The 23rd International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems
University of Liverpool (U.K.), 16th-17th December 2010
http://conference.jurix.nl/2010
For more than 20 years the Jurix Conference has provided an international forum for academics and practitioners in the field of legal informatics for sharing ideas and experiences on the representation of legal content and its representation in computer systems.
The 23rd edition of Jurix will be organised by the University of Liverpool.
We invite submission of original papers on the advanced management of legal information and knowledge (foundations, methods, tools, systems and applications), including but not limited to the following:
- systems supporting lawyers, in legal reasoning, document drafting, negotiation
- systems supporting the production and management of legislation, in agenda setting, - policy analysis, drafting, workflow management, monitoring implementation
- systems supporting the judiciary, in application of the law, analysis of evidence, management of cases
- systems supporting police activities, in forensic inquiries, search and evaluation of evidence, management of investigations
- systems supporting public administration, in applying regulations and managing information
- systems for the retrieval of legal information
- systems supporting legal education
- systems for digital-rights management
- systems supporting the acquisition, management or use of legal knowledge, using rules, cases, neural networks, intelligent agents or other methods
- systems supporting alternative dispute resolution, particularly on-line systems and methods to support regulatory compliance and compliance of business processes
- systems and method to support policies and legal issues for social networks
- theoretical foundations for the use of Artificial Intelligence in the legal domain
- models of legal knowledge, including concepts (legal ontologies), rules, cases, principles, values and procedures
- models of legal inference and argumentation
- methods for verifying and validating legal knowledge systems
- methods and techniques for managing legal information in the semantic web
- methods for managing organizational change when introducing legal knowledge systems
- XML standards for legal documents, including legislative, judicial, administrative acts as well as private documents, such as contracts
- methods for modelling the legal interactions of autonomous agents and digital institutions
Papers should not be simultaneously submitted for publication elsewhere except as a submission to JURISIN 2010. The double submission policy with JURISIN 2010 is as follows:
Papers being submitted both to JURISIN 2010 and JURIX 2010 must note this on the title page.
A paper to be published and presented at JURIX 2010 must be withdrawn from JURISIN 2010 and vice versa according to the choice by the authors.
If the authors do not follow this double submission policy, the paper by the authors will not be included in the proceedings of JURIX 2010.
Deadline for paper submission is September 5th, 2010. Papers should be submitted through the Jurix Easychair system, using PDF, PostScript or Word format, and should not exceed 10 pages when formatted using the styles and guidelines in the Instructions for Authors. Author instructions and style sheets can be found at the IOS Press site.
The conference proceedings will be published by IOS Press (Amsterdam, Berlin, Oxford, Tokyo, Washington DC) in their series “Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications” before the Conference.
The Jurix conferences are held under the auspices of the Dutch Foundation for Legal Knowledge Systems (www.jurix.nl).
Proposals for tutorials and workshops are invited and strongly encouraged. All proposals, including a short description of the topic, should be sent to the Program Chair by email.
Important Dates
August 29th, 2010 Deadline for submission of abstracts
September 5th, 2010 Deadline for submission of papers
September 19th, 2010 Deadline for submission of tutorials, workshops and demonstration proposals
October 1st, 2010 Notification of paper acceptance
October 17th, 2010 Camera-ready papers due
December (14th and) 15th, 2010 Jurix Workshops/Tutorials
December 16th-17th, 2010 Jurix 2010 Main Conference
Contacts
You can contact us by sending an email to: jurix2010@jurix.nl.
Program Committee Chair
Radboud Winkels, Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Organisation Committee Chair
Katie Atkinson, University of Liverpool, U.K.
Program Committee
Radboud Winkels (Chair) Leibniz Center for Law, Netherlands
Kevin D. Ashley University of Pittsburgh, USA
Katie Atkinson University of Liverpool, UK
Daniθle Bourcier CNRS CERSA, University of Paris 2, France
Joost Breuker University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Pompeu Casanovas Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
Jack Conrad Thompson Reuters, USA
Tom van Engers Leibniz Center for Law, The Netherlands
Enrico Francesconi ITTIG-CNR, Florence, Italy
Thomas F. Gordon Fraunhofer FOKUS, Berlin, Germany
Guido Governatori NICTA, Australia
Carole D. Hafner Northeastern University, USA
Rinke Hoekstra VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Arno R. Lodder VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Thorne McCarthy Rutgers University, USA
Marie-Francine Moens KU Leuven, Belgium
Laurens Mommers Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands
Monica Palmirani University of Bologna, Italy
Henry Prakken Universiteit Groningen & Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Paulo Quaresma Universidade de Evora & Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
Giovanni Sartor European University Institute & University of Bologna, Italy
Ken Satoh National Institute of Informatics and Sokendai, Japan
Burkhard Schafer University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Uri Schild Bar Ilan University, Israel
Bart Verheij Universiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
Fabio Vitali University of Bologna, Italy
Douglas N. Walton University of Windsor, Canada
Adam Wyner University of Leeds, UK
John Zeleznikow Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
Δευτέρα 19 Ιουλίου 2010
Τρίτη 6 Ιουλίου 2010
ΚΩΔΙΚΑΣ ΔΕΟΝΤΟΛΟΓΙΑΣ ΤΟΥ ΤΜΗΜΑΤΟΣ ΝΟΜΙΚΗΣ ΑΠΘ
Το Τμήμα Νομικής της Σχολής Νομικών, Οικονομικών και Πολιτικών Επιστημών του ΑΠΘ, αξιοποιώντας την πολύχρονη έως τώρα εμπειρία του, συναισθανόμενο τις ευθύνες του απέναντι στον νομικό κόσμο της χώρας και την κοινωνία γενικότερα και επιθυμώντας πέρα από την καλλιέργεια της Νομικής Επιστήμης να αποτελέσει έμπρακτο παράδειγμα λειτουργίας των αρχών του Δικαίου, αποφάσισε να θεσπίσει τον παρόντα Κώδικα Δεοντολογίας, εξειδικεύοντας τις αρχές που διέπουν τις σχέσεις των μελών ΔΕΠ μεταξύ τους, τη σχέση μελών ΔΕΠ και φοιτητών και την εν γένει ακαδημαϊκή του λειτουργία προκειμένου να διασφαλιστεί αυξημένη αντικειμενικότητα, αμεροληψία και διαφάνεια.
Ι. ΓΕΝΙΚΕΣ ΥΠΟΧΡΕΩΣΕΙΣ
ΙΙ. Γενικές υποχρεώσεις μελών ΔΕΠ. Σχέσεις φοιτητών-μελών ΔΕΠ
• Οι σχέσεις μεταξύ διδασκόντων, όπως επίσης μεταξύ διδασκόντων και φοιτητών διέπονται από τις αρχές της ακαδημαϊκής ελευθερίας, του αμοιβαίου σεβασμού και της ίσης μεταχείρισης. Τα μέλη ΔΕΠ απέχουν από συμπεριφορές που μπορούν να εκληφθούν ως εύνοια προς ορισμένο ή ορισμένους φοιτητές, τα δε όργανα του Τμήματος δεν νομιμοποιούν ως συνομιλητές άτομα που ασκούν βία και προσβάλλουν την ακαδημαϊκή ελευθερία για όσο χρονικό διάστημα ασκείται η βία.
• Τα μέλη ΔΕΠ πλήρους απασχόλησης οφείλουν να έχουν ως κύρια και βασική απασχόληση την εργασία τους στο Πανεπιστήμιο, σε όλες τις επιμέρους εκφάνσεις της, ακαδημαϊκές και διοικητικές, και να στηρίζουν με το έργο τους το σύνολο των λειτουργιών του Τμήματος. Τα μέλη ΔΕΠ συμβάλλουν με την παρουσία και ενεργό συμμετοχή τους σε επιτροπές και σε όργανα του Τμήματος στην αναβάθμιση των υπηρεσιών του Τμήματος.
• Τα μέλη ΔΕΠ, οι προπτυχιακοί και μεταπτυχιακοί φοιτητές οφείλουν να χρησιμοποιούν επιμελώς τις αίθουσες, τους κοινόχρηστους χώρους και τον εν γένει υλικοτεχνικό εξοπλισμό. Οι φοιτητές οφείλουν επίσης να σέβονται τον χρόνο και τον χώρο των μαθημάτων. Ανακοινώσεις με περιεχόμενο άσχετο της εκπαιδευτικής διαδικασίας από μεμονωμένους φοιτητές ή παρατάξεις, μετά την είσοδο του καθηγητή στην αίθουσα, θα πρέπει να αποφεύγονται.
• Δεν επιτρέπεται η ανάρτηση διαφημίσεων ή διακηρύξεων κομμάτων στους κοινόχρηστους χώρους ή τις αίθουσες της Σχολής. Το δικαίωμα γραπτής δημόσιας έκφρασης των μελών της Πανεπιστημιακής κοινότητας ικανοποιείται με την εξασφάλιση από την Κοσμητεία ειδικών χώρων ανακοινώσεων.
• Η χρήση κινητών τηλεφώνων από φοιτητές ή διδάσκοντες απαγορεύεται αυστηρά κατά τη διάρκεια των μαθημάτων, των εξετάσεων, όπως και στους χώρους της Βιβλιοθήκης. Απαγορεύεται επίσης η κατανάλωση ποτών ή φαγητών στις αίθουσες διδασκαλίας και στη Βιβλιοθήκη.
