1,720,991 research outputs found
The Legal Status of Software Interoperability Information: A Law & Economics Analysis of Application Programming Interfaces and Communication Protocols
No full textThis paper shows that interoperability specifications are not protected by copyright. The paper also demonstrates that existing doubts and uncertainty concerning the legal status of software interoperability information are typically related to a poor understanding of the technical nature of software interfaces. To remedy to such a misunderstanding, the paper focuses on the distinction between interface specifications and implementations and stresses the difference between the steps needed to access to the ideas and principle constituting an interfaces specification and the ones needed to re-implement a functionally equivalent interface through new software code. Leaving interoperability specifications outside the domain of copyright protection (and outside intellectual property in general) is not only coherent with general copyright law principles, as the idea/expression dichotomy; it is also likely not to generate any significant market failures and to increase competitive pressure on software markets leaders. The results of the paper are specifically discussed with respect to the legal systems of the economically more important areas of the world: EU, US and Japan. The analysis is also likely to apply (with minor adaptations) to any copyright system compliant with the Berne Convention (and hence to all the member of the WTO, since the Convention has been incorporated in the TRIPs agreement), since it is mainly based on general copyright law principles, technical arguments and economic reasoning. At the normative level, the paper does not recommend major modifications to the existing model of legal protection of software (and software interfaces), as long as it is interpreted and enforced according to the descriptive part of the work. However, it suggests that policymakers could reduce the Fear of legal actions, other forms of legal Uncertainty and several residual Doubts (FUD) by explicitly stating that interface specifications are unprotectable and freely appropriabl
SOFTWARE INTEROPERABILITY: Issues at the Intersection between Intellectual Property and Competition Policy
Full text linkThe dissertation project proceeds through three papers, analyzing issues related to software interoperability and respectively pertaining to one of the three following interdependent levels of analysis. The first level addresses the legal status of software interoperability information under current intellectual property law (focusing on copyright law, which is the main legal tool for the protection of these pieces of code), trying to clarify if, how and to what extent theses pieces of code (and the associated pieces of information) are protected erga omnes by the law. The second level complements the first one, analyzing legal and economic issues related to the technical possibility of actually accessing this interoperability information through reverse engineering (and software decompilation in particular). Once a de facto standard gains the favor of the market, reverse engineering is the main self-help tool available to competitors in order to achieve interoperability and compete "inside this standard". The third step consists in recognizing that - in a limited number of cases, but which are potentially of great economic relevance - market failures could arise, despite any care taken in devising checks and balances in the legal setting concerning both the legal status of interoperability information and the legal rules governing software reverse engineering. When this is the case, some undertakings may stably gain a dominant position in software markets, and possibly abuse it. Hence, at this level of analysis, competition policy intervention is taken into account. The first paper of the present dissertation shows that interoperability specifications are not protected by copyright. In the paper, I argue that existing doubts and uncertainty are typically related to a poor understanding of the technical nature of software interfaces. To remedy such misunderstanding, the paper focuses on the distinction between interface specifications and implementations and stresses the difference between the steps needed to access to the ideas and principle constituting an interfaces specification and the re-implementation of a functionally equivalent interface through new software code. At the normative level, the paper shows that no major modifications to the existing model of legal protection of software (and software interfaces) are needed; however, it suggests that policymakers could reduce the Fear of legal actions, other forms of legal Uncertainty and several residual Doubts (FUD) by explicitly stating that interface specifications are unprotectable and freely appropriable. In the second paper, I offer a critique of legal restraints on software reverse engineering, focusing in particular on Europe, but considering also similar restraints in the US, in particular in the context of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Through an analysis of entry conditions for late comers and of the comparative costs of developing programs in the first place or reverse engineering them, the paper shows that limitations on decompilation imposed by article 6 of the Software Directive were mostly superfluous and basically non-binding at the time of drafting. What is more, the paper shows that nowadays new - and largely unanticipated - developments in software development models (e.g. open source) make these restraints an obstacle to competition against dominant incumbent controlling software platforms. In fact, limitations on the freedom to decompile obstacle major reverse engineering projects performed in a decentralized way, as in the context of an open source community. Hence, since open source projects are the most credible tools to recreate some competitive pressure in a number of