Category / Law

Erasmus Teaching Visit to Pisa

Fusion

Between May 11 and May 17 Howard Davis (Law Department, Business School) made a teaching visit to the Faculty of Law (Facoltà di Giurisprudenza) at the University of Pisa (Università di Pisa). The visit was paid for under the Erasmus teaching exchange scheme which complements a student exchange programme.

The teaching was based around four two hour lectures and discussion on the theme of human rights law. There were two lectures on themes related to UK law: the post coalition government changes to UK counter-terrorism law and recent changes to the right to a fair trial (including the use of closed material procedures in civil cases involving national security). The other two lectures reflected Howard Davis’ current research interests: the rights of victims of international crimes to gain an account of the truth of what happened to them or their relatives. The lectures are given in English to (mainly) Italian law students taking an English languge course. In Pisa there is an interdisciplinary language department (Centro Linguistico Interdipartimentale) which provides these courses and the lecture programme is part of one of these.

Howard Davis has done these lectures for a number of years and it is always a pleasurable and interesting experience. Pisa University is ancient and prestigious. It was founded in 1343 and jurisprudence was one of its original subjects. Gallileo (laws of physics and mathematics rather than civil or natural law!) was one of its famous pupils (the experiment on mass and acceleration, if it happened at all, involved dropping balls off the Leaning Tower). At last, however, the old building which has housed the law faculty for centuries, is in a state of collapse and the law faculty has had to be distributed at different sites around the city. This did not prevent Howad Davis’ visit from being a success and, it is hoped, an effective way of promoting the good name of Bournemouth University abroad.

BU Research Blog Exclusive: Design & Look of eBU leaked

PG research, Publishing, Research themes

The first screenshot of the eBU interface has been exclusively leaked to the BU Research Blog, and is expected to go viral across the BU community over the next week.

eBU will provide both an internal and external forum for the development of research papers by undergraduate to Professor around the eight BU research themes:

–          Creative & Digital Economies

–          Culture & Society

–          Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth

–          Environmental Change & Biodiversity

–          Green Economy & Sustainability  

–          Health, Wellbeing & Ageing 

–          Leisure & Recreation

–          Technology & Design

Submissions will be open to immediate publication (in a safe internal environment) and open peer review by 2 appropriate BU academics. Authors will be encouraged to act upon these reviews by either reworking papers for submission to an external journal or by opting for publication on the external eBU site.

For BU academics this is a great opportunity to get critical appraisal on your research papers or ideas from colleagues. For academics it also an opportunity to encourage the submission of high quality student output, and possibly to facilitate the co-creation and co-production of publishable material to an external journal or to publish externally with eBU. For students, this is a fantastic opportunity to turn high quality essays or dissertations into scholarly outputs, which will be attractive to employers across many sectors and industries.

If you have any questions or would like to become involved in this exciting venture, please get in touch with me via email aharding@bournemouth.ac.uk or by telephone 01202 963025.

CIPPM Spring Lecture Series 2013

The annual series of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management’s (CIPPM) http://www.cippm.org.uk/ Spring Lectures starts on Thursday 21 February 2013 at 6 pm.

Professor Hector MacQueen, Professor of Private Law at the University of Edinburgh will deliver the first lecture, titled “Ae fond kiss: A Private Matter?” on Thursday 21 February 2013.

Professor MacQueen has written extensively on Intellectual Property law and is author, co-author and editor of a number of books on Intellectual Property law. He was the Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Edinburgh (1999-2003) and Director of the AHRC Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law (SCRIPT) (2002-2007). In 2010 Professor MacQueen took up an appointment as Scottish Law Commissioner (2010-2014).