• Η έγκαιρη έναρξη των μαθημάτων (προπτυχιακών/μεταπτυχιακών) αποτελεί αυτονόητο καθήκον διδασκόντων και φοιτητών. Το ίδιο ισχύει και για το πρόγραμμα των εξετάσεων. Δεν επιτρέπεται η με οποιονδήποτε τρόπο προεξέταση ή μεμονωμένη εξέταση φοιτητών, εκτός αν συντρέχουν ιδιαίτεροι λόγοι, για τους οποίους αποφαίνεται αιτιολογημένα –κατόπιν αιτήματος του φοιτητή και συνεννόησης με τον διδάσκοντα- ο εκάστοτε διευθυντής του οικείου Τομέα.
• Οι ώρες μαθημάτων και ακρόασης των φοιτητών από τους διδάσκοντες θα πρέπει εγκαίρως να ανακοινώνονται στον πίνακα ανακοινώσεων του Τομέα και στο Διαδίκτυο και να τηρούνται επακριβώς. Αν για λόγους ανώτερης βίας ο διδάσκων κωλύεται να εκπληρώσει τις υποχρεώσεις του στην ανακοινωθείσα ημέρα και ώρα, οφείλει, όσο πιο έγκαιρα γίνεται, να ενημερώσει για τυχόν αναβολή και αναπλήρωση του μαθήματος ή της ώρας ακρόασης. Στους λόγους ανώτερης βίας υπάγονται και η συμμετοχή σε συνέδρια (εσωτερικού ή εξωτερικού) και οι μη επιδεχόμενες αναβολής διοικητικές υποχρεώσεις στο Πανεπιστήμιο, συμμετοχή σε εκλεκτορικά σώματα, όχι όμως τυχόν εξωπανεπιστημιακές απασχολήσεις. Η αναπλήρωση του μαθήματος θα πρέπει πάντως να γίνεται κατ’ αρχήν από τον ίδιο διδάσκοντα και μόνο κατ’ εξαίρεση από άλλο μέλος ΔΕΠ ή διδάσκοντα βάσει του ΠΔ 407/1980.
• Οι φοιτητές έχουν δικαίωμα να πληροφορούνται τις αναλυτικές απαντήσεις των θεμάτων στα οποία έχουν εξεταστεί, καθώς και να ζητούν εξηγήσεις για τη βαθμολογία που έλαβαν. Με μέριμνα του Διευθυντή του Τομέα οι βαθμολογήσεις των γραπτών πρέπει να παραδίδονται από τον διδάσκοντα εντός το πολύ 20 ημερών από την ημέρα της εξέτασης στη Γραμματεία του Τομέα. Σε κάθε περίπτωση δεν πρέπει να εκκρεμεί η έκδοση αποτελεσμάτων ενώ έχει ξεκινήσει το νέο εξάμηνο διδασκαλίας.
• Η βαθμολόγηση των επιδόσεων των φοιτητών πρέπει να γίνεται με τρόπο αντικειμενικό, με μόνο κριτήριο την ορθότητα των επιχειρημάτων των απαντήσεων. Επί περισσοτέρων τμημάτων, με περισσότερους διδάσκοντες, ενδείκνυται η διατύπωση κοινών θεμάτων και ο ενιαίος τρόπος βαθμολόγησης.
• Σε περιπτώσεις μαθημάτων, η διδασκαλία των οποίων γίνεται σε περισσότερα τμήματα, οι διδάσκοντες οφείλουν να εναλλάσσονται με τη σειρά στα διάφορα τμήματα. Οφείλουν επίσης να απέχουν από τμήμα, στο οποίο ανήκει ως φοιτητής σύζυγος, μνηστήρας ή συγγενής του διδάσκοντος εξ αίματος ή εξ αγχιστείας μέχρι τετάρτου βαθμού.
Ι. ΘΕΜΑΤΑ ΕΚΛΟΓΗΣ ΜΕΛΩΝ ΔΕΠ
1. Προκήρυξη θέσεων
• Η διαφάνεια των διαδικασιών εκλογής επιτυγχάνεται με την ευρύτερη δυνατή δημοσιότητα της προκήρυξης. Με επιμέλεια του προέδρου του Τμήματος και του διευθυντή του Τομέα, η προκήρυξη αναρτάται στην ιστοσελίδα του Τμήματος, του Τομέα, του ΑΠΘ, και διαβιβάζεται ηλεκτρονικά στα άλλα Πανεπιστήμια, στους μεγάλους Δικηγορικούς και Συμβολαιογραφικούς συλλόγους ,την Εθνική Σχολή Δικαστών, στον Άρειο Πάγο, στο ΣτΕ, στο Ελεγκτικό Συνέδριο και στο ΙΚΥ. Στην προκήρυξη γίνεται μνεία της ηλεκτρονικής διεύθυνσης του αντίστοιχου τομέα, που αφορά στην προκηρυσσόμενη θέση, προκειμένου να μπορέσουν οι ενδιαφερόμενοι να ζητήσουν πληροφορίες. Ο Τομέας είναι υποχρεωμένος σε σύντομο χρονικό διάστημα να απαντά ηλεκτρονικά στις ερωτήσεις.
• Το Τμήμα θα πρέπει να φροντίζει ώστε οι ακολουθούμενες διαδικασίες προκήρυξης θέσεων να εξασφαλίζουν την κατά το δυνατόν υποβολή περισσότερων υποψηφιοτήτων. Η κρίση με μοναδικό υποψήφιο θα πρέπει να είναι ιδιαίτερα θεμελιωμένη ακόμη και αν συντρέχουν ανάγκες κάλυψης των αναγκών του οικείου Τομέα ή Τμήματος. Σε περίπτωση περισσότερων υποψηφίων η πρόκριση του ενός σε καμία περίπτωση δεν ερμηνεύεται ως αρνητική κρίση (απόρριψη) σε βάρος τού ή των άλλων υποψηφίων (η κρίση είναι πάντοτε συγκριτική και όχι απόλυτη), ώστε εμμέσως –προκειμένου να αποφύγουν αρνητική κρίση- να αναγκάζονται συνυποψήφιοι να παραιτούνται πριν από την ολοκλήρωση της διαδικασίας.
• Ενδείκνυται η προκήρυξη για νέα θέση να γίνεται στην εισαγωγική βαθμίδα του λέκτορα. Σε ανώτερη βαθμίδα μπορεί να γίνει με ειδικά αιτιολογημένη πρόταση του Τομέα για σοβαρούς ακαδημαϊκούς λόγους.
• Ο καθορισμός της βαθμίδας, στην οποία θα γίνεται η προκήρυξη της θέσης, καθώς και του γνωστικού αντικειμένου προτείνεται αιτιολογημένα από τον Τομέα. Το Τμήμα ωστόσο, στην αρμοδιότητα του οποίου ανήκει η προκήρυξη, οφείλει να λαμβάνει υπόψη του τις γενικότερές του ανάγκες χωρίς να δεσμεύεται από την εισήγηση του αρμόδιου Τομέα. Το γνωστικό αντικείμενο της υπό προκήρυξη θέσης θα πρέπει να είναι όσο το δυνατόν ευρύτερο.
• Εάν υπάρξει περίπτωση υποβολής υποψηφιότητας από σύζυγο, μνηστήρα ή συγγενή εξ αίματος ή εξ αγχιστείας μέχρι τετάρτου βαθμού υπηρετούντος στο Τμήμα μέλους ΔΕΠ, ανεξαρτήτως βαθμίδας ή γνωστικού αντικειμένου, το μέλος αυτό απέχει δικαιολογημένα από κάθε συλλογικό όργανο, που θα ασχοληθεί αμέσως ή εμμέσως με την εκλογή, και για όσο διάστημα διαρκεί η διαδικασία της εκλογής. Αν το μέλος είναι Πρόεδρος του Τμήματος στα αρμόδια συλλογικά όργανα προεδρεύει ο Αναπληρωτής Πρόεδρος, αν το μέλος είναι Διευθυντής Τομέα, στις συνεδριάσεις του Τομέα προεδρεύει ο Πρόεδρος του Τμήματος.
2. Εισηγητική Επιτροπή- Έκθεση
• Η εισηγητική επιτροπή απαρτίζεται κατά πλειοψηφία από καθηγητές της πρώτης βαθμίδας. Εάν αυτό εξ αντικειμένου δεν μπορεί να τηρηθεί, ένα μέλος της θα πρέπει να είναι οπωσδήποτε αυτής της βαθμίδας. Το καθήκον του μέλους της εισηγητικής επιτροπής βαρύνει όλα τα μέλη ΔΕΠ, όπου η εγγύτητα του επιστημονικού αντικειμένου και εν συνεχεία η βαθμίδα καθορίζουν την επιλογή. Επιβάλλεται η εναλλαγή των μελών ΔΕΠ ως μελών εισηγητικής επιτροπής για εκλογή ή εξέλιξη μέλους ΔΕΠ.
• Θα πρέπει κατά το δυνατόν να αποφεύγεται η συμμετοχή σε Εισηγητική Επιτροπή μέλους ΔΕΠ, όταν το ίδιο μέλος έχει συμμετάσχει στην Εισηγητική Επιτροπή σε προηγούμενη κρίση του ίδιου υποψηφίου.
• Εάν υποψήφιος για κατάληψη θέσης ΔΕΠ ή για εξέλιξη του σε ανώτερη βαθμίδα είναι σύζυγος, μνηστήρας ή συγγενής εξ αίματος ή εξ αγχιστείας μέχρι τετάρτου βαθμού ενεργού μέλους ΔΕΠ του Τμήματος ή ακόμη αποχωρήσαντος (την τελευταία 5ετία) ή τελούντος σε αναστολή μέλους, τουλάχιστον δύο μέλη της εισηγητικής επιτροπής θα πρέπει να είναι μέλη ΔΕΠ άλλου Τμήματος. Ο ορισμός ομότιμου καθηγητή ως μέλους εισηγητικής επιτροπής επιτρέπεται μόνο ως έσχατη λύση, εάν δεν μπορεί δηλαδή να καλυφθεί το κενό από ενεργό μέλος ΔΕΠ του Νομικού Τμήματος ή άλλου Τμήματος.
