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“They Collected What Was Left of the Scraps”: Food Surplus as an Opportunity and Its Legal Incentives
No full textFor many years the problem of food security has been addressed only in relation to developing countries, due to the fact that people in developed nations had a relatively abundant supply of food. This is not anymore true both because of the economic crisis and an increasing demand of food at the global level. Therefore, food surplus in the food chain both at the production level and at household consumption could become a resource. In this respect, legal rules (e.g., the Good Samaritan Act in the United States) may provide incentives to economic agents for recovering food surplus. This paper examines in a comparative way legal remedies provided by United States and European Union to address food surplus. Some suggestions are provided to further improve the systems as well
TBIM: A Language for Modeling and Reasoning about Business Plans
No full textConceptual models of different aspects of an organization--business objectives, processes, rules, policies and objects--have been used for organizational design, analysis, planning, and knowledge management. Such models have also served as starting points for designing information systems and conducting business intelligence activities. This paper proposes the Tactical Business Intelligence Model (TBIM), a language for modeling and reasoning about strategic business plans. TBIM lies in between the strategic and tactical level, for strategic plans are abstract tactics. The language extends a strategic modeling language with primitives for business model design. The paper presents graphical syntax and semantics for TBIM, and illustrates the power of our proposal on a medium-sized case study. In addition, the paper proposes a method for evaluating alternative strategic plans by mapping them to business process models and analyzing the outcome via simulation technique
Regole di sicurezza e responsabilità civile nella attività di mountain biking e downhill montano = Safety Rules and Civil Liability in the Practice of Mountain Biking and Downhill
No full textIl paper si prefigge l’obiettivo di esaminare, sotto diversi profili, le regole di sicurezza e la responsabilità civile nascente dall’esercizio del mountain biking e del downhill, due attività sportive in grande espansione che costituiscono ormai un volano importante nelle strategie di marketing connesse alla fruizione turistica della montagna estiva. L’analisi si focalizza sulla evoluzione del fenomeno sportivo e turistico connessa a questi sport e sulle responsabilità nascenti in capo ai soggetti che in queste attività sono coinvolti nella veste di erogatori di servizi che le rendono possibili e di utenti che le praticano.
Lo studio è suddiviso in due parti. La prima muove dal lumeggiare l’evoluzione storica della bicicletta, dai primi modelli sprovvisti di sterzo e pedali fino alle più evolute mountain bike di oggi. L’analisi prosegue soffermandosi sull’avvento della pratica della mountain bike e del downhill in Italia, per poi ricostruire il quadro regolativo che scandisce modalità, condizioni di pratica e regole di sicurezza che circondano queste attività sportive, con riferimento ad una normativa spesso poco omogenea e dispersa a vari livelli nella gerarchia delle fonti (con un modello rilevante rappresentato dalla recente normativa trentina), dove un ruolo importante viene giocato da regole tecniche e sociali delle comunità di pratica di riferimento.
La seconda parte del paper analizza la responsabilità civile che interessa tutti i soggetti coinvolti in questa attività in veste di erogatori di servizi e di utenti. Viene esaminata la figura dell’accompagnatore/maestro di mountain bike, non ancora considerata dalla normativa nazionale, ma eterogeneamente disciplinata da alcune norme regionali, mettendo in luce la responsabilità civile gravante su queste figure dall’incerto status professionale in relazione a infortuni di allievi e di terzi danneggiati da questi ultimi nel tempo in cui sono operano sotto la vigilanza dei propri istruttori. Si considera quindi la responsabilità civile del gestore di bike park, l’area appositamente adibita alla pratica del downhill. Il gestore attraverso la stipulazione di un “contratto atipico di fruizione del bike park” si impegna a trasportare da valle a monte il biker, e viene assoggettato a responsabilità che sono legate alle condizioni di sicurezza delle aree dove il biker esegue la propria discesa a valle. Si esamina anche il ruolo dell’assicurazione, prendendo atto che alcune normative locali prevedono in capo al gestore del bike park l’obbligo di dotarsi di una adeguata copertura assicurativa prima di procedere all’apertura dell’impianto al pubblico. Si analizza anche lo scenario conseguente ad ipotesi di collisione tra bikers ed altri fruitori della montagna estiva, sia all’interno che all’esterno del bike park, verificando la posizione assunta dal gestore in relazione a tali evenienze. Non si è infine trascurato di considerare la responsabilità civile nascente da un difetto dell’attrezzatura impiegata dal mountain biker. Le figure analizzate corrispondono al produttore di mountain bike in relazione alla responsabilità extracontrattuale nascente dalla immissione sul mercato di un prodotto difettoso, e al locatore di mountain bike in relazione alla responsabilità contrattuale derivante da inadempimento del contratto per mancata idoneità e/o manutenzione del bene locato.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT
This paper aims to examine the rules of safety and liability emerging from the practice of mountain biking and downhill. The number of tourists praticing these two sports is greatly increasing in the Italian mountais holiday destinations. This phenomena is progressiveley becoming an important driver in the marketing strategies related to the tourist fruition of the Italian mountains in summer. The analysis focuses on the evolution of these spost activities and of the tourism choices connected to these sports. It inquires the civil liabilities arising for the parties that are involved in these activities both as service provider and as consumers.
