Free-libre open source software as a public policy choice

Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) is characterised by a specific programming and development paradigm. The availability and freedom of use of source code are at the core of this paradigm, and are the prerequisites for FLOSS features. Unfortunately, the fundamental role of code is often ignored among those who decide the software purchases for Canadian public agencies. Source code availability and the connected freedoms are often seen as unrelated and accidental aspects, and the only real advantage acknowledged, which is the absence of royalty fees, becomes paramount. In this paper we discuss some relevant legal issues and explain why public administrations should choose FLOSS for their technological infrastructure. We also present the results of a survey regarding the penetration and awareness of FLOSS usage into the Government of Canada. The data demonstrates that the Government of Canada shows no enforced policy regarding the implementation of a specific technological framework (which has legal, economic, business, and ethical repercussions) in their departments and agencies

Deep pockets, packets, and harbours

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is a set of methodologies used for the analysis of data flow over the Internet. It is the intention of this paper to describe technical details of this issue and to show that by using DPI technologies it is possible to understand the content of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol communications. This communications can carry public available content, private users information, legitimate copyrighted works, as well as infringing copyrighted works. Legislation in many jurisdictions regarding Internet service providers’ liability, or more generally the liability of communication intermediaries, usually contains “safe harbour” provisions. The World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty of 1996 has a short but significant provision excluding liability for suppliers of physical facilities. The provision is aimed at communication to the public and the facilitation of physical means. Its extensive interpretation to cases of contributory or vicarious liability, in absence of specific national implementation, can prove problematic. Two of the most relevant legislative interventions in the field, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the European Directive on Electronic Commerce, regulate extensively the field of intermediary liability. This paper looks at the relationship between existing packet inspection technologies, especially the ‘deep version,’ and the international and national legal and regulatory interventions connected with intellectual property protection and with the correlated liabilities ‘exemptions. In analyzing the referred two main statutes, we will take a comparative look at similar interventions in Australia and Canada that can offer some interesting elements of reflection

Introduction. Understanding hate crime: research, policy and practice

In 2013, a group of scholars from Europe and North America came together to form the International Network for Hate Studies (INHS). The key aims of the network included bridging gaps between academics and policy makers/practitioners in the field, and "internationalizing" our understanding of hate crime generally. In the spring of 2014, INHS held its inaugural conference at the University of Sussex in Brighton, the United Kingdom. In this special edition of Criminal Justice Policy Review (CJPR), we bring together expanded versions of four of the keynote speeches from that conference. In distinct ways, each speaks to the key themes noted above, as this brief introduction will illustrate

Federal Policy and the Rise in Disability Enrollment: Evidence for the VA's Disability Compensation Program

The U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) currently provides disability benefits to 2.72 million veterans of U.S. military service through the Disability Compensation (DC) program. Until recently, the medical eligibility criteria for this program were the same across service eras, with the key condition being that the disability was caused or aggravated by military service. But in July of 2001, the VA relaxed the eligibility criteria for Vietnam veterans by including diabetes in the list of conditions covered by DC. This change was motivated by an Institute of Medicine report, which linked exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used by the U.S. military in Vietnam, to the onset of diabetes. In this paper, we investigate the impact of this policy change on DC enrollment, expenditures, and the sensitivity of the program to economic conditions. Our findings demonstrate that the Agent Orange decision increased DC enrollment by 7.6 percentage points among Vietnam veterans and that an additional 3.3 percent enjoyed an increase in their DC benefits. Our estimates further suggest that the policy change increased program expenditures by $2.69 billion during the 2006 fiscal year and by$45 billion in present value terms. After the policy took effect, we find that the sensitivity of the program to local economic conditions increased substantially. Taken together, our results suggest that even relatively narrow changes in the medical eligibility criteria for federal disability programs can have a powerful effect on program enrollment and expenditures.

Research Freedom for University Scholars

Professor Mark Perry is jointly appointed to the Faculty of Science, Computer Science, and the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada where he is Associate Dean of Research, Graduate Programs and Operations. He is a Faculty Fellow at IBM\u27s Center for Advanced Studies, a Barrister and Solicitor of the Law Society of Upper Canada, a member of the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property, the IEEE, the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada, and the ACM. He is a member of the College of Reviewers of the Canada Research Chairs, a reviewer for Canadian Foundation for Innovation, a member in the Selden Society and the Computer Research Association, on the executive committee for the ACM Special Interest Group on Computers and Society, in the Rotman Institute of Science and Values, a reviewer for Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Professor Perry\u27s research is focused on the nexus of science and law, and in the area of autonomic computing system development. He holds grants to pursue his research in both law and science, including Genome Canada, and has supervised numerous graduate and undergraduate theses. He has been invited by universities in Australia, India, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States, and Canada to speak at research-intensive colloquia and classes. He regularly contributes to the media on technology and law issues. A selection of papers can be found at http://ssrn.com/author=10510 . Professor Perry is an expert on the nexus of legal issues and leading technologies. His science and legal backgrounds have led him to a unique approach to both disciplines that brings together the scientific approach and legal analysis. This has been expressed through modeling the legal relationships in computer and biological systems. His current focus has been on copyright, patent and trademark (as well as other intellectual property rights) in technology systems, and also the regulation of cutting edge technologies

Acts of Parliament: Privatisation, Promulgation and Crown Copyright – Is There a Need for a Royal Royalty?