• Η εισηγητική έκθεση και τα πρακτικά εκλογής αναρτώνται στην ιστοσελίδα του Τμήματος, όπως προβλέπει άλλωστε και ο ν. 3848/2010.
• Ο εύλογος χρόνος μέσα στον οποίο πρέπει να κατατίθεται η εισηγητική έκθεση σε καμιά περίπτωση δεν επιτρέπεται να υπερβαίνει το εξάμηνο από τον ορισμό της τριμελούς εισηγητικής επιτροπής.
• Έργο που δημοσιεύεται ύστερα από τη λήξη της προθεσμίας υποβολής υποψηφιοτήτων απλώς συνυπολογίζεται, εφόσον υποβληθεί μέχρι τη λήξη της προθεσμίας κατάθεσης της εισηγητικής έκθεσης. Προσμετράται μόνον επιβοηθητικά (συμπληρωματικά), χωρίς να μπορεί να καλύπτει τυχόν μειονεξία του κύριου έργου (διορθωτικά).
• Για καθεμία κρίση σε βαθμίδα ΔΕΠ ανώτερη εκείνης του λέκτορα απαιτείται κατ’ αρχήν μία τουλάχιστον μονογραφία δημοσιευμένη. Άλλες δημοσιεύσεις αρκούν μόνο κατ’ εξαίρεση, αν τεκμηριωμένα αποδεικνύεται ιδιαίτερη πρωτοτυπία της επιστημονικής δουλειάς που αυτές παρουσιάζουν. Σύνηθες διδακτικό βιβλίο, αυτοτελώς ή σε συνεργασία με άλλον (μέλος ΔΕΠ ή όχι), από μόνο του δεν υποκαθιστά την απουσία μονογραφίας. Εκτενής συμβολή σε υπομνηματιστικό έργο μπορεί να συγκεντρώνει γνωρίσματα αναλυτικής-μονογραφικής επεξεργασίας, εφόσον πρόκειται για συλλογικό έργο αναγνωρισμένης επιστημονικής εμβέλειας.
• Για την αξιολόγηση του έργου του υποψηφίου σημασία έχει ιδιαίτερα η συστηματική και συνεκτική οργάνωση του επιστημονικού λόγου, η κριτική ικανότητα του υποψηφίου για αιτιολογημένη λήψη θέσης στα εξεταζόμενα ζητήματα, η ικανότητα εμβάθυνσης σ’ αυτά και στις πρακτικές διαστάσεις τους, η σαφήνεια και εν γένει ποιότητα του λόγου του, η ευρυμάθειά του, καθώς και ο βαθμός δυσχέρειας τού υπό έρευνα αντικειμένου. Έργο που εξαντλείται σε περιγραφική αναφορά σε νομοθετικά κείμενα, νομολογιακές τάσεις ή απόψεις άλλων δεν αποτελεί συμβολή στην επιστήμη και την έρευνα. Οι επιστημονικές θέσεις του υποψηφίου αυτές καθ’ εαυτές δεν αποτελούν κριτήριο αξιολόγησης θετικής ή αρνητικής. Τα μέλη ΔΕΠ οφείλουν με την έρευνά τους να προάγουν την επιστημονική ελευθερία. Αποφεύγουν να αναπαράγουν ιδέες τρίτων, αποφεύγουν τους χαρακτηρισμούς και σέβονται τις αντίθετες απόψεις. Η ανταλλαγή προσωπικών χαρακτηρισμών είναι ανεπίτρεπτη, ακόμη και όταν γίνεται στο πλαίσιο αξιολόγησης έργου του υποψηφίου.
• Αναγνώριση του επιστημονικού έργου του υποψηφίου ενδεικτικά αποδεικνύεται από θετικές ετεροαναφορές, βασικά από ερευνητές εκτός του Τμήματος, από αναφορές στο αιτιολογικό δικαστικών αποφάσεων, από συμμετοχή σε συνέδρια και επιστημονικές εκδηλώσεις με ομιλία.
• Ιδιαίτερη βαρύτητα στην κρίση του υποψηφίου έχει κατ’ αρχάς η προοπτική για ακαδημαϊκή εξέλιξή του. Η προοπτική αυτή δεν νοείται ως πρόβλεψη για γεγονότα μέλλοντα και αβέβαια, αλλά ως εύλογη εκτίμηση ότι, εφόσον ο υποψήφιος συνεχίσει να αξιοποιεί τα μέχρι τούδε εγνωσμένα προσόντα και εν γένει πνευματικά εφόδιά του, η εξέλιξή του μπορεί να επιτρέψει ευχερώς θετική κρίση για ανώτερη βαθμίδα. Βαρύνουσα σπουδαιότητα έχει επίσης η διεθνής παρουσία του, οι δυνατότητες διεθνούς επιστημονικής παρουσίας και συμβολής στην προβολή του Τμήματος σε διεθνές επίπεδο. Το Τμήμα αποδίδει ιδιαίτερη σημασία σ’ αυτό, επιδιώκοντας να ενισχύσει την εξωστρέφεια και επιστημονική παρουσία του στο σημερινό διεθνοποιημένο περιβάλλον.
• Διδακτική εμπειρία στο πλαίσιο του προγράμματος ERASMUS του Τμήματός μας αποτελεί αξιοσημείωτο προσόν. Η διεθνής παρουσία, που προάγει το διεθνές κύρος του Τμήματος και την αξιολόγησή του, εξειδικεύεται ενδεικτικά με τα παρακάτω: 1)Άρθρα σε ξενόγλωσσα ή ξένα επιστημονικά-νομικά περιοδικά. 2)Παραπομπές-αναφορές από ξένους συγγραφείς. 3)Βιβλία ή μονογραφίες σε ξένη γλώσσα. 4)Συμμετοχή σε προγράμματα ανταλλαγής καθηγητών-εντολές διδασκαλίας από αλλοδαπά ΑΕΙ. 5)Κοινά σεμινάρια με ξένα πανεπιστήμια, ακόμη και αν διεξάγονται στη χώρα μας. 6)Προσκλήσεις για ομιλίες ή διαλέξεις σε επιστημονικά συνέδρια στο εξωτερικό. 7)Συμμετοχή με παρέμβαση σε επιστημονικά συνέδρια στο εξωτερικό. 8)Συμμετοχή σε επιτροπές επίβλεψης διδακτορικών διατριβών που εκπονούνται στο εξωτερικό. 9)Συμβολές σε αλλοδαπούς τιμητικούς τόμους. 10)Ιδιότητα μέλους αλλοδαπού διεθνούς επιστημονικού σωματείου ή πρωτοβουλίας ενοποίησης του δικαίου, ιδιότητα εκπροσώπου της χώρας μας σε διεθνή-ευρωπαϊκά fora κλπ.
• Ανεξάρτητα από τυχόν διδακτική πείρα του υποψηφίου για νέα θέση μέλους ΔΕΠ, ο ίδιος υποχρεούται σε δοκιμαστικό μάθημα, οργανωμένο με ευθύνη της εισηγητικής επιτροπής.
• Δεν συνάδει με την ακαδημαϊκή δεοντολογία να γίνεται επίκληση σε προηγούμενη κρίση του Τμήματος, προκειμένου να αντληθεί επιχείρημα για υποβάθμιση των απαιτούμενων κριτηρίων αξιολόγησης σε νέα ακαδημαϊκή κρίση. Αδικαιολόγητη είναι η αντίληψη για ισότιμη προς τα κάτω μεταχείριση, με αφορμή τυχόν παρελθόν περιστατικό.
• Στις κρίσεις για εξέλιξη πρέπει να τεκμηριώνεται επαρκώς τόσο η αφοσίωση του υποψηφίου στο Τμήμα και στο Πανεπιστήμιο γενικά όσο και η στοιχειωδώς ευπρεπής συμπεριφορά του έναντι των συναδέλφων του και των φοιτητών. Ως προς το πρώτο προσόν, αυτό αποδεικνύεται ενδεικτικά από τα εξής: 1)Φυσική παρουσία στο ΑΠΘ και κατοικία στη Θεσσαλονίκη, χωρίς εξαιρέσεις που ενδεχομένως θα δικαιολογούνταν από εξωπανεπιστημιακούς ή επαγγελματικούς λόγους. 2) Συνεργασία σε διδακτικό και ερευνητικό επίπεδο με άλλους συναδέλφους του Τμήματος (π.χ. επίβλεψη εκπόνησης διδακτορικών διατριβών, συγγραφή κοινού βιβλίου κλπ. 3) Οποιοδήποτε διοικητικό έργο στο ΑΠΘ (μέλος επιτροπών του ΑΠΘ, διενέργεια ΕΔΕ, εκπροσώπηση του ΑΠΘ ενώπιον Αρχών, δικαστηρίων κλπ. -Η συμμετοχή στα συλλογικά όργανα του Τομέα και του Τμήματος δεν αρκεί-). 4) Επιμέλεια έκδοσης τιμητικού τόμου, 5)Ανάληψη ευθύνης διοργάνωσης επιστημονικών εκδηλώσεων, συνεδρίων κλπ.