crucial software markets, the paper recommends creating a simpler and clear-cut safe harbor for software reverse engineering. The third paper claims that, in software markets, refusal-to-deal (or "information-withholding") strategies are normally complementary with tying (or "predatory-innovation") strategies, and that this complementarity is so relevant that dominant platform controllers need to couple both in order to create significant anti- competitive effects. Hence, the paper argues that mandatory unbundling (i.e. mandating a certain degree of modularity in software development) could be an appropriate - and frequently preferable - alternative to mandatory disclosure of interoperability information. However, considering the critiques moved from part of the literature to the Commission's Decision in the recent European Microsoft antitrust case, an objection to the previous argument could be that - also in the case of mandatory unbundling - one should still determine the minimum price for the unbundled product. The last part of the paper applies some intuitions coming from the literature concerning complementary oligopoly to demonstrate that this objection is not well grounded and that - in software markets - mandatory unbundling (modularity) may be a useful policy even if the only constraint on the price of the unbundled good is the one of non-negativit
Principi tecnici ed economici per l'analisi del mercato delle piattaforme software: Il Caso Microsoft europeo
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Legal interoperability: making Open Government Data compatible with businesses and communities
Full text linkLegal interoperability could be defined as the possibility of legally mixing data coming from different sources (including governmental data, data generated by online communities and data held by private parties). Legal interoperability is similar to technical interoperability, since it is a prerequisite for mixing data and create new knowledge or services. But it also has its own peculiarities, for instance because it could be achieved simply choosing the appropriate licensing scheme, but also because self-help mechanisms which could - at a certain price - guarantee technical interoperability to third parties cannot (lawfully) solve legal interoperability issues. In the mid/long run, legal interoperability could be achieved thorough the evolution of legal frameworks in order to harmonize the landscape of Government Data. In the short term, the shortcomings generated by diversified legal frameworks may be alleviated through the careful choice of copyright licenses. The presentation will focus on the latter aspects, discussing existing public licenses (such as the Creative Commons and Open Data Commons ones), representing a de facto standard in this domain, and the main open data licenses developed by European governments (e.g. the Open Government Licenses in the UK, the French License Ouverte or the Italian Open Data License
The Future of Museums in the Digital Age: New Models of Access and Use of Digital Collections
No full textThe authors investigate how the transition to digitization and the Internet is affecting the management of museums' digital collections and the challenges and opportunities it presents. Drawing from the economic literature on information technology and from a selection of current initiatives in cyberspace, they provide an analytical framework for identifying the emerging models regarding access to and use of digital collections and for evaluating the challenges to museums in their role as providers of authoritative content, the profitability of digital collections, and the adoption of new metrics to assess the social impact and public mission of digital collection
Creative Commons 4.0 licenses: a sui generis challenge?
No full textThe Sui Generis Database Rights (SGDR) protection grants an exclusive right on databases when a substantial investment is required to collect and arrange the database contents. Since this specific protection makes any re-use of such contents impossible without an explicit permission, therefore directly impacting on the exploitation of Open Data, managing SGDR (where exsisting) – e.g. by adopting a license - is crucial for any public body who wants to make its data available for re-use. The paper examines the new features introduced in the 4.0 version of the Creative Commons Public Licenses, with particular attention to the treatment of SGDR to describe the suitability of the 4.0 version in the specific field of Open Data licensing and re-use. The evaluation has been conducted in light of the current EU legal framework on database rights, also considering the issue of interoperability with other existing database licenses
OpenCoesione and Monithon - a Transparency Effort
Full text linkContext OpenCoesione is the first portal about the fulfilment of investments and projects planned by the Italian central government and by the Italian Regions using the 20072013 European Cohesion funds. Together with Monithon, it is a "transparency tool" whose aim is to foster participation of the citizens and efficiency of the public sector bodies in order to improve the implementation of development policies. By now it is one of the best Open Data portal in Italy qualitywise. Objective Our goal is to show the utility of these portals, how this open information is supposed to help the civil society and how data quality might affect reuse. Method We engage in the empirical observation on how data are exposed and used, discussing specific examples, and applying some data quality metrics. Results We present some evidences on how open data can positively affect the public sector bodies and the spending of funds. Conclusions Underspending of EU Cohesion funds is a serious problem in Italy. OpenCoesione and Monithon can contribute solving this inefficiency, e.g., by presenting data in such a (standardised) way to enable their elaboration by third partie
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