Hail to the thief: a tribute to Kazaa

THIS PAPER CONSIDERS THE ONGOING LITIGATION against the peer-to-peer network KaZaA. Record companies and Hollywood studios have faced jurisdictional and legal problems in suing this network for copyright infringement. As Wired Magazine observes: “The servers are in Denmark. The software is in Estonia. The domain is registered Down Under, the corporation on a tiny island in the South Pacific. The users—60 million of them—are everywhere around the world.” In frustration, copyright owners have launched copyright actions against intermediaries—like against Internet Service Providers such as Verizon. They have also embarked on filing suits against individual users of file-sharing programs. In addition, copyright owners have called for domestic- and international-law reform with respect to digital copyright. The Senate Committee on Government Affairs of the United States Congress has reviewed the controversial use of subpoenas in suits against users of file-sharing peer-to-peer networks. The United States has encouraged other countries to adopt provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 in bilateral and regional free-trade agreements

The Influence of Galactic Cosmic Rays on Ion-Neutral Hydrocarbon Chemistry in the Upper Atmospheres of Free-Floating Exoplanets

Cosmic rays may be linked to the formation of volatiles necessary for prebiotic chemistry. We explore the effect of cosmic rays in a hydrogen-dominated atmosphere, as a proof-of-concept that ion-neutral chemistry may be important for modelling hydrogen-dominated atmospheres. In order to accomplish this, we utilize Monte Carlo cosmic ray transport models with particle energies of $10^6$ eV $< E < 10^{12}$ eV in order to investigate the cosmic ray enhancement of free electrons in substellar atmospheres. Ion-neutral chemistry is then applied to a Drift-Phoenix model of a free-floating giant gas planet. Our results suggest that the activation of ion-neutral chemistry in the upper atmosphere significantly enhances formation rates for various species, and we find that C$_2$H$_2$, C$_2$H$_4$, NH$_3$, C$_6$H$_6$ and possibly C$_{10}$H are enhanced in the upper atmospheres because of cosmic rays. Our results suggest a potential connection between cosmic ray chemistry and the hazes observed in the upper atmospheres of various extrasolar planets. Chemi-ionization reactions are briefly discussed, as they may enhance the degree of ionization in the cloud layer.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures. Accepted to the International Journal of Astrobiolog

Orphans' or Veterans? Justice for Children Born of War in East Timor

All over East Timor, one can find “orphans” whose parents still live, and “wives” who have never been married. These labels mask an open secret in Timorese society—hundreds of babies were born of rape during the Indonesian occupation from 1974 to 1999. In juxtaposition, as a result of the 2004 UNFPA-conducted census, there is finally data available on the current population of East Timor and it has unexpectedly revealed a baby boom, perhaps in response to the emotional losses of the occupation. The fertility rate was found to be the highest in the world, at 8.3 babies per woman.1 The baby as the symbol of both wound and healing is clearly at play in Timor at the present time. Nonetheless, there is official silence on the number and treatment of the children born of conflict, a lack of attention in the transitional justice mechanisms in place in Timor in regard to the human rights violations that produced their situation, and no official policies to deal with the needs of these children or their mothers, or the discrimination they may face. The challenge posed by these children and women to the social fabric of Timor reveals important gaps and silences within the international human rights law framework which might nonetheless be addressed by some fairly straightforward policy innovations. In this paper, I argue that status of the mothers socially and legally, as it impacts on the well-being and ability of the children to claim their rights, needs to be more fully addressed in transitional justice debates. Within Timor, there is a definite ambivalence about the idea of these women as contributors to independence during the occupation, and discomfiture regarding their status as so-called “wives” of Indonesian military. This cultural construction is both exacerbated and challenged by the ambivalent influence of Catholic teachings on East Timorese society. Nonetheless, social currents also exist that, if strategically used to reconstruct the image of these children and women, could more effectively reframe their trauma in transitional justice discourse, and contribute both to their well-being and the long-term process of reconciliation in East Timor. The paper proceeds in two sections. First, I first provide an overview of the situation of sexual violence survivors and their children in East Timor. In the second section I discuss current approaches to the children and their mothers within the transitional justice mechanisms available in East Timor at this time. I aim to shift the current approach to children born of war in Timor from covert welfare assistance by the Catholic Church and NGOs, to a rights-based framework, where the affected children are publicly accepted with valid claims on the Government, rather than seen as by-products of a crime or sin. From this analysis it becomes clear that creative policy and legal options are required that would assist these families with integration, status and financial security. I conclude with one such proposal to improve the situation of these families: re-characterise the affected women and their children as “veterans” of the conflict, with the same status as the former Falintil guerrillas.La

