed an overall left to right shift in bisection bias as a function of viewing distance: suggestive of a leftward bias in near space, and a rightward bias in far space. GVS induced strong polarity dependent effects in spatial perception, broadly consistent with those previously reported in patients: left-anodal and right-cathodal GVS induced a leftward bisection bias, while right-anodal and left-cathodal GVS reversed this effect, producing instead a bisection bias toward the right side of the space. Interestingly, the effects of GVS were comparable in near and far space. We speculate that vestibular-induced biases in space perception may optimize gathering of information from different parts of the environment

Koyaanisqatsi in Cyberspace

Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi Indian word that translates into English as 'life out of balance,' 'crazy life,' 'life in turmoil,' 'life disintegrating,' all meanings consistent with indicating 'a way of life which calls for another way of living.” While not wishing to suggest either that the international regime of intellectual property rights protection scientific and technical data and information is “crazy” or that it is “in turmoil”, this paper argues that the persisting drift of institutional change towards towards a stronger, more extensive and globally harmonized system of intellectual property protections during the past two decades has dangerously altered the balance between private rights and the public domain in data and information. In this regard we have embarked upon “a way of life which calls for another way of living.” High access charges imposed by holders of monopoly rights in intellectual property have overall consequences for the conduct of science that are particularly damaging to programs of exploratory research which are recognized to be critical for the sustained growth of knowledge-driven economies. Lack of restraint in privatizing the public domain in data and information has effects similar to those of non- cooperative behaviors among researchers in regard to the sharing of access to raw data-steams and information, or the systematic under- provision the documentation and annotation required to create reliably accurate and up-to-date public database resources. Both can significantly degrade the effectiveness of the research system as a whole. The urgency of working towards a restoration of proper balance between private property rights and the public domain in data and information arises from considerations beyond the need to protect the public knowledge commons upon which the vitality of open science depends. Policy-makers who seek to configure the institutional infrastructure to better accommodate emerging commercial opportunities of the information-intensive “new economy” – in the developed and developing countries alike –therefore have a common interest in reducing the impediments to the future commercial exploitation of peer-to-peer networking technologies which are likely to be posed by ever-more stringent enforcement of intellectual property rights.

Global and local perceptual style, field-independence, and central coherence: an attempt at concept validation

Historically, the concepts of field-independence, closure flexibility, and weak central coherence have been used to denote a locally, rather globally, dominated perceptual style. To date, there has been little attempt to clarify the relationship between these constructs, or to examine the convergent validity of the various tasks purported to measure them. To address this, we administered 14 tasks that have been used to study visual perceptual styles to a group of 90 neuro-typical adults. The data were subjected to exploratory factor analysis. We found evidence for the existence of a narrowly defined weak central coherence (field-independence) factor that received loadings from only a few of the tasks used to operationalise this concept. This factor can most aptly be described as representing the ability to dis-embed a simple stimulus from a more complex array. The results suggest that future studies of perceptual styles should include tasks whose theoretical validity is empirically verified, as such validity cannot be established merely on the basis of a priori task analysis. Moreover, the use of multiple indices is required to capture the latent dimensions of perceptual styles reliably

Tragedy of the Public Knowledge 'Commons'? Global Science, Intellectual Property and the Digital Technology Boomerang

Radical legal innovations in intellectual property protection have been introduced by the little noticed European Database Directive of March 1996. This initiative, part of the larger institutional transformations initiated in response to the economic ramifications of rapid progress in digital information technologies, poses numerous contentious issues in law and economics. These are likely to create ambiguities for business and non-profit activities in this area for years to come, and the terms on which those issues are resolved will materially affect the costs and organizational feasibility of scientific projects that are of global reach and significance. This is the case especially in fields such as geology, oceanography and climatology, which depend heavily upon the collection, management and analysis of large volumes of observational data that cannot be regenerated. More generally the conduct of open, collaborative science - along with many of the benefits that flow from it for the developed and the developing economies alike - may be seriously jeopardized by the consequences of the new database protections. This raises the spectre of a new and different "tragedy of the commons," one created by continuing the unbalanced pressure to extract greater economic rents by means of controlling access to information. "Over-fencing," which is to say, the erection of artificial cost barriers to the production of reliable public knowledge by means of reliable public knowledge, threatens the future of "the public knowledge commons" that historically has proved critically important for rapid advance in science and technology. The paper sets out the economic case for the effectiveness of open, collaborative research, and the forces behind the recent, countervailing rush to strengthen and expand the scope of intellectual property rights protection. Focusing upon innovations in copyright law and the sui generis protection of hitherto unprotected content, it documents the genesis and analyzes the economic implications of the EC''s Database Directive, and related legislative proposals (H.R. 3125, H.R. 354 and H.R. 1858) in the US. The discussion concludes by advancing a number of modest remedial proposals that are intended to promote greater efforts to arrive at satisfactory policy solutions for this aspect of "the digital dilemma."economics of technology ;

