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Transnational Perspectives on the Paris Climate Agreement Beyond Paris: Redressing American Defaults in Caring for Earth’s Biosphere
Get PDFAnxiety about the fate of human civilization is rising. International Law has an essential role to play in sustaining community of nations. Without enhancing International Environmental Law, the biosphere that sustains all nations is imperiled. Laws in the United States can either impede or advance global environmental stewardship. What is entailed in such a choice?
The biosphere is changing. At a time when extraordinary technological prowess allows governments the capacity to know how deeply they are altering Earth\u27s biosphere, nations experience a perverse inability to cooperate together. The Arctic is melting rapidly, with knock on effects for sea level rise and alterations in the hydro-logic cycle world-wide. As both the UN Global Environment Outlook (Geo-5) or the Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “Global Warming 1.5° C” indicate, global environmental trends are destabilizing and can overwhelm societies on each continent. Governments do not respond effectively. Their tepid response to climate change, as embodied in the Paris Agreement of 2015, is the best evidence that States need to reassess their cooperation. Shallow considerations of realpolitik no longer suffice. Nor do otherwise conventional questions, born of once sound practices from the “business as usual” eras, about how governments might methodically shape new treaties or incrementally advance international law while Earth\u27s biosphere rapidly degrade.
States will need to rediscover the benefits and burdens of international cooperation. The aspirational norms of the United Nations Charter are still in force, albeit too little encouraged. More than needing reaffirmation, they require progressive development. Collaborative principles of law can be framed to provide the shared vision that States will require as the Earth\u27s human population grows from 7.6 billion today toward 9.8 billion by 2050. This article suggests the contributions that international environmental law can made toward this objective
Deep Learning vs Markov Model in Music Generation
Get PDFArtificial intelligence is one of the fastest growing fields at the moment in Computer Science. This is mainly due to the recent advances in machine learning and deep learning algorithms. As a result of these advances, deep learning has been used extensively in applications related to computerized audio/music generation. The main body of this thesis is an experiment. This experiment was based on a similar experiment done by Mike Kayser of Stanford University in 2013 for his thesis “Generative Models of Music” where he used Hidden Markov Models and tested the quality/accuracy of the music he generated using a music composer classifier. The experiment involves creating Markov models for music generation and then creating new models that use deep learning algorithms. These models were trained on midi files of piano music from various composers and were used to generate new music in a similar style to the composer it was trained on. In order to compare the results of these models quantitatively, the music generated by these models was passed to a classifier in order to see which technique create a model that makes music that is correctly classified as being from the composer they were trained on. The results of this experiment showed that the classifier was able to more accurately label music generated by the deep learning model than the Markov model as being from the composer the model was trained on
Privacy Law Disparities between the United States and the European Union
Get PDFData is the world’s most valuable resource today. In the 21st century, big data has overtaken the world’s commonly known large industries to become one of the most sought after markets, and companies pay to own this data (The Economist, 2017). Advertisements may have been targeted towards demographics such as race or sex in past years. However, in the digital age, the capability exists to push advertisements to the screens of specific users with known interests. This has been made possible, in part, by unregulated data collection practices across the globe, including in the United States and the European Union. Data collection practices, from the conception of the Internet until the present day, have been disregarding the consent of the user the data represents. This unregulated data collection practice was halted recently in the European Union with the passing of the General Data and Privacy Regulation. However, the practice remains of concern in the United States. This research aims to conduct a classic comparative analysis of the omnibus privacy laws of the United States and the European Union. The existing laws will be compared across the following variables: the right to be informed, right of access, right to rectification, right to erasure, right to restrict processing, right to data portability, and the right to object. Recommendations for improving the United States privacy legislation will be highlighted based on this comparative analysis
The Practically Perfect Tale as Old as Time: A Comparative Analysis of the Branding of Beauty and the Beast and Mary Poppins
Get PDFThe Walt Disney company and all of its heavily branded mastermind keep much of its planning and strategy under wraps from the general public. Although it has been observed amongst fans and business people how Disney markets their products and what their strategy looks like, it has not been compared between two similar projects that have followed the same strategic path. This paper will examine and compare the branding strategies of “Beauty and the Beast” and “Mary Poppins” from screen to stage and back to the screen again in hopes to better understand why one title may take in more at the box office than the other. In order to answer this question, interviews were held to examine the monetary success of all six iterations of these titles. What was discovered was that two out of three times, one title reigned supreme based on box office sales. For future research, this would open up doors to how Disney can better formulate strategies between different areas of the business while also deciding what kind of content to invest their expensive resources into.
‘Yellowface’: An Exploration of Hollywood’s Film History with the Yellow Race
Get PDFThis study explores the history behind Hollywood’s relationship with the depiction of Asians and Asian Americans in film. Through tracking examples of Hollywood’s use of yellowface and whitewashing in movies from the 1920s into modern day, the study explores the historical and financial reasons behind controversial casting decisions, and how they affect the perceived image of Asians in America. In exploring the quantitative aspect, three films created within the last five years that were known to have participated in whitewashing were chosen and analyzed critically and financially. The data from these three movies were then used in comparison to Crazy Rich Asians (2018), a recently released film starring an international Asian cast in order to analyze whether casting controversies can affect the financial box office success of a film
Cleaning Up Our Toxic Coasts: A Precautionary and Human Health-Based Approach to Coastal Adaptation
Get PDFHurricanes in the United States in 2005, 2012, and 2017 have all revealed an insidious problem for coastal climate change adaptation: toxic contamination in the coastal zone. As sea levels rise and violent coastal storms become increasingly frequent, this legacy of toxic pollution threatens immediate emergency response, longer term human health, and coastal ecosystems’ capacity to adapt to changing coastal conditions.
