Copyright Distributive Injustice

By design, copyright is a legal field that is not distinctively designed for redistribution. And yet, numerous fairness scholars and other critics of the economics paradigm quite markedly argue that copyright law should be based upon some measure of distribution, not efficiency. This essay argues that copyright law should not promote distributive justice concerns, subject to narrow exceptions and that other more efficient law such as taxation and welfare laws should do that instead. It does so in accordance to the prevailing welfare economics interpretative approach to copyright jurisprudence, with emphasis on the latest Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing litigation. It focuses on the leading classes of distributive injustice that have emerged in the present day Internet, referring to poor infringers, poor creators and wealthy copyright industries. At least in these classes of individuals, this essay argues, redistribution through copyright law, arguably, offers no advantage over redistribution through the income tax system and other transfer mechanisms and laws and typically is less efficient in doing so

Israel and the Palestinian State: Reply to Quigley

This article replies to Professor John Quigley\u27s recent article on the rather dramatic controversy concerning Palestinian statehood. The present article provides a critical assessment of two pivotal Palestinian Unilateral Declarations of Independence (UDI) initiatives as of 1988 and 2011. It does so both generally and with regard to the territorial and border disputes underplayed by Professor Quigley\u27s supportive Palestinian statehood argument altogether. In the wake of the codenamed \u27Arab Spring\u27 tentative spread of democracy throughout the Middle East, regional law and order commands legal certainty. Thus, while being sympathetic to the secessionist selfdetermination of Palestine under public international law, this article offers critical assessment of the latter\u27s unilateral bypass of both relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions as well as the Israeli-Palestinian bilateral Oslo Interim Peace Agreements. The article concludes that neither argument to the contrary in support of unilateral Palestinian statehood as put by Professor Quigley is legally assured

Cyberspace Cartography: The Case of On-line Territorial Privacy

Territorial privacy, one of the central categories of privacy protection, involves setting limit boundaries on intrusion into an explicit space or locale. Initially, the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which defined the privacy tort of intrusion, as applied by courts, most notably designated two classes of excluded areas: “private” places in which the individual can expect to be free from intrusion, and “non-private” places, in which the individual does not have a recognized expectation of privacy. In the physical world, courts ultimately held almost uniformly that the tort of intrusion could not occur in a public place or in a place that may be viewed from a public place. Cyberspace, on the other hand, was not left with a public sphere nor has a balanced territorial privacy policy so far been established. Instead, based on the category of database privacy protection, only a private privacy legal rule was adopted and too widely so. One of the main explanations for this anomaly, in fact, derives from cyberspace’s unique architecture. While the physical world is subject to a default rule of a continuous public sphere that is then subject to distinct proprietary private sphere allotments; Cyberspace architecture, on the other hand, imbeds a different structure. In the latter, apart from the Internet’s “public roads” or backbone transit infrastructure, which is distinctly regulated according to telecommunications and antitrust law, the present default rule contains a mosaic of private allotments – namely, neighboring proprietary web sites. This anomaly is even more acute given that the U.S government, the FTC and theoreticians alike, thus far, have developed neither comprehensive nor supportive boundary theory that could maintain territorial privacy. All three, instead, have implicitly or explicitly only considered technocentristic boundary approaches. From a legal perspective the factual truths or scientific hypothesis underlying the existence of on-line spatiality, as discussed notably in the works of Johnson and Post, Lessig, Hunter, Lemley and others, should, instead, be only a parameter in establishing legal truth. In compliance with what is an alternative localist boundary approach, this study suggests that law, indeed, could construct a legal fiction of on-line locales, through which territorial privacy, ultimately, could be integrated into cyberspace privacy policy at large

COPYRIGHT DISTRIBUTIVE INJUSTICE

Copyright law is not distinctively designed for redistribution. And yet, numerous fairness scholars and other critics of the economics paradigm claim that copyright law should be based upon redistribution, rather than efficiency. Redistributive justice goals intrinsically play a role in the design of the copyright commons, but whether copyright law should itself serve as the means of achieving such goals is truly questionable. This Article argues instead that, subject to narrow exceptions, copyright law doctrine should not promote redistributive justice concerns and that other, more efficient areas of law such as taxation and welfare programs should do so. This argument accords with the prevailing welfare economics approach to copyright jurisprudence and emphasizes the latest Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing litigation. This Article focuses on the leading classes of individuals subject to the distributive injustice that has emerged on the internet: poor infringers, poor creators and wealthy copyright holders. This Article argues that, for at least these three classes of individuals, redistribution through copyright law offers no efficiency advantage over redistribution through the income tax system and other legal transfer mechanisms