The study is divided into two parts. The first highlights the historical evolution of the bicycle, from the early models without steering and pedals up to the most advanced mountain bike today. It is later potrayed the advent of the practice of mountain biking and downhill in Italy, in order to understand the regulatory framework that articulates procedures, conditions of practice and safety rules surrounding these sport activities, with reference to legislation often uneven and dispersed at various levels in the hierarchy of sources (with an important model represented by recent Trentino legislation), where an important role is played by the technical and social rules of the communities of practice of reference.
The second part is about the civil liabilities affecting the subjects involved in this activity as service providers and users. The paper examines the figure of the guide/teacher of mountain bike, not yet legislatively recognized as professions, but heterogeneously governed by some regional rules, highlighting the civil liability imposed on these figures of uncertain professional level in relation to accidents involving pupils and of parties injured by them during the time in which they are placed under the supervision of their instructors. It then considers the liability of the operator of the bike park, an organized area specifically reserved to the practice of downhill. The bike park manager by entering into what can be considered a "contract for the use of the bike park" undertakes to carry the rider from downstream to upstream, and is subject to liabilities that are related to the safety conditions of the areas where the rider performs his descent to valley. It also examines the role of insurance, noting that some local regulations require the operators of the bike park to provide adequate insurance cover before opening the park to the public. Also analyzed is the scenario resulting from an hypotetical collision between bikers and other traditional visitors of the mountain, both inside and outside of the bike park, exloring the liability of the operator in relation to such occurrences. Lastly it is also considered the civil liability arising from a defect on the equipments used by mountain bikers, as well as the product liability of the manufacturer of mountain bikes in relation to a non-contractual liability arising from placing on the market a defective mountain bike
Scientific knowledge unchained: verso una policy dell’università italiana sull’Open Access
No full textLo scopo di questo scritto è mettere in luce quel che il diritto formale può fare a favore dell’Open Access (OA).
La tesi di fondo è che il diritto formale - la legge, i regolamenti, i contratti - può rappresentare un formidabile ausilio all’affermazione del principio dell’accesso aperto, ma che il definitivo successo dell’OA risiede in un radicale cambiamento delle norme informali che presidiano le prassi dell’editoria scientifica. Un tale mutamento dipende dalle dinamiche di potere nelle quali si intrecciano gli interessi degli scienziati che comandano il gioco delle pubblicazioni (potere accademico-scientifico) e gli interessi degli editori scientifici che hanno una posizione di preminenza sul mercato (potere commerciale). Inoltre, un ruolo di primo piano viene giocato dai nuovi attori che si affacciano nel sistema della comunicazione scientifica (archivi disciplinari, motori di ricerca, social network scientifici etc.).
Particolare attenzione è riservata al mutamento normativo e all’interazione tra diverse tipologie di regole (regole giuridiche, regole informali e regole tecnologiche).
Lo scritto s’incentra sull’accesso aperto alle pubblicazioni e tocca tangenzialmente altri, e pur fondamentali, aspetti connessi come quello dell’accesso ai dati della ricerca scientifica.