Focusing on Hurricane Harvey’s 2017 devastation of Houston, Texas, as its primary example, this Article first discusses the toxic legacy still present in many coastal environments. It then examines the existing laws available to clean up the coastal zone—CERCLA, RCRA, and the Coastal Zone Management Act at the federal level, land use planning, and state tort law—both to identify ways in which states and the federal government could more effectively implement existing law and to suggest improvements to these existing laws to more emphatically prioritize the elimination of toxic coastal legacies. It concludes with three specific recommendations that precautionarily prioritize human health considerations in coastal management as a means of reducing coastal toxicity in the Anthropocen
How the United States Stopped Being a Pirate Nation and Learned to Love International Copyright
Get PDFFrom the time of the first federal copyright law in 1790 until enactment of the International Copyright Act in 1891, U.S. copyright law did not apply to works by authors who were not citizens or residents of the United States. U.S. publishers took advantage of this lacuna in the law, and the demand among American readers for books by popular British authors, by reprinting the books of these authors without their authorization and without paying a negotiated royalty to them.
This Article tells the story of how proponents of extending copyright protections to foreign authors—called international copyright—finally succeeded after more than fifty years of failed efforts. Beginning in the 1830s, the principal opponents of international copyright were U.S. book publishers, who were unwilling to support a change in the law that would require them to pay negotiated copyright royalties to British authors and, even worse from their perspective, would open up the American market to competition from British publishers. U.S. publishers were quite content with the status quo—a system of quasi-copyright called “trade courtesy.” That system came crashing down in the 1870s, when non-establishment publishers who did not benefit from trade courtesy decided to ignore its norms, publishing their own cheap, low-quality editions of books by British authors in competition with the editions published by the establishment publishers. As a result, most U.S. publishers came to support extending copyright to foreign authors as a means of preventing competition from publishers of the cheap editions.
Once the publishers withdrew their opposition, another powerful interest group came to the fore: typesetters, bookbinders, printers, and other workers in the book-manufacturing industries. These groups opposed international copyright unless it were accompanied by rules assuring that they would not be thrown out of work by a transfer of book manufacturing from the United States to England. In the 1891 Act, the typesetters achieved what they sought: a provision requiring books to be typeset in the United States as a condition of copyright. In this way, U.S. copyright law implemented an element of U.S. trade policy.
The manufacturing clause, as this requirement was called, was gradually watered down over the succeeding decades and lingered in the copyright law until 1986. Yet the entanglement of copyright law with trade policy continued, in the World Trade Organization treaty system and elsewhere.
As a major exporter of books, software, movies, and other articles embodying copyrighted works, the United States has sought in multiple forums to strengthen the protections those works receive under the laws of other nations, sometimes provoking pushback from countries that are net importers of intellectual property goods. When pursuing these goals in the twenty-first century, U.S. policymakers would do well to bear in mind this country’s forgotten history as the greatest copyright pirate nation of the nineteenth century
The Futility of Walls: How Traveling Corporations Threaten State Sovereignty
Get PDFInversions--mergers in which one firm merges with another abroad to avoid taxes in its home country--have spread as globalization has reduced many of the transactional costs associated with relocating. As firms acquire the power to choose the laws that govern them, they challenge the sovereignty of nation-states, who find their ability to tax and regulate firms depleted. States and firms compete in a game of cat and mouse to adapt to this new global reality. The subversion of state power by these firms reveals the futility of walls, both literal and regulatory. This Essay describes the phenomenon of these “traveling corporations” and analyzes several remedies that could limit future mergers. We conclude by arguing that inversions provoke deglobalization and yet may continue to flourish despite it as firms take the lead in dictating global norms
The Concrete Jungle: Where Dreams Are Made of . . . and Now Where Children Are Protected
Get PDFThe tragic and unsettling story of Kalief Browder has notably emerged as a prominent illustration of our criminal justice system’s historical failure to protect our youth. Kalief’s story gained massive media attention with the help of a TIME documentary series featured on Netflix and famous A-listers such as music artist Jay-Z and TV host Rosie O’Donnell. It is hard to ignore the fact that Kalief Browder was cheated by the system; he chose suicide to escape his demons, which developed after undeserved time spent at Riker’s – a place he would have never experienced had he initially been tried as a juvenile in Family Court.
Kalief Browder’s devastating story, along with many other similar stories, provoked valid concerns about criminal procedural policies in New York. Fortunately, Kalief did not die in vain; on April 10, 2017, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signed the New York State Raise the Age reform bill into law. In October 2018, this law commenced New York’s progressive journey of raising its juvenile age from sixteen years old to eighteen years old. Although this change is a tremendous step for the State’s criminal justice system, its execution has and will require considerable adjustment and adaptation by departments and courts throughout the state. This Article discusses the history of the Raise the Age Campaign, the reasons for its promulgation, the potentially significant impact of the new law on our current system, local strategies for implementation, and additional steps beyond raising the age that must be taken to further resolve our system’s juvenile delinquency issues