• Επίσης, η συμβολή του έργου του υποψηφίου στη γενικότερη πρόοδο της επιστήμης, πέρα από στον στενότερο επιστημονικό του κλάδο, η συμμετοχή του σε διοικητικά συμβούλια επιστημονικών σωματείων ή στη συντακτική επιτροπή επιστημονικών περιοδικών, σε εισηγητικές επιτροπές κρίσης άλλων ΑΕΙ, σε νομοπαρασκευαστικές επιτροπές, οι μετακλήσεις για διδασκαλία σε άλλα πανεπιστήμια κλπ. προβάλλουν την εικόνα του Τμήματός μας και συνεκτιμώνται θετικά σε κρίση για εξέλιξη.
Ι. ΓΕΝΙΚΕΣ ΥΠΟΧΡΕΩΣΕΙΣ
ΙΙ. Γενικές υποχρεώσεις μελών ΔΕΠ. Σχέσεις φοιτητών-μελών ΔΕΠ
• Οι σχέσεις μεταξύ διδασκόντων, όπως επίσης μεταξύ διδασκόντων και φοιτητών διέπονται από τις αρχές της ακαδημαϊκής ελευθερίας, του αμοιβαίου σεβασμού και της ίσης μεταχείρισης. Τα μέλη ΔΕΠ απέχουν από συμπεριφορές που μπορούν να εκληφθούν ως εύνοια προς ορισμένο ή ορισμένους φοιτητές, τα δε όργανα του Τμήματος δεν νομιμοποιούν ως συνομιλητές άτομα που ασκούν βία και προσβάλλουν την ακαδημαϊκή ελευθερία για όσο χρονικό διάστημα ασκείται η βία.
• Τα μέλη ΔΕΠ πλήρους απασχόλησης οφείλουν να έχουν ως κύρια και βασική απασχόληση την εργασία τους στο Πανεπιστήμιο, σε όλες τις επιμέρους εκφάνσεις της, ακαδημαϊκές και διοικητικές, και να στηρίζουν με το έργο τους το σύνολο των λειτουργιών του Τμήματος. Τα μέλη ΔΕΠ συμβάλλουν με την παρουσία και ενεργό συμμετοχή τους σε επιτροπές και σε όργανα του Τμήματος στην αναβάθμιση των υπηρεσιών του Τμήματος.
• Τα μέλη ΔΕΠ, οι προπτυχιακοί και μεταπτυχιακοί φοιτητές οφείλουν να χρησιμοποιούν επιμελώς τις αίθουσες, τους κοινόχρηστους χώρους και τον εν γένει υλικοτεχνικό εξοπλισμό. Οι φοιτητές οφείλουν επίσης να σέβονται τον χρόνο και τον χώρο των μαθημάτων. Ανακοινώσεις με περιεχόμενο άσχετο της εκπαιδευτικής διαδικασίας από μεμονωμένους φοιτητές ή παρατάξεις, μετά την είσοδο του καθηγητή στην αίθουσα, θα πρέπει να αποφεύγονται.
• Δεν επιτρέπεται η ανάρτηση διαφημίσεων ή διακηρύξεων κομμάτων στους κοινόχρηστους χώρους ή τις αίθουσες της Σχολής. Το δικαίωμα γραπτής δημόσιας έκφρασης των μελών της Πανεπιστημιακής κοινότητας ικανοποιείται με την εξασφάλιση από την Κοσμητεία ειδικών χώρων ανακοινώσεων.
• Η χρήση κινητών τηλεφώνων από φοιτητές ή διδάσκοντες απαγορεύεται αυστηρά κατά τη διάρκεια των μαθημάτων, των εξετάσεων, όπως και στους χώρους της Βιβλιοθήκης. Απαγορεύεται επίσης η κατανάλωση ποτών ή φαγητών στις αίθουσες διδασκαλίας και στη Βιβλιοθήκη.
• Η έγκαιρη έναρξη των μαθημάτων (προπτυχιακών/μεταπτυχιακών) αποτελεί αυτονόητο καθήκον διδασκόντων και φοιτητών. Το ίδιο ισχύει και για το πρόγραμμα των εξετάσεων. Δεν επιτρέπεται η με οποιονδήποτε τρόπο προεξέταση ή μεμονωμένη εξέταση φοιτητών, εκτός αν συντρέχουν ιδιαίτεροι λόγοι, για τους οποίους αποφαίνεται αιτιολογημένα –κατόπιν αιτήματος του φοιτητή και συνεννόησης με τον διδάσκοντα- ο εκάστοτε διευθυντής του οικείου Τομέα.
• Οι ώρες μαθημάτων και ακρόασης των φοιτητών από τους διδάσκοντες θα πρέπει εγκαίρως να ανακοινώνονται στον πίνακα ανακοινώσεων του Τομέα και στο Διαδίκτυο και να τηρούνται επακριβώς. Αν για λόγους ανώτερης βίας ο διδάσκων κωλύεται να εκπληρώσει τις υποχρεώσεις του στην ανακοινωθείσα ημέρα και ώρα, οφείλει, όσο πιο έγκαιρα γίνεται, να ενημερώσει για τυχόν αναβολή και αναπλήρωση του μαθήματος ή της ώρας ακρόασης. Στους λόγους ανώτερης βίας υπάγονται και η συμμετοχή σε συνέδρια (εσωτερικού ή εξωτερικού) και οι μη επιδεχόμενες αναβολής διοικητικές υποχρεώσεις στο Πανεπιστήμιο, συμμετοχή σε εκλεκτορικά σώματα, όχι όμως τυχόν εξωπανεπιστημιακές απασχολήσεις. Η αναπλήρωση του μαθήματος θα πρέπει πάντως να γίνεται κατ’ αρχήν από τον ίδιο διδάσκοντα και μόνο κατ’ εξαίρεση από άλλο μέλος ΔΕΠ ή διδάσκοντα βάσει του ΠΔ 407/1980.
• Οι φοιτητές έχουν δικαίωμα να πληροφορούνται τις αναλυτικές απαντήσεις των θεμάτων στα οποία έχουν εξεταστεί, καθώς και να ζητούν εξηγήσεις για τη βαθμολογία που έλαβαν. Με μέριμνα του Διευθυντή του Τομέα οι βαθμολογήσεις των γραπτών πρέπει να παραδίδονται από τον διδάσκοντα εντός το πολύ 20 ημερών από την ημέρα της εξέτασης στη Γραμματεία του Τομέα. Σε κάθε περίπτωση δεν πρέπει να εκκρεμεί η έκδοση αποτελεσμάτων ενώ έχει ξεκινήσει το νέο εξάμηνο διδασκαλίας.
• Η βαθμολόγηση των επιδόσεων των φοιτητών πρέπει να γίνεται με τρόπο αντικειμενικό, με μόνο κριτήριο την ορθότητα των επιχειρημάτων των απαντήσεων. Επί περισσοτέρων τμημάτων, με περισσότερους διδάσκοντες, ενδείκνυται η διατύπωση κοινών θεμάτων και ο ενιαίος τρόπος βαθμολόγησης.
• Σε περιπτώσεις μαθημάτων, η διδασκαλία των οποίων γίνεται σε περισσότερα τμήματα, οι διδάσκοντες οφείλουν να εναλλάσσονται με τη σειρά στα διάφορα τμήματα. Οφείλουν επίσης να απέχουν από τμήμα, στο οποίο ανήκει ως φοιτητής σύζυγος, μνηστήρας ή συγγενής του διδάσκοντος εξ αίματος ή εξ αγχιστείας μέχρι τετάρτου βαθμού.
Ι. ΘΕΜΑΤΑ ΕΚΛΟΓΗΣ ΜΕΛΩΝ ΔΕΠ
1. Προκήρυξη θέσεων
• Η διαφάνεια των διαδικασιών εκλογής επιτυγχάνεται με την ευρύτερη δυνατή δημοσιότητα της προκήρυξης. Με επιμέλεια του προέδρου του Τμήματος και του διευθυντή του Τομέα, η προκήρυξη αναρτάται στην ιστοσελίδα του Τμήματος, του Τομέα, του ΑΠΘ, και διαβιβάζεται ηλεκτρονικά στα άλλα Πανεπιστήμια, στους μεγάλους Δικηγορικούς και Συμβολαιογραφικούς συλλόγους ,την Εθνική Σχολή Δικαστών, στον Άρειο Πάγο, στο ΣτΕ, στο Ελεγκτικό Συνέδριο και στο ΙΚΥ. Στην προκήρυξη γίνεται μνεία της ηλεκτρονικής διεύθυνσης του αντίστοιχου τομέα, που αφορά στην προκηρυσσόμενη θέση, προκειμένου να μπορέσουν οι ενδιαφερόμενοι να ζητήσουν πληροφορίες. Ο Τομέας είναι υποχρεωμένος σε σύντομο χρονικό διάστημα να απαντά ηλεκτρονικά στις ερωτήσεις.
• Το Τμήμα θα πρέπει να φροντίζει ώστε οι ακολουθούμενες διαδικασίες προκήρυξης θέσεων να εξασφαλίζουν την κατά το δυνατόν υποβολή περισσότερων υποψηφιοτήτων. Η κρίση με μοναδικό υποψήφιο θα πρέπει να είναι ιδιαίτερα θεμελιωμένη ακόμη και αν συντρέχουν ανάγκες κάλυψης των αναγκών του οικείου Τομέα ή Τμήματος. Σε περίπτωση περισσότερων υποψηφίων η πρόκριση του ενός σε καμία περίπτωση δεν ερμηνεύεται ως αρνητική κρίση (απόρριψη) σε βάρος τού ή των άλλων υποψηφίων (η κρίση είναι πάντοτε συγκριτική και όχι απόλυτη), ώστε εμμέσως –προκειμένου να αποφύγουν αρνητική κρίση- να αναγκάζονται συνυποψήφιοι να παραιτούνται πριν από την ολοκλήρωση της διαδικασίας.