Nel primo paragrafo si introduce l’argomento, si dichiara la metodologia di riferimento, si disegna l’architettura della trattazione. Nel secondo paragrafo si mette in luce che l’oligopolio della scienza dipende da un’interazione perversa tra diritto d’autore e regole della valutazione. Nel terzo paragrafo si delinea il cuore giuridico e le finalità dell’accesso aperto. Nel quarto paragrafo si illustrano le principali policy di riferimento. Nel quinto paragrafo si descrive la policy dell’Unione Europea in materia di OA. Nel sesto e ultimo paragrafo si propongono alcune linee di sviluppo di una politica normativa che possa contribuire alla definitiva affermazione dell’OA nell’università italiana.
ENGLISH VERSION
The aim of this paper is to explore the contribution of formal law to Open Access (OA).
The main thesis is that formal law may be considered as an outstanding instrument to affirm the OA principle. However, the ultimate success of OA depends on a radical change of the informal rules that apply to scientific publishing practices. Such a variation must take into account the dynamics of power that govern academic-scientific publications, in which the interests of both scientists and publishers intersect.
Moreover, a pivotal role is played by new upcoming actors that populate the system of scientific communication (repositories, search engines, scientific social networks etc.).
Special attention is given to the normative change and the interaction that occurs among different types of rules (formal legal rules, informal rules and technology rules).
This article focuses primarily on OA to publications and it does not discuss in details other related topics such as open research data.
In the first paragraph, I briefly introduce the subject, explaining the methodology and the general framework of the paper. The second paragraph focuses on the presumption that scientific oligopoly depends on the perverse interaction between copyright and evaluation rules. In the third paragraph, I describe the legal kernel, as well as the scope, of OA. The fourth paragraph illustrates the main applicable policies and the fifth concentrates on the European Union policy on OA. Lastly, the sixth paragraph focuses on some development avenues for a normative policy that may contribute to a definitive affirmation of OA in Italian universities
Joint Learning and Optimization of Unknown Combinatorial Utility Functions
No full textThis work considers the problem of automatically discovering the solution preferred by a decision maker (DM). Her preferences are formalized as a combinatorial utility function, but they are not fully defined at the beginning and need to be learnt during the search for the satisficing solution. The initial information is limited to a set of catalog features from which the decisional variables of the DM are to be selected.
An interactive optimization procedure is introduced, which iteratively learns an approximation of the utility function modeling the quality of candidate solutions and uses it to generate novel candidates for the following refinement.
The source of learning signals is the decision maker, who is fine-tuning her preferences based on the learning process triggered by the presentation of tentative solutions.
The proposed approach focuses on combinatorial utility functions consisting of a weighted sum of conjunctions of predicates in a certain theory of interest. The learning stage exploits the sparsity-inducing property of 1-norm regularization to learn a combinatorial function from the power set of all possible conjunctions of the predicates up to a certain degree. The optimization stage consists of maximizing the learnt combinatorial utility function to generate novel candidate solutions. The maximization is cast into an Optimization Modulo Theory problem, a recent formalism allowing to efficiently handle both discrete and continuous-valued decisional features. Experiments on realistic problems demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in focusing towards the optimal solution and its ability to recover from suboptimal initial choices
Produrre e nutrirsi "bio" : analisi comparata del diritto degli alimenti biologici = Producing and eating "bio" : a comparative analysis of the law of organic food
No full textThe European Union and the United States represent the world’s largest markets for organic food. Despite the need for harmonization of organic standards, the legal systems of the largest food market of the world have accomplished a merely relative disciplinary convergence on organic food production and consumption. Retracing the most important steps of the organic phenomenon, which was born as a philosophical movement and as a reaction to the industrialization of agricultural production between the two world wars, this paper analyzes the concept of "organic farming" as an agricultural production method which requires farmers to follow certain rules and limit the use of pesticides and other chemicals. Following a general exposure of the legal frameworks in both areas, created during the 90s in order to respond to public concerns about the intensification of livestock production and several food scandals –, the first chapter of the paper analyzes the value of consumer’s trust in the accuracy and truthfulness of organic labeled products, considering that they represent typical credence goods, where consumers lack the possibility to check by themselves the “quality” attached to the food that they have chosen in the market, and if the manufacturer has complied with the rules expressing this quality. As a matter of fact, the quality of organic food is only guaranteed through proper labelling and the certification of the production process or the final product by third-party organizations. The second chapter evaluates the regulations both in the US and in the European model, paying particular attention to import and export regimes in both areas.
