Abstraction and registration: conceptual innovations and supply effects in Prussian and British Copyright (1820-50)

It is one of the orthodoxies of modern copyright law that the enjoyment and the exercise of the rights granted “shall not be subject to any formality” (Berne Convention 1886, Berlin revision 1908, Art.4), such as a registration requirement. In this article, we trace the origins of this provision to a conceptual shift that took place during the early 1800s. Specific regulations of the book trade were superseded by the protection of all instantiations (such as performances, translations and adaptations) of abstract authored work. For two seminal copyright acts of the period, the Prussian Act of 1837 and the UK Act of 1842, we show there was considerable concern about the economic implications of this new justificatory paradigm, reflected in a period of experimentation with sophisticated registration requirements. We indicate market responses to these requirements and plea for a reconsideration of “formalities” as redressing justificatory problems of copyright in the digital environment

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and the Trap of Inhalt (Content) and Form: An Information Perspective on Music Copyright

In the digital environment, copyright law has become trapped in an assessment of what has been taken, rather than what has been done with copied materials and elements. This expands the scope of copyright into areas where it should not find infringement (such as sampling, mash-ups and other transformative uses) while encouraging activities that are problematic (such as hiding sources). This article argues that the trap was laid by the German idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte whose influential 1793 article Proof of the Unlawfulness of Reprinting for the first time distinguishes Inhalt (i.e. content free to all) and Form (i.e. the author’s inalienable expression) as copyright categories. It is shown that Fichte’s structure conflates norms of communication and norms of transaction. An alternative path for copyright law in an information society is sketched from a separation of these norms: copying should be assessed from (i) the attribution of sources, and (ii) the degree to which original and derivative materials compete with each other. Throughout the article, transformative practices in music set the scene

Potential for Early Forecast of Moroccan Wheat Yields Based on Climatic Drivers

Wheat production plays an important role in Morocco. Current wheat forecast systems use weather and vegetation data during the crop growing phase, thus limiting the earliest possible release date to early spring. However, Morocco's wheat production is mostly rainfed and thus strongly tied to fluctuations in rainfall, which in turn depend on slowly evolving climate dynamics. This offers a source of predictability at longer time scales. Using physically guided causal discovery algorithms, we extract climate precursors for wheat yield variability from gridded fields of geopotential height and sea surface temperatures which show potential for accurate yield forecasts already in December, with around 50% explained variance in an out-of-sample cross validation. The detected interactions are physically meaningful and consistent with documented ocean-atmosphere feedbacks. Reliable yield forecasts at such long lead times could provide farmers and policy makers with necessary information for early action and strategic adaptation measurements to support food security. ©2020. The Authors

Electron-Polarization Coupling in Superconductor-Ferroelectric Superlattices

We present a phenomenological model of periodic ferroelectric-superconductor (FE-S) heterostructures containing two alternating ferroelectric and superconducting layers. The interaction at the FE-S contacts is described as a coupling of the local carrier density of the superconductor with the spontaneous ferroelectric polarization near the FE-S interface. We obtain a stable symmetric domain-type phase exhibiting a contact-induced polarization and the ferroelectric domain structure at temperatures above the bulk ferroelectric transition temperature. With an increasing coupling energy, we find the appearance of the ferroelectric phase coexisting with the suppressed superconductivity in the S-film. The system is analyzed for different thicknesses of the FE- and S-films demonstrating the dramatic change of the topology of the phase diagrams with a variation of the layers thickness. The results are expected to shed light on the processes occurring in high-temperature superconducting films grown on perovskite alloy-substrates exhibiting ferroelectric properties at lower temperatures.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Becoming the Synthi-Fou: Stockhausen and the new keyboardism

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Karlheinz Stockhausen embraced the potential of electronic music to generate new timbres and acoustic typologies early in his career. After first experimenting with magnetic tape in works such as Gesang der Jünglinge (1955) and Kontakte (1958–60), he later embraced other synthesis technologies for the production of large-scale spatial electro-acoustic works such as Sirius (1970) and Oktophonie (1990–91). His interest in technological advances in sound design and sound diffusion also managed to penetrate his highly evolved Klavierstücke

Space of State Vectors in PT Symmetrical Quantum Mechanics

Space of states of PT symmetrical quantum mechanics is examined. Requirement that eigenstates with different eigenvalues must be orthogonal leads to the conclusion that eigenfunctions belong to the space with an indefinite metric. The self consistent expressions for the probability amplitude and average value of operator are suggested. Further specification of space of state vectors yield the superselection rule, redefining notion of the superposition principle. The expression for the probability current density, satisfying equation of continuity and vanishing for the bound state, is proposed.Comment: Revised version, explicit expressions for average values and probability amplitude adde