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Parody and Fair Markets
Get PDFIn December 2011, the UK Intellectual Property Office commissioned the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management at Bournemouth University to research the effects of parody on copyrighted works. Do parodies harm the market for the underlying work? How might we measure the economic effects of parody, as incentive depressors or engines?
UK copyright law does not contain an exception specifically covering parodies. The authors of the study perceive the UK copyright law as one of the most restrictive in seven jurisdictions surveyed (US, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Netherlands, UK) with regard to parodies. By commissioning this research, the UK appears to be considering reform. The study concludes that changes loosening the reign of copyright over parodies would further copyright’s underlying purposes of creation and dissemination
VAT Fraud and Terrorist Funding -- The Azizi Extradition Allegations Part I
Get PDFOn April 14, 2015 Samir Azizi, a 25 year old German/Afghan citizen, was extradited from the United States to Germany. The Extradition Compliant alleged (in 89 criminal counts) that Azizi had denied the German Treasury €61,104,368 in VAT revenue with 12 distinct Missing Trader Intra-Community (MTIC) fraud schemes. At the time of arrest the 26 year old Azizi admitted that his involvement in MTIC frauds stretched back even before 2008, the initial reference year of the Complaint.
This paper assesses the Azizi extradition in two parts. The first part considers the first 26 criminal counts, representing alleged VAT losses of €15,302,965 from four MTIC schemes. The second part considers the remaining €45,801,403, in 63 criminal counts involving an additional 8 companies. Underlying both parts of this assessment is a fundamental (but unanswered) question: “Who exactly is Samir Azizi? Is he the mastermind of a multi-million euro VAT fraud, a fundraising fraudster for terrorist organizations, or a youthful face of convenience used to disguise the intentions and involvement of a larger criminal organization?”
The most troubling aspect of this case (more troubling than the financial losses) are the further allegation that is underscored by Judge Howard R. Lloyd in his Extradition Order that “… there were also indicators that perpetrators were using the VAT procured through such fraud, not only for personal enrichment, but also to finance terrorism.
Do Observer Effects Matter? A Comment on Langenburg, Bochet, and Ford
No full textWe identify methodological problems in Langenburg et al. (2014), which undermine its conclusions about the size of the observer effect problem and the importance of sequential unmasking as a solution. The scoring method of Langenburg et al. (2014) appears to be subjective. The classification of cases is not congruent with the three keys to observer effects in forensic science: the analyst\u27s state of expectation, the analyst\u27s state of desire, and the degree of ambiguity in the evidence being examined. Nor does the paper adequately support its claim, “[I]t has been asserted that the high context/high interaction cases are essentially where there is the most danger of bias.” While the paper tends to minimize concern over observer effects, the evidence in it seems to support the view that fingerprint analysts look to contextual information to help them make decisions
Do Damages Caps Reduce Medical Malpractice Insurance Premiums?: A Systematic Review of Estimates and the Methods Used to Produce Them
Get PDFDespite common claims made in policy debates, the theoretical connection between tort reform and medical malpractice insurance premiums is ambiguous. Simple models suggest reforms such as statutory damages caps reduce premiums. More elaborate models that account for changes in physician behavior suggest caps might increase or have no impact on premiums. A number of empirical studies have been conducted to estimate the impacts of caps on premiums, and several qualitative literature reviews have attempted to draw general conclusions from the literature. No review, however, has offered a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the full set of empirical studies. This chapter fills that gap. We provide a first glimpse at the wide methodological variations in the studies that employ regression analysis to estimate the impacts of caps on medical malpractice insurance premiums. We describe 16 empirical studies that report 197 estimates of the impact of caps on premiums. Using a theory-driven framework to develop a set of best practices, we find that little weight can be put on any one study due to broad methodological shortcomings. This chapter highlights the need for better data and additional research on the impact of caps on premiums
Is it Time to Rewrite the Constitution? Fidelity to Our Imperfect Constitution
Get PDFThis essay considers arguments that the U.S. Constitution is so imperfect — and the constitutional and political system so dysfunctional or otherwise failing — that it is time to rewrite the Constitution through amendment or constitutional convention. I argue that if we adopt and maintain an attitude of fidelity to our imperfect Constitution, it may be unnecessary to formally amend the Constitution unless there is good reason to believe that something better might come out of this process. The better approach is to maintain an attitude of fidelity to the imperfect Constitution and to apply a Constitution-perfecting theory — to interpret the Constitution so as to make it the best it can be. Furthermore, maintaining that attitude, we should recognize the need to “rewrite” the constitutional culture the better to secure constitutional democracy: to cultivate the civic virtues and foster the capacities needed to maintain constitutional self-government
The Picture Begins to Assert Itself: Rules of Construction for Essential Health Benefits in Health Insurance Plans Subject to the Affordable Care Act