As regards the U.S. area, traditionally inspired by a very confident approach towards technology, the paper provides a comprehensive exposure of the standards of the National Organic Program and their implementation. In the European Union context, the paper explores the provisions of Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 of 28 June 2007, whose compliance enables any food producer to qualify products as "organic". The third chapter considers the implementation of the European regulation by the Italian legislative decree no. 220/1995, which confers the control over actors in the organic sector to private bodies, authorized for this purpose by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, the Italian authority responsible for the coordination of technical and administrative activities related to the application of the EU regulation. For that purpose, the Ministry collaborates with the Italian autonomous regions and provinces, which have taken a leading role in the national organic sector (even anticipating the European Community’s legal initiative of the 90s). Their most significant contributions to the field, like for instance the encouragement of local farmers and the explicit regulation of the coexistence between organic, non-organic and GM crops, will be discussed in further detail, as well as the rules envisaging an alternative agricultural method called “integrated agriculture”. In the last chapter, the paper analyzes whether and what kind of responsibility may arise from the violation of legislation on organic food, considering the possible venues of redress for consumers willing to vindicate the misbranding of organic food against not only the producers but also the intermediaries of the supply chain. In this view a powerful tool is certainly represented by the remodeled class action, as contained within art. 140-bis of the Italian Consumers’ Code. This instrument is inspired by the US class action, whose essential characteristics will be compared with its (often uncertain) application upon the different Italian regulatory environment. Finally, the paper considers the new widespread responsibility in the food supply chain based on food labeling and more generally on any information attached to food placed into the market, which has been introduced by the Regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011
Minimalist Metadata Visualization: The Minimal Set of Context Dependent Attributes for Entity Identification
No full textThe purpose of our study is to addresses fundamental issues of minimalist metadata visualization that make an entity identifiable by human inspection. Minimalist metadata visualization for entity depends on the context of use of that entity, i.e., who is asking for what/whom at when and where. Therefore, we seek to recognize the need for requisite types, amount and order of metadata in different context. A survey result and user study on YouTube is presented revealing interesting facts based on our common understanding and practice of metadata visualization. In the first survey, we took one entity type with five different contexts to illustrate how variant the user reacts in different requirements. Afterwards, in user study we tried to plot our findings on popular video sharing website “YouTube” and identified some key problems as well. The results of our study will help to understand the importance of the minimal attribute set to identify an entity which can accelerate any sort of entity search in an efficient way
Cloud-assisted Dissemination in Social Overlays
No full textDecentralized social networks are an emerging solution to the privacy issues plaguing mainstream centralized architectures. Social overlays---overlay networks mirroring the social relationships among node owners---are particularly intriguing, as they limit communication within one's friend circle. Previous work investigated efficient protocols for peer-to-peer (P2P) dissemination in social overlays, but also showed that the churn induced by users, combined with the topology constraints posed by these overlays, may yield unacceptable latency. In this paper, we combine P2P dissemination on the social overlay with occasional access to the cloud. When updates from a friend are not received for a long time, the cloud serves as an external channel to verify their presence. The latter acts as an external channel to check for friend updates, when these are not received for a long time. The outcome is disseminated in a P2P fashion, quenching cloud access from other nodes and, if an update exists, speeding dissemination. We show that our protocol performs close to mainstream centralized architectures and incurs only modest monetary costs
Copyright, contratto e accesso alla conoscenza: un’analisi comparata = Copyright, contract and access to knowledge: a comparative analysis.
No full textIl processo di digitalizzazione e lo sviluppo dei media, stravolgendo il paradigma tradizionale del copyright/diritto d’autore conducono a reazioni opposte. Da un lato, estendendo in vario modo l’ampiezza dell’esclusiva autorale favoriscono l’adozione di regole restrittive di accesso e uso dei contenuti; dall’altro, alimentano le logiche di condivisione, specie in alcune aree di produzione del sapere.