A TRAGEDY OF THE PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE ‘COMMONS’? Global Science, Intellectual Property and the Digital Technology Boomerang

Radical legal innovations in intellectual property protection have been introduced by the little noticed European Database Directive of March 1996. This initiative, part of the larger institutional transformations initiated in response to the economic ramifications of rapid progress in digital information technologies, poses numerous contentious issues in law and economics. These are likely to create ambiguities for business and non-profit activities in this area for years to come, and the terms on which those issues are resolved will materially affect the costs and organizational feasibility of scientific projects that are of global reach and significance. This is the case especially in fields such as geology, oceanography and climatology, which depend heavily upon the collection, management and analysis of large volumes of observational data that cannot be regenerated. More generally the conduct of open, collaborative science – along with many of the benefits that flow from it for the developed and the developing economies alike – may be seriously jeopardized by the consequences of the new database protections. This raises the spectre of a new and different “tragedy of the commons,” one created by continuing the unbalanced pressure to extract greater economic rents by means of controlling access to information. “Over-fencing,” which is to say, the erection of artificial cost barriers to the production of reliable public knowledge by means of reliable public knowledge, threatens the future of “the public knowledge commons” that historically has proved critically important for rapid advance in science and technology. The paper sets out the economic case for the effectiveness of open, collaborative research, and the forces behind the recent, countervailing rush to strengthen and expand the scope of intellectual property rights protection. Focusing upon innovations in copyright law and the sui generis protection of hitherto unprotected content, it documents the genesis and analyzes the economic implications of the EC’s Database Directive, and related legislative proposals (H.R. 3125, H.R. 354 and H.R. 1858) in the US. The discussion concludes by advancing a number of modest remedial proposals that are intended to promoted greater efforts to arrive at satisfactory policy solutions for this aspect of “the digital dilemma.”intellectual property rights, copyright, sui generis protection of expressive material, economics of information-goods, open science, “fair use,” scientific databases.

Implementation of JPEG compression and motion estimation on FPGA hardware

A hardware implementation of JPEG allows for real-time compression in data intensivve applications, such as high speed scanning, medical imaging and satellite image transmission. Implementation options include dedicated DSP or media processors, FPGA boards, and ASICs. Factors that affect the choice of platform selection involve cost, speed, memory, size, power consumption, and case of reconfiguration. The proposed hardware solution is based on a Very high speed integrated circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL) implememtation of the codec with prefered realization using an FPGA board due to speed, cost and flexibility factors; The VHDL language is commonly used to model hardware impletations from a top down perspective. The VHDL code may be simulated to correct mistakes and subsequently synthesized into hardware using a synthesis tool, such as the xilinx ise suite. The same VHDL code may be synthesized into a number of sifferent hardware architetcures based on constraints given. For example speed was the major constraint when synthesizing the pipeline of jpeg encoding and decoding, while chip area and power consumption were primary constraints when synthesizing the on-die memory because of large area. Thus, there is a trade off between area and speed in logic synthesis

Global and local perceptual style, field-independence, and central coherence: An attempt at concept validation.

Historically, the concepts of field-independence, closure flexibility, and weak central coherence have been used to denote a locally, rather globally, dominated perceptual style. To date, there has been little attempt to clarify the relationship between these constructs, or to examine the convergent validity of the various tasks purported to measure them. To address this, we administered 14 tasks that have been used to study visual perceptual styles to a group of 90 neuro-typical adults. The data were subjected to exploratory factor analysis. We found evidence for the existence of a narrowly defined weak central coherence (field-independence) factor that received loadings from only a few of the tasks used to operationalise this concept. This factor can most aptly be described as representing the ability to dis-embed a simple stimulus from a more complex array. The results suggest that future studies of perceptual styles should include tasks whose theoretical validity is empirically verified, as such validity cannot be established merely on the basis of a priori task analysis. Moreover, the use of multiple indices is required to capture the latent dimensions of perceptual styles reliably