Can Ideas be Capital? Factors of Production in the Post-Industrial Economy: A Review and Critique

Economic and social relations are undergoing radical change, expressed in such concepts as “knowledge economy,” “weightless economy,” “postindustrial society,” and “information society.” The literature suggests the arrival of a distinct new factor of production—intellectual capital—replacing or perhaps supplementing land, labor, and capital. We give a historically informed theoretical exposition of capital as the durable result of past production processes, transforming future production while not being transformed itself and associated with a particular economic actor. We then construct a taxonomy of the possible characteristics and location of intellectual capital in postindustrial production

Integrating biofuels into the DART model: Analysing the effects of the EU 10% biofuel target

Biofuels and other forms of bioenergy have received increased attention in recent times: They have partly been acclaimed as an instrument to contribute to rural development, energy security and to fight global warming but have been increasingly come under attack for their potential to contribute to rising food prices. It has thus become clear that bioenergy cannot be evaluated independently of the rest of the economy and that national and international feedback effects are important. In this paper we describe how the CGE model DART is extended to include first-generation biofuel production technologies. DART can now be used to assess the efficiency of combined climate and bioenergy policies. As a first example the effects of a 10% biofuel target in the EU are analyzed.biofuels, CGE model, EU climate policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

WiBACK: A back-haul network architecture for 5G networks

Recently both academic and industry worlds has started to define the successor of Long Term Evolution (LTE), so-called 5G networks, which will most likely appear by the end of the decade. It is widely accepted that those 5G networks will have to deal with significantly more challenging requirements in terms of provided bandwidth, latency and supported services. This will lead to not only modifications in access and parts of core networks, but will trigger changes throughout the whole network, including the Back-haul segment. In this work we present our vision of a 5G Back-haul network and identify the associated challenges. We then describe our Wireless Backhaul (WiBACK) architecture, which implements Software Defined Network (SDN) concepts and further extends them into the wireless domain. Finally we present a brief overview of our pilot installations before we conclude.This work has been supported by the BATS research project which is funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme under contract n317533

'This Video is Unavailable': Analyzing Copyright Takedown of User-Generated Content on YouTube

What factors lead a copyright owner to request removal of potentially infringing user-generated content? So-called “notice-and-takedown” measures are provided in the United States under Section 512 of the U.S. Copyright Act (as amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998) and enabled in the European Union under the Directive on Electronic Commerce (2000/31/EC). While the combination of limiting liability (“safe harbor”) and notice-and-takedown procedures was originally conceived as a means of balancing innovation with the interests of rightholders, there has been limited empirical study regarding their effects. This research investigates, for the first time, the factors that motivate takedown of user-generated content by copyright owners. We study takedowns within an original dataset of 1,839 YouTube music video parodies observed between January 2012 and December 2016. We find an overall rate of takedowns within the sample of 32.9% across the 4-year period. We use a Cox proportional hazards model to investigate propositions from rightholder groups about the factors that motivate takedowns: these include concerns about commercial substitution; artistic/moral concerns; cultural differences between firms; and YouTube uploader practices. The main finding is that policy concerns frequently raised by rightholders are not associated with statistically significant patterns of action. For example, the potential for reputational harm from parodic use does not appear to predict takedown behavior. Nor does commercial popularity of the original music track trigger a systematic response from rightholders. Instead, music genre and production values emerge as significant factors. We suggest that evolving policy on intermediary liability - for example with respect to imposing filtering systems (automatically ensuring “stay-down” of potentially infringing content) - should be carefully evaluated against evidence of actual behavior, which this study shows may differ materially from stated policy positions

Topology forming and optimization framework for heterogeneous wireless back-haul networks supporting unidirectional technologies

Wireless operators, in developed or emerging regions, must support triple-play service offerings as demanded by the market or mandated by regulatory bodies through so-called Universal Service Obligations (USOs). Since individual operators might face different constraints such as available spectrum licenses, technologies, cost structures or a low energy footprint, the EU FP7 CARrier grade wireless MEsh Network (CARMEN) project has developed a carrier-grade heterogeneous multi-radio back-haul architecture which may be deployed to extend, complement or even replace traditional operator equipment. To support offloading of live triple-play content to broadcast-optimized, e.g., DVB-T, overlay cells, this heterogeneous wireless back-haul architecture integrates unidirectional broadcast technologies. In order to manage the physical and logical resources of such a network, a centralized coordinator approach has been chosen, where no routing state is kept at plain WiBACK Nodes (WNs) which merely store QoS-aware MPLS forwarding state. In this paper we present our Unidirectional Technology (UDT)-aware design of the centralized Topology Management Function (TMF), which provides a framework for different topology and spectrum allocation optimization strategies and algorithms to be implemented. Following the validation of the design, we present evaluation results using a hybrid local/centralized topology optimizer showing that our TMF design supports the reliable forming of optimized topologies as well as the timely recovery from node failures.Federal Ministry of Education and Research of the Federal Republic of German (F¨orderkennzeichen 01 BU1116,SolarMesh Energieeffizientes,autonomesgroßfl¨achiges Sprach- undDatenfunknetzmitflacher IP-Architektur

Path signalling in a wireless back-haul network integrating unidirectional broadcast technologies

The black-haul infrastructures of today's wireless operators must support the triple-play services demanded by the market or regulatory bodies. To cope with increasing capacity demand, in our previous work, we have developed a cost-effective heterogeneous layer 2.5 wireless back-haul (WiBACK) architecture, which leverages the native multicast capabilities of broadcast technologies such as DVB to off-load high-bandwidth broadcast content delivery. Furthermore, our architecture provides support for unidirectional technologies on the data and the control plane. This adopts a centralized coordinator approach, in which coordinator nodes install so-called management and data pipes. No routing state is kept at plain WiBACK nodes, which merely store QoS-aware pipe forwarding state. Consequently, the architecture requires a reliable protocol to push resource allocation and pipe forwarding state into the network, considering possibly unidirectional connectivity. Such a protocol, whose task is related to MPLS label distribution, is essential during the initial forming of WiBACK topologies and during regular network operations to reliably manage the data pipes. In this paper, we present a novel approach to extend our IEEE 802.21-inspired WiBACK TransportService and, based upon this, the design of an RSVP-TE-style pipe signalling protocol using nested hop-by-hop request/response MIH transactions that supports signalling over unidirectional technologies. A thorough evaluation and successful testbed deployments show that this protocol reliably signals pipe state even under high loss conditions

Towards QoS-aware load distribution in heterogeneous networks

Enabling broadband internet connectivity of 30 mbps and more is an ambiguous goal of the European Digital Agenda, particularly in rural and remote regions. Not relying on a single access technology but using multiple simultaneously is believed to be a promising option to meet this objective. However, simply using the available connections in parallel and distributing traffic arbitrarily among them despite their different characteristics might still lead to an unacceptable service quality due to the heterogeneity. Instead, methods that are sophisticated are required, which on one hand takes the Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements of the various applications into account and on the other hand is aware of the different network characteristics. In this work, we discuss the main challenges which occur when utilizing multiple access technologies in parallel and we propose an architecture addressing those issues. Moreover, we present some preliminary validation results, which show the benefit of our approach.The BATS research project which is funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme under contract n31753