The road of privatisation of government assets is littered with the debris of mishaps and oversights. One clear illustration is the history and effect of the sale of the Government Printing Office (GPO) in 1990. Within the sale process there was a failure to ensure adequate consideration of the policy implications from an important perspective, namely the effect of privatising the means of promulgation of the normative materials of the State. Furthermore, there was no enquiry into the dubious assumptions made as to Crown Copyright in legislation. Intellectual property rights in primary legal materials create a dilemma for policy makers. Should the State’s normative materials be subject to reproduction restrictions? Is the basis of unsubstantiated economic benefit for the administration and the claimed preservation of the integrity of the materials sufficient ground? Perhaps third parties should be encouraged to reproduce and disseminate such materials, or even the State could take responsibility for large scale dissemination. This article examines issues surrounding the privatisation of the GPO. This requires inquiry into the history of Crown Copyright, the sale of GPO, and the influence of privatisation on the passage of the Copyright Bill 1994

MASCULINITY, MALE EMPOWERMENT, AND HIV/AIDS RISK IN CAPRIVI, NAMIBIA

Namibia has a generalized HIV epidemic, with 13% of adults being infected. Its East Caprivi Region has the highest prenatal HIV prevalence in the country, 21%, among girls and women aged 15-24 years. In recent years, researchers have pointed to men who express their masculinity through high-risk sex as driving the epidemic in East Caprivi. This exploratory study examined the role that men and their masculinity concepts played in transmission, how those concepts were evolving over time, what was influencing the change, and in which directions. Employing grounded theory methods and guided by Robert Connell\u27s theoretical framework on masculinities, the study employed in-depth interviews with community leaders and focus group discussions with men 18-24 years of age to elicit characterizations of dominant masculinities in East Caprivi, their developmental contexts, motivations, support systems, and their rewards. A preliminary theory was generated suggesting that socio-cultural, and economic changes introduced into Caprivi following Namibian Independence in 1990, interacted with older, hegemonic masculinity concepts to stimulate new, adaptive ways of performing manhood, accompanied by higher-risk behavior. Through special exercises with focus groups, multiple alternate, culturally-acceptable models of masculinity at lower risk for HIV were also elicited. After applying the Diffusion of Innovations criteria, one was selected as most likely to be adopted by young men in Caprivi. Across focus groups, young men selected a fairly austere, rather than moderate-risk masculinity as their preferred model. The alternates and the forces of transformation may each present opportunities to gendered intervention programs to insert themselves into the adaptive process, providing young men the support and guidance that they need in order to achieve the hallmarks of manhood that they ultimately want – respect and broad recognition – with lower risk for HIV

Research Freedom for University Scholars

Professor Mark Perry is jointly appointed to the Faculty of Science, Computer Science, and the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada where he is Associate Dean of Research, Graduate Programs and Operations. He is a Faculty Fellow at IBM\u27s Center for Advanced Studies, a Barrister and Solicitor of the Law Society of Upper Canada, a member of the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property, the IEEE, the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada, and the ACM. He is a member of the College of Reviewers of the Canada Research Chairs, a reviewer for Canadian Foundation for Innovation, a member in the Selden Society and the Computer Research Association, on the executive committee for the ACM Special Interest Group on Computers and Society, in the Rotman Institute of Science and Values, a reviewer for Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Professor Perry\u27s research is focused on the nexus of science and law, and in the area of autonomic computing system development. He holds grants to pursue his research in both law and science, including Genome Canada, and has supervised numerous graduate and undergraduate theses. He has been invited by universities in Australia, India, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States, and Canada to speak at research-intensive colloquia and classes. He regularly contributes to the media on technology and law issues. A selection of papers can be found at http://ssrn.com/author=10510 . Professor Perry is an expert on the nexus of legal issues and leading technologies. His science and legal backgrounds have led him to a unique approach to both disciplines that brings together the scientific approach and legal analysis. This has been expressed through modeling the legal relationships in computer and biological systems. His current focus has been on copyright, patent and trademark (as well as other intellectual property rights) in technology systems, and also the regulation of cutting edge technologies

Shanghai, Dubai, Mumbai Or Goodbye?

Starting in 2007, Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) from Asia and the Middle East have invested billions of dollars in major U.S. financial firms. The primary driving force behind their growth is rising commodity prices, in particular oil. Given that SWFs represent a relatively new, cash-rich investment group, we studied the public policy concerns with their investments, SWFs mode of entry, and how does the market react to the investment. SWFs lack of transparency with regards to their investment motives and governance structure is cause for concern. While taking full opportunity of depressed security prices as a result of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, they are also being prudent by investing mostly in preferred stocks and fixed-income convertible securities of large U.S. corporations that are followed by many analysts and are highly liquid. Despite investing handsomely in U.S. targets and adopting a hands-off approach toward management; the liquidity crisis continues to perpetuate the decline in SWF-targets’ stock price post-investment. Using an event study parameter approach, we found the short-run market reaction to be statistically insignificant in 11 out of 12 announcements of SWF investments; but in the months following the investment, SWF-targets underperform both the S&P500 and the Dow Jones Financial Services Index Fund.Stock Market, Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs), SWF-targets’ stock price post-investment