CIPPM Spring Lectures take place at 18:00, in the Executive Business Centre, close to the Bournemouth Travel Interchange (89 Holdenhurst Road, BH8 8EB). The lectures are free to attend, but places are limited, and admission to the building closes at 18:15. If you wish to reserve a place, please contact Mandy Lenihan at ALenihan@bournemouth.ac.uk

For further information on forthcoming CIPPM Spring Lectures and for booking information see http://business.bournemouth.ac.uk/news/2013/jan/ne001-cippm-lectures-2013.html

Report from the ESRC Festival of Social Science

Bournemouth University was host to an ESRC Festival of Social Science event on 8 November 2012.  The one-day conference, organized by Professor Martin Kretschmer and colleagues from the Law School, sought to explore the complexities of developing empirical research to support public policy in domains such as copyright law.   In attendance at the conference were stakeholders from the Intellectual Property Office UK, the Cabinet Office, law professionals and academics from around Europe.  The day was structured around a series of panel discussions by representatives from policy, the media industry, and law, prompting lively debate around questions such as: ‘What is the status of qualitative research in policy decision making?’ and ‘How can we reconcile the differing legal and academic standards for evidence?’.

The conference was video recorded with the help of research assistants from the Media School and will be made available in full as a series of digital conference proceedings.

The conference was also an opportunity for Professor Kretschmer, Dr. Kris Erickson and Dr. Dinusha Mendis to present the findings of research they carried out during the IPO consultation on the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property.  The research seeks to evaluate possible economic impacts of any future change to UK copyright law to permit parody, caricature and pastiche of existing works.  Currently, parody is not explicitly permitted under UK copyright law.  The authors hope that this type of empirical research will help to illuminate complex public policy questions and strengthen the role of academic research in the policy process.

Below you may view a detailed presentation of the research from the ESRC event.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWbgZ63Ug9k

 

 

 

How Martin Kretschmer’s research impacted the proposed plan to extend copyright term

Watch this excellent short video from BU’s Prof Martin Kretschmer on how a BU conference and signed statement resulted in the European Union amending a proposed plan on copyright law.

To see other BU videos on YouTube go to the BU YouTube page!

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGZZ4SrrzSI

 

View Martin Kretschmer’s publications in our institutional repository.

Co-Director of CIPPM, Dr Dinusha Mendis, elected to the Executive Committee of the British and Irish Law Education and Technology Association (BILETA)

Dr Dinusha Mendis, Senior Lecturer in Law, and Co-Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management http://www.cippm.org.uk/ was elected to the Executive Committee of the long-standing British and Irish Law Education and Technology Association (BILETA) in March 2012 http://www.bileta.ac.uk/Membership/Executive%20Committee

Formed in April 1986 BILETA exists to promote the use of technology in legal education throughout the UK and Ireland.  The Association liaises with academic organisations and professional organisations such as the Higher Education Academy http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/disciplines/law and British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILI) http://www.bailii.org/ Dr. Mendis also represents Bournemouth University on the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) Council http://www1.legalscholars.ac.uk/about/council/index.cfm which was founded in 1908 and celebrates 104 years in 2012.

At the 2012 BILETA Annual Conference in Newcastle (http://www.numyspace.co.uk/~unn_mlif1/school_of_law/bileta/)  Dr. Mendis presented a paper analysing the UK Digital Economy Act 2010. This Act attempts to enforce copyright law in the online environment, for example against downloading and file-sharing. Infringing users will be given three warnings after which they can potentially be disconnected from the Internet, also known as ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’. The law is controversial, and still to be implemented. Dr Mendis considers the proportionality of the measure and its effectiveness in the context of fast moving technology.

Two new copyright papers by Business School Professors

Professor Ruth TowseProfessor Ruth Towse’s article What we know, what we don’t know, and what policy-makers would like us to know about the economics of copyright, published in the Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues (2011, vol. 8(2), pp.101-120) was recently listed on Social Science Research Network’s (SSRN) Top Ten Download list for: Intellectual Property: Copyright Law eJournal.

Ruth Towse is Professor of Economics of Creative Industries in the Business School, and is Centre for Intellectual Property and Policy Management (CIPPM) co-director (economics).

Professor Paul Heald’s ongoing study exploring the public domain effects Professor Paul Healdof copyright law was reported on The Atlantic, among other places. It shows there are twice as many newly published books available on Amazon from 1850 as there are from 1950.