• Ενδείκνυται η προκήρυξη για νέα θέση να γίνεται στην εισαγωγική βαθμίδα του λέκτορα. Σε ανώτερη βαθμίδα μπορεί να γίνει με ειδικά αιτιολογημένη πρόταση του Τομέα για σοβαρούς ακαδημαϊκούς λόγους.
• Ο καθορισμός της βαθμίδας, στην οποία θα γίνεται η προκήρυξη της θέσης, καθώς και του γνωστικού αντικειμένου προτείνεται αιτιολογημένα από τον Τομέα. Το Τμήμα ωστόσο, στην αρμοδιότητα του οποίου ανήκει η προκήρυξη, οφείλει να λαμβάνει υπόψη του τις γενικότερές του ανάγκες χωρίς να δεσμεύεται από την εισήγηση του αρμόδιου Τομέα. Το γνωστικό αντικείμενο της υπό προκήρυξη θέσης θα πρέπει να είναι όσο το δυνατόν ευρύτερο.
• Εάν υπάρξει περίπτωση υποβολής υποψηφιότητας από σύζυγο, μνηστήρα ή συγγενή εξ αίματος ή εξ αγχιστείας μέχρι τετάρτου βαθμού υπηρετούντος στο Τμήμα μέλους ΔΕΠ, ανεξαρτήτως βαθμίδας ή γνωστικού αντικειμένου, το μέλος αυτό απέχει δικαιολογημένα από κάθε συλλογικό όργανο, που θα ασχοληθεί αμέσως ή εμμέσως με την εκλογή, και για όσο διάστημα διαρκεί η διαδικασία της εκλογής. Αν το μέλος είναι Πρόεδρος του Τμήματος στα αρμόδια συλλογικά όργανα προεδρεύει ο Αναπληρωτής Πρόεδρος, αν το μέλος είναι Διευθυντής Τομέα, στις συνεδριάσεις του Τομέα προεδρεύει ο Πρόεδρος του Τμήματος.
2. Εισηγητική Επιτροπή- Έκθεση
• Η εισηγητική επιτροπή απαρτίζεται κατά πλειοψηφία από καθηγητές της πρώτης βαθμίδας. Εάν αυτό εξ αντικειμένου δεν μπορεί να τηρηθεί, ένα μέλος της θα πρέπει να είναι οπωσδήποτε αυτής της βαθμίδας. Το καθήκον του μέλους της εισηγητικής επιτροπής βαρύνει όλα τα μέλη ΔΕΠ, όπου η εγγύτητα του επιστημονικού αντικειμένου και εν συνεχεία η βαθμίδα καθορίζουν την επιλογή. Επιβάλλεται η εναλλαγή των μελών ΔΕΠ ως μελών εισηγητικής επιτροπής για εκλογή ή εξέλιξη μέλους ΔΕΠ.
• Θα πρέπει κατά το δυνατόν να αποφεύγεται η συμμετοχή σε Εισηγητική Επιτροπή μέλους ΔΕΠ, όταν το ίδιο μέλος έχει συμμετάσχει στην Εισηγητική Επιτροπή σε προηγούμενη κρίση του ίδιου υποψηφίου.
• Εάν υποψήφιος για κατάληψη θέσης ΔΕΠ ή για εξέλιξη του σε ανώτερη βαθμίδα είναι σύζυγος, μνηστήρας ή συγγενής εξ αίματος ή εξ αγχιστείας μέχρι τετάρτου βαθμού ενεργού μέλους ΔΕΠ του Τμήματος ή ακόμη αποχωρήσαντος (την τελευταία 5ετία) ή τελούντος σε αναστολή μέλους, τουλάχιστον δύο μέλη της εισηγητικής επιτροπής θα πρέπει να είναι μέλη ΔΕΠ άλλου Τμήματος. Ο ορισμός ομότιμου καθηγητή ως μέλους εισηγητικής επιτροπής επιτρέπεται μόνο ως έσχατη λύση, εάν δεν μπορεί δηλαδή να καλυφθεί το κενό από ενεργό μέλος ΔΕΠ του Νομικού Τμήματος ή άλλου Τμήματος.
• Η εισηγητική έκθεση και τα πρακτικά εκλογής αναρτώνται στην ιστοσελίδα του Τμήματος, όπως προβλέπει άλλωστε και ο ν. 3848/2010.
• Ο εύλογος χρόνος μέσα στον οποίο πρέπει να κατατίθεται η εισηγητική έκθεση σε καμιά περίπτωση δεν επιτρέπεται να υπερβαίνει το εξάμηνο από τον ορισμό της τριμελούς εισηγητικής επιτροπής.
• Έργο που δημοσιεύεται ύστερα από τη λήξη της προθεσμίας υποβολής υποψηφιοτήτων απλώς συνυπολογίζεται, εφόσον υποβληθεί μέχρι τη λήξη της προθεσμίας κατάθεσης της εισηγητικής έκθεσης. Προσμετράται μόνον επιβοηθητικά (συμπληρωματικά), χωρίς να μπορεί να καλύπτει τυχόν μειονεξία του κύριου έργου (διορθωτικά).
• Για καθεμία κρίση σε βαθμίδα ΔΕΠ ανώτερη εκείνης του λέκτορα απαιτείται κατ’ αρχήν μία τουλάχιστον μονογραφία δημοσιευμένη. Άλλες δημοσιεύσεις αρκούν μόνο κατ’ εξαίρεση, αν τεκμηριωμένα αποδεικνύεται ιδιαίτερη πρωτοτυπία της επιστημονικής δουλειάς που αυτές παρουσιάζουν. Σύνηθες διδακτικό βιβλίο, αυτοτελώς ή σε συνεργασία με άλλον (μέλος ΔΕΠ ή όχι), από μόνο του δεν υποκαθιστά την απουσία μονογραφίας. Εκτενής συμβολή σε υπομνηματιστικό έργο μπορεί να συγκεντρώνει γνωρίσματα αναλυτικής-μονογραφικής επεξεργασίας, εφόσον πρόκειται για συλλογικό έργο αναγνωρισμένης επιστημονικής εμβέλειας.
• Για την αξιολόγηση του έργου του υποψηφίου σημασία έχει ιδιαίτερα η συστηματική και συνεκτική οργάνωση του επιστημονικού λόγου, η κριτική ικανότητα του υποψηφίου για αιτιολογημένη λήψη θέσης στα εξεταζόμενα ζητήματα, η ικανότητα εμβάθυνσης σ’ αυτά και στις πρακτικές διαστάσεις τους, η σαφήνεια και εν γένει ποιότητα του λόγου του, η ευρυμάθειά του, καθώς και ο βαθμός δυσχέρειας τού υπό έρευνα αντικειμένου. Έργο που εξαντλείται σε περιγραφική αναφορά σε νομοθετικά κείμενα, νομολογιακές τάσεις ή απόψεις άλλων δεν αποτελεί συμβολή στην επιστήμη και την έρευνα. Οι επιστημονικές θέσεις του υποψηφίου αυτές καθ’ εαυτές δεν αποτελούν κριτήριο αξιολόγησης θετικής ή αρνητικής. Τα μέλη ΔΕΠ οφείλουν με την έρευνά τους να προάγουν την επιστημονική ελευθερία. Αποφεύγουν να αναπαράγουν ιδέες τρίτων, αποφεύγουν τους χαρακτηρισμούς και σέβονται τις αντίθετες απόψεις. Η ανταλλαγή προσωπικών χαρακτηρισμών είναι ανεπίτρεπτη, ακόμη και όταν γίνεται στο πλαίσιο αξιολόγησης έργου του υποψηφίου.
• Αναγνώριση του επιστημονικού έργου του υποψηφίου ενδεικτικά αποδεικνύεται από θετικές ετεροαναφορές, βασικά από ερευνητές εκτός του Τμήματος, από αναφορές στο αιτιολογικό δικαστικών αποφάσεων, από συμμετοχή σε συνέδρια και επιστημονικές εκδηλώσεις με ομιλία.
• Ιδιαίτερη βαρύτητα στην κρίση του υποψηφίου έχει κατ’ αρχάς η προοπτική για ακαδημαϊκή εξέλιξή του. Η προοπτική αυτή δεν νοείται ως πρόβλεψη για γεγονότα μέλλοντα και αβέβαια, αλλά ως εύλογη εκτίμηση ότι, εφόσον ο υποψήφιος συνεχίσει να αξιοποιεί τα μέχρι τούδε εγνωσμένα προσόντα και εν γένει πνευματικά εφόδιά του, η εξέλιξή του μπορεί να επιτρέψει ευχερώς θετική κρίση για ανώτερη βαθμίδα. Βαρύνουσα σπουδαιότητα έχει επίσης η διεθνής παρουσία του, οι δυνατότητες διεθνούς επιστημονικής παρουσίας και συμβολής στην προβολή του Τμήματος σε διεθνές επίπεδο. Το Τμήμα αποδίδει ιδιαίτερη σημασία σ’ αυτό, επιδιώκοντας να ενισχύσει την εξωστρέφεια και επιστημονική παρουσία του στο σημερινό διεθνοποιημένο περιβάλλον.