Community Arts: Sustainability in Austerity

The aim of the research project about which this document reports was to explore some of the ways in which three case study community-based organisations in Norwich – and especially those with either a current or previously significant involvement in arts activity – have been affected by the current period of financial austerity

Lightning and charge processes in brown dwarf and exoplanet atmospheres

The study of the composition of brown dwarf atmospheres helped to understand their formation and evolution. Similarly, the study of exoplanet atmospheres is expected to constrain their formation and evolutionary states. We use results from 3D simulations, kinetic cloud formation and kinetic ion-neutral chemistry to investigate ionisation processes which will affect their atmosphere chemistry: The dayside of super-hot Jupiters is dominated by atomic hydrogen, and not H$_2$O. Such planetary atmospheres exhibit a substantial degree of thermal ionisation and clouds only form on the nightside where lightning leaves chemical tracers (e.g. HCN) for possibly long enough to be detectable. External radiation may cause exoplanets to be enshrouded in a shell of highly ionised, H$_3^+$-forming gas and a weather-driven aurora may emerge. Brown dwarfs enable us to study the role of electron beams for the emergence of an extrasolar, weather-system driven aurora-like chemistry, and the effect of strong magnetic fields on cold atmospheric gases. Electron beams trigger the formation of H$_3^+$ in the upper atmosphere of a brown dwarf (e.g. LSR-J1835) which may react with it to form hydronium, H$_3$O$^+$, as a longer lived chemical tracer. Brown dwarfs and super-hot gas giants may be excellent candidates to search for H$_3$O$^+$ as an H$_3^+$ product.Comment: 16 pages, accepted for publication in the Philosophical Transactions A of the Royal Society, (some typos corrected

Small hydrocarbon molecules in cloud-forming Brown Dwarf and giant gas planet atmospheres

We study the abundances of complex carbon-bearing molecules in the oxygen-rich dust- forming atmospheres of Brown Dwarfs and giant gas planets. The inner atmospheric re- gions that form the inner boundary for thermochemical gas-phase models are investigated. Results from Drift-phoenix atmosphere simulations, which include the feedback of phase- non-equilibrium dust cloud formation on the atmospheric structure and the gas-phase abun- dances, are utilised. The resulting element depletion leads to a shift in the carbon-to-oxygen ratio such that several hydrocarbon molecules and cyanopolycyanopolyynene molecules can be present. An increase in surface gravity and/or a decrease in metallicity support the increase in the partial pressures of these species. CO, CO2, CH4, and HCN contain the largest fraction of carbon. In the upper atmosphere of low-metallicity objects, more carbon is contained in C4H than in CO, and also CH3 and C2H2 play an increasingly important role as carbon-sink. We determine chemical relaxation time-scales to evaluate if hydrocarbon molecules can be affected by transport-induced quenching. Our results suggest that a considerable amount of C2H6 and C2H2 could be expected in the upper atmospheres not only of giant gas planets, but also of Brown Dwarfs. However, the exact quenching height strongly depends on the data source used. These results will have an impact on future thermo-kinetic studies, as they change the inner boundary condition for those simulations.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, 1 table, accepted to MNRA

Understanding the Cultural Value of 'In Harmony-Sistema England'

This research project on which this paper reports was designed to explore questions of cultural value in relation to the schools music project In Harmony-Sistema England. Our core research focus has been upon the ways in which children, their teachers and tutors, and their families understand the value of their participation in IHSE initiatives. The project engaged with three case studies of IHSE initiatives (based in Norwich, Telford and Newcastle) and qualitative data was gathered with primary school children, school staff, parents and IHSE musicians in all three cases