Paul Heald is Professor of Law at the University of Illinois and Professorial Fellow at the CIPPM, Bournemouth University. You can read more about Professor Heald’s work here.

Copyright levies & market growth: Kretschmer presents in Brussels

Professor Martin KretschmerBU’s Professor Martin Kretschmer presented his latest research on copyright levies to over 70 representatives from the European Commission, European Parliament and international organisations and firms including Google, Nokia and Apple in Brussels last week.

The event saw speakers thrash out the role of intellectual property (IP) in digital markets and particularly the barrier copyright levies pose to market growth. (The levy system adds a tariff to blank CDs, MP3 players, printers, PCs and other copying devices, and the money is given as compensation to the IP owner for loss of sale).

Professor Kretschmer’s research reported the results of three product CDsstudies (printer / scanners, portable music / video / game devices and tablet computers) and analysed the relationship between VAT, levy tariffs and retail prices in 20 levy and non-levy countries.

He argued that reproduction of files for personal use, storage or back up should fall under a (non-compensated) copyright exception as there is no harm due to loss of sale, but that file sharing, performance or social network activities will need a licensing solution.

Speaking alongside Kretschmer was Professor Ian Hargreaves; author of the ‘Hargreaves review’, which was conducted in 2011 for Prime Minister David Cameron, recommending an IP framework to support innovation and economic growth in the digital age.

Audio recordings and slides from the event, ‘Intellectual Property for Growth in Digital Markets’, can be accessed via the Bruegel website.

Privilege and Property: Essays on the History of Copyright

Professor Kretschmer’s co-authored publication ‘Privilege and Property’ (Cambridge OpenBook Publishers, 2010, with Professors Deazley and Bently) has been reviewed in the Swiss published journal Archiv für Urheber- und Medienrecht, or UFITA (trans. Copyright and Media Law).

The edited volume is a companion to the AHRC funded digital archivePicture of Professor Martin Kretschmer, ‘Primary Sources of Copyright’, which Professor Kretschmer has co-directed with Professor Bently of Cambridge University since 2006. The archive now comprises of more than 550 documents going back to Renaissance Italy (in facsimile, transcribed, translated and commented).

In the review, the lawyer and chairman of the Swedish Performing Rights Society, Dr Gunnar Petri, writes: “This magnificent resource comprises essential material from all the great traditions of copyright and will enormously facilitate comparative research…. By way of introduction, the editors present a highly interesting picture of the present state of copyright historiography, in itself a ground-breaking venture. They trace the elevation of copyright history into an academic subdiscipline to the years between about 1740 and 1790 in Britain, France and the German-speaking lands, see it in the jurisprudential treatises of the 19th century and note a decline in interest after the signing of the Bern convention [1886], signalling a more functional approach to copyright’s history.”

‘Privilege and Property’ and the digital archive at www.copyrighthistory.org  “deserve the highest appreciation” (Petri).

Find out about Max Lowenstein’s research into denunciation

Dr Max Lowenstein, from the Law Department in the Business School, has a piece of research coming out in Criminology & Criminal Justice: An International Journal (rated A in the Excellence Research Australia journal ranking list) that explores the meaning of judicial denunciation. The article attempts to relate sentencing principle, policy and social theory to legal practice by comparing the perceptions of English and Danish lower Court judges when sentencing minor theft offenders. There is no coherent international academic agreement as to what judicial denunciation means. The qualitative data gathered by interviewing Danish and English judges commonly pointed to the ‘public condemnation of someone or something’ Oxford Dictionaries Online (World English). In other words, judges pointing out wrongful behavior in theft offenders during sentence summation and explaining how this impacts victims, themselves and wider society. Through a small comparison of judicial perceptions in two distinct legal cultures there were common hints provided as to what denunciation may mean and what it could achieve when applied to theft offenders. In England, the potentially negative repercussions of denouncing theft offenders in Court were the focus. As one English lay judge eloquently summed up;

‘There is little impact on hardened persistent theft offenders because they know full well what they have done is wrong. It is like water off a duck’s back to them. Public shaming only has an impact if the theft offender cares about what others think of him.’