• Διδακτική εμπειρία στο πλαίσιο του προγράμματος ERASMUS του Τμήματός μας αποτελεί αξιοσημείωτο προσόν. Η διεθνής παρουσία, που προάγει το διεθνές κύρος του Τμήματος και την αξιολόγησή του, εξειδικεύεται ενδεικτικά με τα παρακάτω: 1)Άρθρα σε ξενόγλωσσα ή ξένα επιστημονικά-νομικά περιοδικά. 2)Παραπομπές-αναφορές από ξένους συγγραφείς. 3)Βιβλία ή μονογραφίες σε ξένη γλώσσα. 4)Συμμετοχή σε προγράμματα ανταλλαγής καθηγητών-εντολές διδασκαλίας από αλλοδαπά ΑΕΙ. 5)Κοινά σεμινάρια με ξένα πανεπιστήμια, ακόμη και αν διεξάγονται στη χώρα μας. 6)Προσκλήσεις για ομιλίες ή διαλέξεις σε επιστημονικά συνέδρια στο εξωτερικό. 7)Συμμετοχή με παρέμβαση σε επιστημονικά συνέδρια στο εξωτερικό. 8)Συμμετοχή σε επιτροπές επίβλεψης διδακτορικών διατριβών που εκπονούνται στο εξωτερικό. 9)Συμβολές σε αλλοδαπούς τιμητικούς τόμους. 10)Ιδιότητα μέλους αλλοδαπού διεθνούς επιστημονικού σωματείου ή πρωτοβουλίας ενοποίησης του δικαίου, ιδιότητα εκπροσώπου της χώρας μας σε διεθνή-ευρωπαϊκά fora κλπ.
• Ανεξάρτητα από τυχόν διδακτική πείρα του υποψηφίου για νέα θέση μέλους ΔΕΠ, ο ίδιος υποχρεούται σε δοκιμαστικό μάθημα, οργανωμένο με ευθύνη της εισηγητικής επιτροπής.
• Δεν συνάδει με την ακαδημαϊκή δεοντολογία να γίνεται επίκληση σε προηγούμενη κρίση του Τμήματος, προκειμένου να αντληθεί επιχείρημα για υποβάθμιση των απαιτούμενων κριτηρίων αξιολόγησης σε νέα ακαδημαϊκή κρίση. Αδικαιολόγητη είναι η αντίληψη για ισότιμη προς τα κάτω μεταχείριση, με αφορμή τυχόν παρελθόν περιστατικό.
• Στις κρίσεις για εξέλιξη πρέπει να τεκμηριώνεται επαρκώς τόσο η αφοσίωση του υποψηφίου στο Τμήμα και στο Πανεπιστήμιο γενικά όσο και η στοιχειωδώς ευπρεπής συμπεριφορά του έναντι των συναδέλφων του και των φοιτητών. Ως προς το πρώτο προσόν, αυτό αποδεικνύεται ενδεικτικά από τα εξής: 1)Φυσική παρουσία στο ΑΠΘ και κατοικία στη Θεσσαλονίκη, χωρίς εξαιρέσεις που ενδεχομένως θα δικαιολογούνταν από εξωπανεπιστημιακούς ή επαγγελματικούς λόγους. 2) Συνεργασία σε διδακτικό και ερευνητικό επίπεδο με άλλους συναδέλφους του Τμήματος (π.χ. επίβλεψη εκπόνησης διδακτορικών διατριβών, συγγραφή κοινού βιβλίου κλπ. 3) Οποιοδήποτε διοικητικό έργο στο ΑΠΘ (μέλος επιτροπών του ΑΠΘ, διενέργεια ΕΔΕ, εκπροσώπηση του ΑΠΘ ενώπιον Αρχών, δικαστηρίων κλπ. -Η συμμετοχή στα συλλογικά όργανα του Τομέα και του Τμήματος δεν αρκεί-). 4) Επιμέλεια έκδοσης τιμητικού τόμου, 5)Ανάληψη ευθύνης διοργάνωσης επιστημονικών εκδηλώσεων, συνεδρίων κλπ.
• Επίσης, η συμβολή του έργου του υποψηφίου στη γενικότερη πρόοδο της επιστήμης, πέρα από στον στενότερο επιστημονικό του κλάδο, η συμμετοχή του σε διοικητικά συμβούλια επιστημονικών σωματείων ή στη συντακτική επιτροπή επιστημονικών περιοδικών, σε εισηγητικές επιτροπές κρίσης άλλων ΑΕΙ, σε νομοπαρασκευαστικές επιτροπές, οι μετακλήσεις για διδασκαλία σε άλλα πανεπιστήμια κλπ. προβάλλουν την εικόνα του Τμήματός μας και συνεκτιμώνται θετικά σε κρίση για εξέλιξη.
Ευρωπαϊκός Κώδικας Πνευματικής Ιδιοκτησίας
Η Ομάδα Wittem δημοσίευσε στις 26 Απριλίου 2010 τον Ευρωπαϊκό Κώδικα Πνευματικής Ιδιοκτησίας. Το εν λόγω έργο αποτελεί ένα πρότυπο νομοθεσίας που αποτελεί προϊόν ενός ερευνητικού προγράμματος στο οποίο συμμετείχαν ειδικοί του δικαίου πνευματικής ιδιοκτησίας στην ΕΕ. Τα μέλη της ομάδας θεωρούν ότι ο εν λόγω Κώδικας μπορεί να χρησιμεύσει ως μοντέλο ή σημείο αναφοράς με στόχο την περαιτέρω εναρμόνιση ή ενοποίηση του δικαίου πνευματικής ιδιοκτησίας στην Ευρώπη.
Στόχος του προγράμματος Wittem και του Κώδικα είναι να ενισχύσει τη διαφάνεια και τη συνεκτικότητα του ευρωπαϊκού δικαίου πνευματικής ιδιοκτησίας. Τα μέλη της ομάδας πιστεύουν ότι η διαδικασία νομοθέτησης στο επίπεδο της ΕΕ, όσον αφορά το δίκαιο πνευματικής ιδιοκτησίας χαρακτηρίζεται από την έλλειψη διαφάνειας και ότι δεν ακούγεται συχνά η φωνή των ακαδημαϊκών.
Ο Κώδικας καταρτίσθηκε από μία επιτροπή σύνταξης που αποτελούνται από επτά μέλη. Κάθε κεφάλαιο του Κώδικα συντάχθηκε αρχικά από ένα ή δύο μέλη της επιτροπής που ήταν εισηγητές. Οι εισηγητές για κάθε κεφάλαιο ήταν οι εξής: Καθηγητής Quaedvlieg (Chapter 1: Works), Καθηγητής Hugenholtz (Chapter 2: Authorship and ownership), Καθηγητής Strowel (Chapter 3: Moral rights), Καθηγητής Visser (Chapter 4: Economic rights) και οι Καθηγητές Dreier και Hilty (Chapter 5: Limitations).
Κάθε σχέδιο κεφαλαίου συνοδεύονται από ένα explanatory memorandum και συζητήθηκε από το Wittem Advisory Board και άλλους ειδικούς που προσκλήθηκαν ad hoc. Μετά τις συνόδους αυτές συντάχθηκε το δεύτερο σχέδιο κάθε κεφαλαίου και ακολούθως, ενσωματώθηκαν στην τελική έκδοση. Η τελική ευθύνη για τη σύνταξη του Κώδικα βαρύνει, πάντως, την Επιτροπή σύνταξης.
Σημειώνεται ότι ο Κώδικας δεν εξαντλεί την ύλη του δικαίου πνευματικής ιδιοκτησίας, αλλά επικεντρώνεται στα βασικά στοιχεία κάθε κωδικοποίησης της πνευματικής ιδιοκτησίας: το αντικείμενο της (Κεφάλαιο 1), δικαιούχοι (κεφάλαιο 2), ηθικά δικαιώματα (κεφάλαιο 3), δικαιώματα εκμετάλλευσης (κεφάλαιο 4) και περιορισμοί (κεφάλαιο 5). Ο Κώδικας δεν ρυθμίζει, λ.χ., το δικαίωμα δημόσιου δανεισμού και το δικαίωμα παρακολούθησης ούτε και ασχολείται με τα τεχνικά μέτρα προστασίας. Τέλος, δεν ρυθμίζει την επιβολή δικαιωμάτων και την ευθύνη, όπως ούτε και τα συγγενικά δικαιώματα και το δικαίωμα στη βάση δεδομένων.
Ακόμα, σημειώνεται ότι ο Κώδικας στηρίζεται στους κανόνες της Σύμβασης της Βέρνης και της Συμφωνίας TRIPS, ενώ λαμβάνεται υπόψη και το κοινοτικό κεκτημένο της πνευματικής ιδιοκτησίας, αλλά ενίοτε παρεκκλίνει από αυτό.
Βλ. European Copyright Code
Παρασκευή 2 Ιουλίου 2010
Civil measures to protect intellectual property rights in the EU Member-States: legislation and court practice
I. Introduction
Counterfeiting and piracy, and infringements of intellectual property in general, are a constantly growing phenomenon[1], which nowadays have an international dimension, since they are a serious threat to national economies and to competition in the Internal Market in the EU. This is so, because these phenomena lead to a loss of confidence amongst operators in the Internal Market, if they are not punished effectively, and the effect of this situation is to discourage creators and inventors and to endanger innovation and creativity.[2] Furthermore, counterfeiting and piracy also pose problems for consumer protection, particularly when public health and safety are at stake [3], and to a certain extent, go hand-in-hand with organised crime.