Il contratto, pur mutata la propria natura nella dimensione digitale, rappresenta la prima leva per l’affermazione di tali divergenti dinamiche, che, in entrambe le direzioni, riguardano anche la circolazione della conoscenza scientifica. Nel senso dell’apertura, lo strumento negoziale consente di perseguire i principi affermati dal movimento dell’Open Access (OA), abbattendo le barriere economiche e giuridiche all’accesso e utilizzo dei contenuti.
Dal deposito e pubblicazione su archivi istituzionali e disciplinari di opere transitate già attraverso i canali editoriali convenzionali, comunemente definita green road, alla pubblicazione su riviste ad accesso aperto, gold road, il fenomeno si sviluppa dal basso verso l’alto grazie alle dichiarazioni di principio e alle norme informali che hanno sin ora guidato le comunità accademiche nell’affermazione dell’OA. Di recente, tuttavia, i principi dell’OA sono oggetto di attenzione da parte del decisore pubblico che, pur timidamente, ne “impone” l’attuazione a tutte le comunità accademiche. Eppure, il diritto formale non sembra da solo sufficiente: è soltanto il primo tassello di una disciplina organica tesa a definire regole e incentivi per la produzione e la disseminazione della conoscenza scientifica, allo scopo di bilanciare la libertà “accademica” con il diritto di accesso alla conoscenza. = ENGLISH VERSION = Along with a comparative perspective that takes account of the U.S. and Italian law, this work aims to explore the interface between copyright and contract lae in publishing process.
In the current publishing environment, contracts and technology play a dominant role in the exploitation of copyrighted works. Publishers are granted by assignment of all copyright rights to reproduce and publish the work, but also to exercise control over its contents through technological protection measures. At the same time, mass digitization allows libraries and other organizations to make contents available online, which it entails a redefinition of the traditional publishing process and introduces new players to the scene (e.g., Google Books).
Hence, technology proves to be a powerful instrument for the spread of knowledge and it is on this pattern that Open Access (OA) is rapidly gaining ground.
Mostly based on a bottom-up approach that is on soft law, institutional policies and contracts, OA designs a new legal environment targeting the objectives of free accessibility, further distribution, and proper archiving of publications. These aims can be achieved through the creation of new open access business models to publish on OA journals (gold road) or to self-archive in institutional or disciplinary repositories works that have been originally published in conventional journals (green road).
However, in order for OA to be fully developed it is necessary to devise a principled and feasible approach to the dissemination of scholarly works against the current social, economic and legal background.
Indeed, the importance of OA is steadily recognized by legislators who integrate OA provisions into their legal system. This is an innovation of great significance, which was first fostered in the USA, and then extended in some European countries such as Italy and Germany in the European framework. Nevertheless, considering the different law systems, the formal law need to be combined with national strategies and institutional policies providing adequate incentives to the authors, while also promoting academic freedom and the right to knowledge access
Towards Hybrid and Diversity-Aware Collective Adaptive Systems
No full textThe physical and virtual dimensions of life are becoming more and more deeply interwoven. Society is merging with technology, giving rise to a global socio-technical ecosystem. In a society comprising people and machines as actors we often see people-to-people interactions mediated by machine and machine-to-machine interaction mediated by people. The speed and scale of this change and the differences in culture, language and interests make the problem of establishing effective means of communication and coordination increasingly challenging. Our vision, embodied in the SmartSociety project , is that a new generation of systems, hybrid (i.e., including humans and artificial peers, as well as social groups), distributed, open and large-scale, is needed to tackle these issues. In such systems, multitudes of heterogeneous peers will produce and handle massive amounts of data; peers will join/leave the system following unpredictable patterns with no central coordination and will interoperate at different spatial and temporal scales. Aware of the ethical issues, and by identifying the right incentive schemes and privacy levels, these systems will assist individuals and collectives in their everyday activities, coping with the diversity of the world and working in the presence of incomplete and incorrect information