 However, in Denmark, the potentially positive repercussions of denouncing theft offenders in Court were the focus. As one Danish professional judge confidently stated;

‘When you explain why conduct is unacceptable in society, particularly early on in a theft offender’s anti-social habits, it can act as an important wake up call.’

Sadly comparative qualitative data on judicial denunciation is very rare due to the significant challenges it presents to the researcher. Indeed this research comparing such an important element of the sentencing approach had never been attempted before. By gathering more data across legal cultures it may be possible to align our theoretical understandings of judicial denunciation with the common perceptions in legal practice across Europe and beyond. In this way, comparative academics can contribute to the continuing future globalization of criminal justice. Much more research on judicial denunciation can and should be done. In so doing, how public condemnation of wrongful behavior is commonly perceived by judges in relation to similar criminal offences across different legal cultures will begin to emerge.

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission (Digital Agenda), reads BU research, but…

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, made her annual set piece speech at the Media Forum in Avignon, France on 19 November: Who feeds the artist?

Speaking of economic reward: if that is the aim of our current copyright system, we’re failing here too. [then follows a paragraph summarising the BU studies in the area, but without reference] 1000 euros a month is not much to live off. Often less than the minimum wage. But most artists, and not only the young ones at the early stages of their career, have to do so. Half the fine artists in the UK, half the “professional” authors in Germany, and, I am told, an incredible 97.5% of one of the biggest collecting society’s members in Europe, receive less than that paltry payment of 1000 euros a month for their copyright works. Of course, the best-paid in this sector earn a lot, and well done to them. But at the bottom of the pyramid are a whole mass of people who need independent means or a second job just to survive.

[before indicating a change in policy direction] Let’s not wait for a financial crisis in the creative sector to happen to finally adopt the right tools to tackle it.

—

The data is clearly from:

AUTHORS’ EARNINGS FROM COPYRIGHT AND NON-COPYRIGHT SOURCES: A SURVEY OF 25,000 BRITISH AND GERMAN WRITERS (ALCS Study 2007) http://www.cippm.org.uk/alcs_study.html

COPYRIGHT CONTRACTS AND EARNINGS OF VISUAL CREATORS: A SURVEY OF 5,800 BRITISH DESIGNERS, FINE ARTISTS, ILLUSTRATORS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS (DACS Study 2011) http://www.cippm.org.uk/publications/dacs-report.html

A possible source is my contribution to a Hearing in the European Parliament last June. http://www.cippm.org.uk/news/2011/jun/ne001-future-of-copyright-in-the-digital-era.html

So there is a challenge… I could blog: “European Commission Vice-President reads BU research”.

But no source is cited. Did our studies matter? Is there a causal link to a change in the direction of copyright policy?

In REF terms, was there Impact of research?

Howard Davis publishes in the highly rated journal – Public Law

Dr Howard Davis, from the Law Department in the Business School, has a piece coming out in Public Law (A* in the Excellence Research Australia journal ranking list) on the right to an open hearing in the context of mental health law. Courts and tribunals dealing with the affairs of those with serious mental health problems normally conduct their affairs in private with no access of the public or the media. This is to protect confidentiality and privacy. But private hearings go against the fundamental principle of open justice. The article explores recent developments in which mental health tribunals (which deal with questions whether someone detained in a mental hospital ought to be released) and the Court of Protection (whose concerns include sorting out the property etc of those unable to look after themselves) have both allowed some degree of publicity to their proceedings. In the tribunal case it was a patient who had been detained in Broadmore for 23 years who successfully sort a public hearing in order, he hoped, to publicise his position and his criticisms of the regime. In the COP case the application came from the media. The patient is a renowned pianist who is also autistic and there is signicant public interest in his position. The media had a limited right to publicise information gleaned from the proceedings.