Indeed, these operations, which were craft activities, have become almost industrial-scale activities in the globalized economy and they offer criminals the prospect of large economic profit without excessive risk. Particularly, in the context of the Internet, the rapidity of illegal operations and the difficulty of tracking the operations further reduce the risks for the criminal. [4]
In order to combat counterfeiting and piracy effective means of enforcing intellectual property rights particularly against large scale infringements is deemed necessary.[5] For this purpose, Directive 2004/48 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights [6] was adopted. The objective of this Directive is to approximate legislative systems so as to ensure a high, equivalent and homogeneous level of protection in the internal market [7], and also to ensure that the substantive law on intellectual property, which is nowadays largely part of the acquis communautaire, is applied effectively in the Community. [8]
The proposal of the Directive of 30.1.2003 provoked controversy and heavy criticism by academics and others [9], so the final text is more moderate than the original proposal. [10] Still, critical voices sustain that the Directive supports private interests at the expense of public interest through the impositions of Mareva injunctions and Anton Pillar Orders, even in instances of accidental and non-commercial infringements of IPRs. [11]
It follows a brief overview of the basic provisions of the Enforcement Directive, which is a legal act that harmonizes the law of the EU Member States in the area of civil procedures. Subsequently, we focus on the court experience of EU Member States on important issues covered by the Directive, such as provisional and precautionary measures, and damages.
II. Overview of the Directive
1. Scope and field of application
The Enforcement Directive (2004/48) aims to provide harmonisation in the area of civil legal proceedings in order to protect intellectual property, which generates 5% of the GDP [12], and to promote creativity, to develop employment and improve competitiveness. In contrast with the TRIPS Agreement [13], criminal sanctions are not included in the field of application of the Directive, as the relevant provisions of the proposals were, after discussions with consumer groups, omitted. A simple reference is made in the preamble of the Directive.[14]
The scope of the Directive is defined in Article 2. Accordingly, the measures, procedures and remedies provided for by this Directive shall apply to any infringement of intellectual property rights as provided for by Community law and/or by the national law of the Member State concerned. National provisions may be maintained in case they are more favourable to right holders. Thus, the Directive provides for minimum harmonisation.
To clarify which rights fall within the definition of IPRs, the EU Commission issued a statement 15], according to which it considers that at least the following intellectual property rights are covered by the scope of the Directive: copyright, rights related to copyright, sui generis right of a database maker, rights of the creator of the topographies of a semiconductor product, trademark rights, design rights, patent rights, including rights derived from supplementary protection certificates, geographical indications, utility model rights, plant variety rights, and trade names, in so far as these are protected as exclusive property rights in the national law concerned.
2. General provisions
Article 3 contains safeguards against misuse of the measures, procedures and remedies established by the Directive. Those measures, procedures and remedies shall be fair and equitable and shall not be unnecessarily complicated or costly, or entail unreasonable time-limits or unwarranted delays, and must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. The principle of proportionality, which is a general principle of EU law, is further specified by the European Court of Justice, in the Promusicae case [16], which states as far as the Directive is concerned that:
“Further, when implementing the measures transposing those directives, the authorities and courts of the Member States must not only interpret their national law in a manner consistent with those directives but also make sure that they do not rely on an interpretation of them which would be in conflict with those fundamental rights or with the other general principles of Community law, such as the principle of proportionality (see, to that effect, Lindqvist, paragraph 87, and Case C 305/05 Ordre des barreaux francophones et germanophone and Others [2007] ECR I 0000, paragraph 28)”.
Article 4 establishes the right for right holders, licensees, collective rights management bodies representing right holders and professional bodies such as trade associations to initiative legal proceedings against pirates and counterfeiters. However, no similar rights are extended to consumers or their representatives.
3. Evidence
The Directive contains novel regulations for the gathering of evidence. It provides that national courts can order the disclosure and deliverance of evidence by the opposing party (Article 6 (1)). In case of infringements committed on a commercial scale, a court can require the disclosure of financial and commercial documents, subject to the protection of confidential information (Article 6 (2)).
It is argued that the provisions of Art. 6 (1) are extremely wide and run the risk of being used by right holders to engage in fishing expeditions to hunt for evidence even before the nature of any potential infringement has been established. [17]
Moreover, Art. 6 (2) creates a powerful means that could be used against average European consumers for engaging in infringements on a commercial scale [18], that is, when used for file-sharing activities in peer-to-peer networks. It is notable that in a Memo concerning the proposal of the Directive, the EU Commision mentioned that “the proposed Directive would not introduce tougher sanctions against individuals downloading the odd track for non-commercial purposes, though it would not stop Member State authorities from introducing and applying tougher laws”.[19] So, it is left to EU Member States to apply this procedure to file-sharing, which constitutes, according to legal doctrine, an infringement on a commercial scale, because of the huge number of digital copies produced in PCs of users.
A court can also order provisional measures to preserve relevant evidence before the commencement of proceedings (Art. 7). Interlocutory evidence can be issued against an infringer and against intermediaries, whose services the infringer is using. Courts can order the seizure and delivery-up of infringing goods. In case where any delay in proceedings might cause irreparable harm, a court can proceed without the other party being heard, but notice has to be given to the opposing party without delay after the execution of the measures at the latest, and the court shall review the terms of its interim orders upon a defendant’s request. The measures to preserve evidence, however, may be subject to the lodging by the applicant of adequate security or an equivalent assurance to ensure compensation for any prejudice suffered by the defendant. These provisions derive from the English case of Anton Piller KG v. Manufacturing Process Limited (1976, Ch. 55). It is notable that the European Court of Human Rights ruled that an Anton Piller order is in accordance with law. However, since it is granted without the defendant’s being notified or heard and is capable of producing damaging and irreversible consequences for him, it is essential that this measure should be accompanied by adequate and effective safeguards against arbitrary interference and abuse. [20]
4. Right of information
Information concerning third parties and the origins of goods can be obtained from a defendant by a discovery order. The information sought has to relate to the origin of infringing products or the distribution networks used by the defendant, including information about names and addresses of possible suppliers and downstream customers, as well as information about the quantities and the price of infringing goods. Persons required to provide information, e.g., are the possessors of infringing material and the users and the providers of services on a commercial scale as well a any person involved in the manufacture, production, or distribution of goods, or the provision of services. However, the defendant may invoke the privilege against self-incrimination, which is recognised by the European Court of Human Rights in the cases Funke v. France and Ernest Saunders v. United Kingdom.
The Directive provides, further, for so-called Mareva injunctions. According to article 9, judicial authorities may issue against the alleged infringer and intermediary, such as an Internet Service Provider, an interlocutory injunction to prevent any imminent infringement and to order the seizure or delivery of the goods suspected of infringing any intellectual property. If evidence shows that infringing acts are committed on a commercial scale, the precautionary seizure of property and the freezing of bank accounts can be ordered.
Without prejudice to the damages due from an intellectual property rights infringement case, the judicial authorities may order various measures such as the recall of infringing goods, their disposal or destruction as well as preventive measures such as an injunction and pecuniary compensation (Articles 10-12).
5. Damages
Regarding damages, Article 13 states generally that damages should be appropriate to the actual prejudice suffered by the right holder as a result of the infringement. It is thus made clear that the proposal of the Commission to allow the plaintiff to claim double licence fees as regular damages is not introduced in the final text of the Directive.
However, in the national legislation of EU Member States such a possibility exists. Notably, in German practice and case law, a 100% surcharge on top of the normal tariff is regularly due for certain infringements of copyright law asserted by collecting societies. The rationale for this is that collecting societies have to undergo increased efforts and expenses to monitor the market. [21]
Also, double licence fees are regulated in Greek Copyright Law. In accordance with Article 65 (2) of Law 2121/1993 Copyright, Related Rights and Cultural Matters, “a person who by intent or negligence infringes copyright or a related right of another person shall indemnify that person for the moral damage caused, and be liable for the payment of damages of not less than twice the legally required or normally payable remuneration for the form of exploitation which the infringing party has effected without license”.
The Enforcement Directive in Art. 13 provides for two methods to be applied by the courts for computing damages. The first method would be to take into account all aspects of the economic consequences resulting from the infringement such as the negative economic consequences, including lost profits, which the injured party has suffered, any unfair profits made by the infringer and, in appropriate cases, elements other than economic factors, such as the moral prejudice caused to the right holder by the infringement. In EU Member States, before the adoption of the Directive, the calculation of damages followed a different system and in particular, compensation for actual damages was separated from recuperation of the infringer’s profits. [22] It is suggested that this provision is intended to provide for a better opportunity of courts to grant higher damages than on the basis of previous national legislation.
As an alternative, damages may be set as a lump sum on the basis of elements such as at least the amount of royalties or fees which would have been due if the infringer had requested authorisation to use the intellectual property right in question. This is an indication that in spite of the general confinement of sanctions to the actual prejudice suffered, the Directive does not discourage double licence schemes such as those referred to above, if justified.[23]
Particularly, in the case were the infringer did not knowingly, or with reasonable grounds know, engage in infringing activity, the Directive includes a non mandatory option. In such case, Member States may lay down that the judicial authorities may order the recovery of profits or the payment of damages, which may be pre-established.
III. The Implementation of the Directive 2004/48 in the EU Member States. Some examples
Germany
The Enforcement Directive (2004/48/EC) was implemented in Germany with the law on amelioration of the enforcement of intellectual property rights of 7th July 2008 (“Gesetz zur Verbesserung der Durchsetzung von Rechten des geistigen Eigentums”), which entered into effect on 1 September 2008. This Law brought amendment of the existing laws on industrial property (Trademark Act, Patent Act etc.) and of the Copyright Act. It is notable that not all parts of the Directive required implementation. The new elements in the law were the right of information vis-à-vis third parties (Art. 8 of the Directive), the relaxation of burden of proof, i.e. the imposition of an obligation of the opposing party to present evidence, in accordance with Art. 6 of the Directive. Regarding damages, the legislation on IPR was amended to codify the existing law and bring it in line with Art. 13 of the Directive.