Get PDFAs the ACA shifts the function of health insurance from voluntary contract to a means of financing health care, it poses some challenges to traditional doctrines for interpreting health plan provisions. This article explores whether and how the doctrine of reasonable expectations and rules of statutory interpretation might apply to Essential Health Benefits coverage. A functional approach linking the two into a doctrine of reasonable statutory expectations could move us toward developing more consistent rules of interpretation within a more realistic conception of contemporary health insurance
Corporate Conscience and the Contraceptive Mandate: A Dworkinian Reading
Get PDFWhen a closely-divided U.S. Supreme Court decided Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), upholding a challenge by three for-profit corporations to the contraceptive coverage provisions (“contraceptive mandate”) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“ACA”), sadly missing in the flurry of commentary was the late Ronald Dworkin’s assessment. This essay asks, “What would Dworkin do?,” if evaluating that case as well as Wheaton College v. Burwell, in which, over a strong dissent by Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Kagan, the Court granted Wheaton College emergency relief from complying with ACA’s accommodation procedure for religious nonprofit organizations who object to the contraception mandate as substantially burdening religious Free Exercise. This essay addresses these questions about ACA and corporate conscience in light of Dworkin’s call, in Religion Without God, to shift from a special right of religious freedom, protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, to a general right of ethical independence. Dworkin only briefly discussed the place of exemptions from general laws in that reorientation, and so this essay considers the form a Dworkinian analysis might take. It examines the different arguments made in Hobby Lobby by the parties, friends of the court, and the justices about whether a for-profit corporation has a right to the free exercise of religion and whether ACA burdens it. Given Dworkin’s sharp criticisms of the idea of corporate personhood in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in the context of political speech, the essay asks whether he would have been similarly critical of corporate personhood for a family-owned, closely held business, given the concern for female employees’ reproductive liberty expressed in Justice Ginsburg’s Hobby Lobby dissent. The essay then asks what insights Dworkin’s work sheds on pending challenges to ACA’s accommodation provision as not accommodating enough
Internet Payment Blockades: SOPA and PIPA in Disguise? Or Worse?
Get PDFThe law of intermediary liability in intellectual property reflects a constant struggle for balance. On the one hand, rights owners frustrated by the game of whack-a-mole have good reason to look for more efficient ways to stanch the flow of infringement. While this concern is not a new one, the global reach and decentralization of the Internet have exacerbated it. On the flipside, consumers, technology developers, and others fret about the impact of broad liability: it can impede speech, limit competition, and impose a drag on economic sectors with only a peripheral relationship to infringement. As the Supreme Court put it thirty years ago in the seminal Sony case, the law must seek a “balance between a [rights] holder’s legitimate demand for effective – not merely symbolic – protection of the statutory monopoly, and the rights of others freely to engage in substantially unrelated areas of commerce.
The Decision That Could Finally Kill the Revenge-Porn Business
No full textRevenge-pornography websites are a reminder that preying on the vulnerable has long been big business. And while various laws protect people against scam artists, extortionists, manipulators, and other unscrupulous enterprises, the law has not been able to keep up with all malicious businesses
Trafficked? AIDS, Criminal Law and the Politics of Measurement
Get PDFSince early in the HIV epidemic, epidemiologists identified individuals who transact sex as a high-risk group for contracting HIV. Where the issue of transacting sex has been framed as sex work, harm-reduction advocates and scholars call for decriminalization as a primary legal solution to address HIV. Where the issue is defined as trafficking, advocates known as abolitionists argue instead for the criminalization of the purchase of sex.
Global health governance institutions are porous to these competing ideas and ideologies. This article first historicizes the contestation between harm-reduction and abolition in global governance on health. The paper then turns to a new arena in which these battles are playing out: measurement and indicators. The contested political environment of the sex work and trafficking debates has resulted in numerous calls to accurately measure “the problem” so that law and policy makers can identify appropriate legal solutions. Rather than being an objective technical tool for effective policymaking, however, I argue that data and indicators serve as a site of politics and governance. Building on literature from law and sociology, I analyze the political battles being waged through the data and indicators on trafficking that reproduce rather than resolve the larger debate on sex work and trafficking. Indicators become instrumental in providing the justification for the competing legal positions. In other words, how people and issues are counted and defined is instrumental for how laws and policy recommendations are made. Finally, in keeping with other critics of the over-emphasis on criminal solutions to trafficking and sex work, I argue that the ongoing legitimation of criminalization projects vis-à-vis indicators comes at a cost to structural solutions to address the underlying factors that lead to violence and exploitation associated with trafficking or sex work