The Effect of Economic Crises on Patenting Activity Across Countries

This article offers a conceptual and empirical contribution regarding the effect of economic crises on patenting activity across countries. It does so in the midst of the predominant general view that economic crises flatly chill patenting activity for all countries alike. Financial crisis literature commonly assumes that, during global financial crises, private enterprises consequently tend to retreat to the safety of their domestic markets. These enterprises presumably react this way because of the lesser familiarity of foreign markets, the currency risks involved in international investment, and the uncertainties regarding the issue of how states will treat foreign assets. This article acknowledges the idiosyncrasies underlying advanced and emerging economies abridging the archetypical North-South divide while rendering separate patenting patterns in particular. It offers a quantitative statistical methodology for the evaluation of the influence of economic crises on patenting activity. The article’s main finding shows that when analyzing patent application rates by proxy of applicants’ national origin (or shortly, ‘by origin’) applications, the influence of economic crises modeled through independent economic variables is much weaker over emerging economies than over advanced economies. Consequently, when the economic variables’ values rise, the probability of the negative change in patent applications count falls. Surely this decline is much steeper for advanced economies than for emerging ones. The analysis possibly corroborates that in emerging economies, where innovation is predominantly promoted by overseas multinational corporations (MNEs) and foreign direct investments (FDI), patenting activity-related decisions come from outside the country and relatively less as a response to economic developments within the country

Israel, Palestine, and the ICC

In the wake of the Israel-Gaza 2008-09 armed conflict and recently commenced process at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Court will soon face a major challenge with the potential to determine its degree of judicial independence and overall legitimacy. It may need to decide whether a Palestinian state exists, either for the purposes of the Court itself, or perhaps even in general. The ICC, which currently has 113 member states, has not yet recognized Palestine as a sovereign state or as a member. Moreover, although the ICC potentially has the authority to investigate crimes which fall into its subject-matter jurisdiction, regardless of where they were committed, it will have to assess its jurisdiction over a non-member state, in this case Israel. Despite having signed the Rome Statute that founded the Court and having expressed deep sympathy for the Court\u27s goals, the state of Israel withdrew its signature in 2002, in accordance with Article 127 of the Statute. At any rate, a signature is not tantamount to accession, and accordingly Israel was never a party. The latest highly publicized moves in The Hague come amid mounting international pressure on Israel and a growing recognition in Israeli government circles that the country may eventually have to defend itself against war crimes allegations. Unlike the ad hoc international criminal tribunals of the second half of the twentieth century, it already appears that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court could act in accordance with the formal requests of the state parties, and with respect to the availability of the accused individual. The ICC already is said to have encountered difficulties in reviewing the Prosecutor\u27s exercise of discretion in a few highly politicized international conflicts. The recent Israel-Gaza conflict and present judicial process serve as a prime example

The Effect of Economic Crises on Patenting Activity Across Countries

This article offers a conceptual and empirical contribution regarding the effect of economic crises on patenting activity across countries. It does so in the midst of the predominant general view that economic crises flatly chill patenting activity for all countries alike. Financial crisis literature commonly assumes that, during global financial crises, private enterprises consequently tend to retreat to the safety of their domestic markets. These enterprises presumably react this way because of the lesser familiarity of foreign markets, the currency risks involved in international investment, and the uncertainties regarding the issue of how states will treat foreign assets. This article acknowledges the idiosyncrasies underlying advanced and emerging economies abridging the archetypical North-South divide while rendering separate patenting patterns in particular. It offers a quantitative statistical methodology for the evaluation of the influence of economic crises on patenting activity. The article’s main finding shows that when analyzing patent application rates by proxy of applicants’ national origin (or shortly, ‘by origin’) applications, the influence of economic crises modeled through independent economic variables is much weaker over emerging economies than over advanced economies. Consequently, when the economic variables’ values rise, the probability of the negative change in patent applications count falls. Surely this decline is much steeper for advanced economies than for emerging ones. The analysis possibly corroborates that in emerging economies, where innovation is predominantly promoted by overseas multinational corporations (MNEs) and foreign direct investments (FDI), patenting activity-related decisions come from outside the country and relatively less as a response to economic developments within the country