Toward Linking Heterogenous References in Czech Court Decisions to Content

In this paper we present initial results from our effort to automatically detect references in decisions of the courts in the Czech Republic and link these references to their content. We focus on references to case-law and legal literature. To deal with wide variety in how references are expressed we use a novel distributed approach to reference recognition. Instead of attempting to recognize the references as a whole we focus on their lower level constituents. We assembled a corpus of 350 decisions and annotated it with more than 50,000 annotations corresponding to different reference constituents. Here we present our first attempt to detect these constituents automaticall

Dangers of Over-Enthusiasm in Licensing under Creative Commons

In this paper we assess the Creative Commons licensing scheme that offers a simple, user-friendly tool to allow anyone to distribute or build upon others' work without the necessity of drafting legal documents. Even a person without any legal education or knowledge of law can use the Creative Commons website to license her work under a professionally drafted license contract. We argue that this user-friendliness has its risks and pitfalls. The licensing procedure itself is perhaps too easy and may create an illusion that nothing can go wrong. But licensing is not as simple as it may appear from the first visit of Creative Commons' website. The most frequent mistake a user can make when using a license under the Creative Commons is to license a work for which he has no legal title. Surprisingly to many users, even the author of the work does not always have the right to license its work under the Creative Commons licensing scheme. We have assessed the most common issues arising out of the situation and suggested possible solutions. We demonstrate that alongside the widely debated issues of the Creative Commons licenses compatibility with current copyright laws of various jurisdictions, as well as the compatibility of the licenses among themselves, a much deeper problem is inherent to the system. It persuades wide range of users with no legal background that it is possible to safely enter into highly complex legal relationships without proper information and assistance. This results in incorrect use of the Creative Commons licenses and countless number of people unintentionally infringing copyright. The situation left unattended may very well lead to the breakdown of the whole Creative Commons system. Indeed, this would be extremely unfortunate, considering the undeniable value of the whole system and the effort that has been already put into its creation. We have formulated easy-to-follow advice for common users and public bodies to foster the development of the Creative Commons. Besides, we have also formulated several suggestions on how to improve the current online licensing tool the Creative Commons organization use to offer the licenses. The common denominator of the changes should be the refocus from simplicity to provision of a complete set of information – shift from gung-ho approach to a responsible and ‘well-informed’ user approach

Veřejné licence v České republice

Kniha se zabývá právními aspekty aplikace veřejných licencí v českém právním řádu a to i v kontextu rekodifikace českého soukromého práva. Pozornost je věnováná veřejnými licencím obecně, v akademické praxi, při licencování software a při licencování informací veřejné správy.The book deals with the legal aspects of the application of public licenses in the Czech legal order (also in the context of recodification of the Czech private law). Attention is paid to public licenses in general, in academic practice, in licensing of software and licensing of public sector information

Rozměry citací v právu a anotační konvence

Článek prezentuje metodologii pro provádění citační analýzy české judikatury jakožto nástroje, který umožní přesnější poznání toho, jak české soudy pracují při své argumentaci s odkazy na jiná rozhodnutí a další dokumenty. Prezentovaná metodologie popisuje odkaz jako prvek textu tvořený čtyřmi konstituenty. Jsou jimi ZDROJ, CÍL, ARGUMENT a POLARITA. Tvrdíme, že pomocí těchto konstituentů je možné detailně popsat kvantitativní i kvalitativní vlastnosti jednotlivých odkazů a umožnit tak jejich smysluplné zkoumání. Každý konstituent je dále vnitřně strukturován tak, aby bylo možné (1) překonat aktuální nedostatky citační praxe českých soudů a (2) vytěžit z odkazu maximum informací pro další analýzu. Struktura jednotlivých konstituentů je v článku detailně popsána a odůvodněna. V závěru článku jsou představeny výzvy pro další výzkum v oblasti citační analýzy. Představené ideální kategorie nejsou univerzálně použitelné pro jakýkoli výzkum. Jsou nicméně naformulované v podobě, která umožňuje jejich implementaci pro kvalitativní i kvantitativní studie o úloze citací v judikatuře a právu obecně.The paper presents a methodology for carrying out citation analysis of the Czech case law as a tool which enables gaining more accurate understanding of how the Czech courts operate with references to other decisions and documents for the sake of their argumentation. The presented methodology describes a reference as textual element consisting of four constituents. These are: SOURCE, TARGET, ARGUMENT and POLARITY. We claim that by using these constituents it is possible to thoroughly describe both quantitative and qualitative characteristics of reference, and thus to meaningfully research them, too. Each of these constituents is further internally structured to enable (1) to overcome the shortcomings of current citation practice of Czech courts and (2) to obtain the most information possible from the reference for further analysis. The detailed structure of each constituent is described and justified within the paper. Challenges for further research on citation analysis are expressed in the conclusion of the paper. The introduced categories are ideal and not universally applicable for any kind of research. However, they are formulated in a way that allows their implementation for both qualitative and quantitative types of research focused on the role of citations in the case law and jurisprudence in general