This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us—Or Is It? Reflections on Copyright, the First Amendment and Google’s Use of Others’ Content

Using a variety of technological innovations, Google became a multi-billion dollar content-delivery business without owning or licensing much of the content that it uses. Google’s principal justification for why this strategy does not contravene the intellectual property rights of the copyright owners is the doctrine of fair use. However, over the last several years, some copyright owners began to push back and challenge Google’s strategy. Much of this litigation presents the courts with something of a conundrum. On the one hand, it is beyond dispute that Google’s services have great social utility. By organizing and making accessible an enormous volume of information on the Internet, Google facilitates broad access to a diverse array of material, a core value of the First Amendment. At the same time, Google’s actions do not always fit comfortably within traditional notions of fair use. In this respect, the Google cases present an opportunity to explore the relationship between copyright and the First Amendment; a subject that has received inadequate attention in the courts, and particularly the Supreme Court. How the apparent tension between the marketplace of ideas and the commercial marketplace is resolved may have significant impact on the development of Internet-based services designed to facilitate access to information, and this subject is the focus of this iBrief

The Relativized Second Eigenvalue Conjecture of Alon

We prove a relativization of the Alon Second Eigenvalue Conjecture for all $d$-regular base graphs, $B$, with $d\ge 3$: for any $\epsilon>0$, we show that a random covering map of degree $n$ to $B$ has a new eigenvalue greater than $2\sqrt{d-1}+\epsilon$ in absolute value with probability $O(1/n)$. Furthermore, if $B$ is a Ramanujan graph, we show that this probability is proportional to $n^{-{\eta_{\rm \,fund}}(B)}$, where ${\eta_{\rm \,fund}}(B)$ is an integer depending on $B$, which can be computed by a finite algorithm for any fixed $B$. For any $d$-regular graph, $B$, ${\eta_{\rm \,fund}}(B)$ is greater than $\sqrt{d-1}$. Our proof introduces a number of ideas that simplify and strengthen the methods of Friedman's proof of the original conjecture of Alon. The most significant new idea is that of a ``certified trace,'' which is not only greatly simplifies our trace methods, but is the reason we can obtain the $n^{-{\eta_{\rm \,fund}}(B)}$ estimate above. This estimate represents an improvement over Friedman's results of the original Alon conjecture for random $d$-regular graphs, for certain values of $d$

Entanglement and Disentanglement in Circuit QED Architectures

We propose a protocol for creating entanglement within a dissipative circuit QED network architecture that consists of two electromagnetic circuits (cavities) and two superconducting qubits. The system interacts with a quantum environment, giving rise to decoherence and dissipation. We discuss the preparation of two separate entangled cavity-qubit states via Landau-Zener sweeps, after which the cavities interact via a tunable "quantum switch" which is realized with an ancilla qubit. Moreover, we discuss the decay of the resulting entangled two-cavity state due to the influence of the environment, where we focus on the entanglement decay.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Employing Circuit QED to Measure Nonequilibrium Work Fluctuations

We study an interferometric method for the measurement of the statistics of work performed on a driven quantum system, which has been put forward recently [Dorner et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110 230601 (2013), Mazzola et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110 230602 (2013)]. The method allows replacing two projective measurements of the energy of the driven system with qubit tomography of an ancilla that is appropriately coupled to it. We highlight that this method could be employed to obtain the work statistics of closed as well as open driven system, even in the strongly dissipative regime. We then illustrate an implementation of the method in a circuit QED set-up, which allows one to experimentally obtain the work statistics of a parametrically driven harmonic oscillator. Our implementation is an extension of the original method, in which two ancilla-qubits are employed and the work statistics is retrieved through two-qubit state tomography. Our simulations demonstrate the experimental feasibility.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in New Journal of Physics in the Focus issue on Quantum Microwave Field Effects in Superconducting Circuit

Toward a Modern Defamation Law in Virginia: Questions Answered, Questions Raised

In 1964, the United States Supreme Court decided that defamatory statements are entitled to some first amendment protection. In later cases, the Court has continued to redefine the constitutional landscape of defamation, but many questions remain unanswered. In their attempts to accommodate the Supreme Court\u27s new doctrine, the Virginia state courts have often struggled with the task of redefining their common law rules so that they are consistent with the constitutional prescriptions. Since 1985, the Virginia Supreme Court has issued five opinions attempting to clarify various aspects of defamation law in Virginia. Part I of this article examines these opinions and discusses their effect on defamation law in the commonwealth. Part II addresses, in greater detail, specific defamation issues that remain unresolved in Virginia. Among the questions considered in Part II are whether Virginia is likely to use a reasonable journalist or ordinary man negligence standard in private figure defamation cases against a professional disseminator of news; the unpredictability of the negligence standard; and limitations placed upon this standard by the supreme court. In addition, it discusses the principles that will likely govern the opinion defense, and finally, considers what remains of the special damages requirement in Virginia defamation cases

Modeling core fluid motions and the drift of magnetic field patterns at the CMB by use of topography obtained by seismic inversion

The thermal wind equations, in which the Coriolis force is balanced by pressure gradients and horizontal density gradients rather than by Lorentz forces, are used to describe patterns of magnetic field drift associated with core fluid motions near the core-mantle boundary (CMB). The advection of magnetic field may be due in part to the flow driven by such horizontal temperature gradients, just as East-West air flow is driven by North-South temperature gradients in the Earth's atmosphere. It is argued that this flow may be concentrated in a shell near the CMB, and the horizontal temperature gradients are expected to be directly proportional to horizontal gradients in CMB topography, the lowest harmonics of which are approximately constrained in seismology. Part of the zonal drift is then associated with the 1=2, m=0 harmonic of CMB topography, and anticyclones are attached to topographic highs (thermal highs). Comparison of our derived flow pattern with those determined purely by magnetic field observations provides tentative support for our model