The Patent Act contains in section 139 (1) an action for injunction, which does not presuppose fault on the part of the infringer. An action for compensation can be filed if the infringer acted intentionally or negligently. The calculation of damages, according to section 139 (2), takes place on the basis of the actual damage suffered including lost profit, or on the basis of the appropriate licensing fee, which the infringer would be liable to pay to the right holder if he had a license. Under section 140a it is provided that the destruction of goods in possession of the infringer can be ordered, while paragraph 3 provides that “any person who exploits a patented invention contrary to Sections 9 to 13 can be sued to recall products, which are the subject matter of the patent or to finally remove them from all distribution channels. The first sentence shall also apply, if the products are manufactured directly by a method, which is the subject matter of the patent.”
Further, the patent Act includes verbatim transposition of the provisions of the Enforcement Directive on information under Art. 8 (140 b Patent Act), on provisional and precautionary measures under Art. 9 (140 c and 140 d Patent Act).
Similar provisions are included in the Copyright Act in sections 97 ff. Regarding damages, there are two relevant provisions. Firstly, section 97 (2) provides that “whoever acts an infringement intentionally or negligently, is liable for compensation of damages to the injured party. In assessing the damages, the profit that the infringing party has obtained from the infringement can be taken into account. An alternative is to calculate the damages on the basis of the appropriate licensing fee, which the infringer would be liable to pay to the right holder if he had a license. And also, authors can require the compensation of moral damages, when and insofar this is equitable.
Section 100 of the Copyright Act transposes the provision of Article 13 (1) lit. b of the Directive, according to which the damages can be set as a lump sum. The German Copyright Act states that if the infringing party does not act intentionally or negligently, he is entitled to compensate the injured party, instead of the actions of sections 97 and 98, in case the exercise of these provisions would bring a disproportionate damage and the injured party can be satisfied. The calculation of damages in this case is based on the appropriate fee in case a license would be acquired.
Soon after the implementation of the Enforcement Directive, two contrasting first instance decisions on the application of the new right of information have been published. Both cases concerned copyright infringement using file-sharing networks on the internet. Section 101 of the German Copyright Act (which implements the Directive) grants rights owners a right of information against third parties – for example, internet service providers – in cases of obvious infringement and, additionally, if the infringement is on a "commercial scale". The scope of "commercial scale" is unclear and the decisions differ significantly in their interpretation of the concept.
In the first case, the Regional Court of Frankenthal, the plaintiff, a company who was right holder on a computer game filed suit against an Internet Access Provider on the basis of section 101 (9) and (2)(1) Nr. 3 Copyright Act, requesting information on the personal information of three Internet users whose IP addresses were identified as making available a torrent file to other Internet users, whereas this file was a version of the computer game. The plaintiff argued that the users were acting on commercial scale, since they offered other users the file for downloading, taking also into account that the file was voluminous and the game was recently put on the market.
The Court held that that the infringers were not acting on a commercial scale. In its reasoning, the Court referred to the practice of German public prosecutors who commence criminal investigations only where a specific threshold is met, taking into account the type of protected works (e.g. individual music songs, full albums, full films) and their actual status (e.g. films before their start in cinemas). Accordingly, an infringement on commercial scale could be in case there is an offer of at least 3,000 music titles, or of files with a market value of more than €3,000. Besides that, the Court held that in the present case the requirement of an infringement on commercial scale was not fulfilled, because there was no deliberate and continuous act, as well as no intention of making a profit from the infringement.
In contrast, the Regional Court of Cologne held that offering a new music album (on a single file) via a file-sharing network shortly after release amounted to copyright infringement on a commercial scale (case no. 28 AR 4/08). In this case, the Court took into account the severity of the infringement and the potentially substantial damage to the right owner flowing from the availability of a new product to an unlimited number of individuals shortly after release.
Large number of proceedings against internet service providers for information in respect of copyright infringements by way of illegal downloads (music, audio books, films). The Court of Appeal of Cologne in its decision of 21.10.2008 held that anyone who is offering a complete music album, particularly in the release phase, acts as a supplier on commercial scale. According to the Court, this person cannot and does not want to control to what extent use of its offer is made and infringes upon the rights of the right holder to such a degree, which corresponds to commercial use of the intellectual property rights. It is also negligible that it is proven that the infringement took place only for a specific time.
Similarly, the Court of Appeal of Karlsruhe held that an infringement on a commercial scale is established, if a particularly large file, such as a complete feature film, a music album or an audio book, before or immediately after its publication in Germany is illegal made available to an indeterminate number of third parties on the Internet. [24] The Court invokes Recital Nr. 14 of the Directive, which states that acts carried out on a commercial scale are those carried out for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage; this would normally exclude acts carried out by end consumers acting in good faith. Thus, the decisive factor is whether the infringement crosses the line of private use and this would be the case, according to the Court, when the infringer does not only download a commercially exploited work, but makes it available to a indefinite number of third persons.
In another interesting case, the Court of Appeal of Munich [25] held that the auction site eBay was responsible for contributory infringement and was responsible to provide information to the plaintiff in accordance with Section 101a of the Copyright Act, transposing Art. 8 of the Enforcement Directive. In this particular case, the plaintiff who was the publisher of a textbook of Latin language noticed that German translations from its textbook were offered in the auction site of the defendant from pseudonymous suppliers. Consequently, the plaintiff sent a letter notice to the defendant, who did not accept its allegations and refused to provide information concerning the suppliers, as this would violate data protection legislation. Hence, the plaintiff filed a lawsuit against the defendant, which was accepted.
The District Court of Cologne delivered a case recently applying the rules of the new copyright act.[26] In this case, the plaintiff was is a major German record producer, while the defendant was the owner of an Internet connection, who was allegedly offering on the Internet copyrighted works, the song "F" and "P" of Artist "B. The claimant for an injunction and for compensation for the attorney’s fees for out-of-settlement. The claimant using a special software discovered that the album of the artist “B” was made online available through a specific IP address and filed a lawsuit against the provider to provide the claimant with information on the defendant. Consequently, the claimant complained to the defendant who contested the infringement, but conceded that that his sons have initiated the filesharing.
The Court ordered the plaintiff to cease and subsist from making available the music recordings on the Internet and condemned him in case of disobedience to pay a fine of 250,000 Euro or be subject to imprisonment of 6 months. It also condemned the defendant to pay to the plaintiff compensation for the expenses in the out-of-court procedure, issued in accordance with section 97a of the Copyright Act, which was determined in the amount of 1379,80 Euro.
GREECE
In Greece, the transposition of the Enforcement Directive took place by the amendment of the Copyright Act only. Amendments of the Trademark Act, the Patent Act and the other legislation on IPR will still have to be caried out.
The Copyright Act contains in Article 63 A provisions on evidence that correspond to Articles 6 and 8 of the Directive, while Article 64 contains provisions on injunctions and precautionary evidence, which correspond to Articles 7, 9 and 11 of the Directive. An injunction against intermediaries is provided for in Article 64A, whose services are used by third party to infringe a copyright or related right, as well as sui generis right.
The provisions of Articles 10 and 11 on damages are transposed in Article 65, which describes a coherent system of liability for damages. It states, in paras 1 to 3 the following:
“ (1) In any case of infringement or threat of infringement of copyright or related rights, the author or the right holder may claim the recognition of this right, the discontinuation of the infringement and its omission in the future. The discontinuation of the infringement may include, at the request of the applicant: a) recall from the channels of commerce of goods that they have found to be infringing rights under this law and, in appropriate cases, with regard to materials and implements principally used in the creation or manufacture of those goods, b) definitive removal from the channels of commerce, or c) destruction. The rights of the first sentence of this paragraph shall be exercised by right holders against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe rights under this law (articles 10, par. 1, and 11 of Directive 2004/48).
(2) A person who by intent or negligence infringes copyright or a related right of another person shall indemnify that person for the moral damage caused, and be liable for the payment of damages of not less than twice the legally required or normally payable remuneration for the form of exploitation which the infringing party has effected without license.
(3) Instead of seeking damages, and regardless of whether the infringement was committed by intent or negligence, the author or the right holder of the related right may demand either the payment of the sum accrued by the infringing party from the unlicensed exploitation of a work, or of the object of a related right, pursuant to Articles 46 to 48 and 51 of this Law, or the profit gained by the infringing party from such an exploitation.”
It also notable that administrative sanctions are provided for in Article 65A, while criminal sanctions are provided for in Article 66.
In a recent decision the Court of First Instance of Athens [27] ordered provisional measures and in more particular, the detailed description of infringing goods including the taking of photographs. In particular, the claimant directed an audiovisual work, i.e. a cartoon. He was also script writer and editor, while other persons contributed in the creation of the work, thus, it was a collaborative work. The claimant delivered the film to the first defendant, manager of the second defendant, in order to decide about possible way of its exploitation. However, although there was no agreement between the claimant and the defendants they undertook the production, distribution and exploitation of a DVD titled “Greek Cartoons 1945-2007” that contained 18 films, including the cartoon of the claimant. This film was stored in the DVD and was reprinted in 5,000 copies without the consent of the claimant. The film was also played in festivals, cinemas, bars, student groups and cartoon seminars, while it cannot be excluded that it was exploited also in other ways. The claimant was thus deprived of his license fee and of the fee for the public execution of the film, but also could not take part in film competitions.
Subsequently, the claimant filed a lawsuit against the defendants before the County Court of Athens, claiming: a) the recognition of his right holder of the film, b) the discontinuation of the infringement and its omission in the future and c) the defendants to pay to him the amount of 6,000 Euro as compensation, which is not less than twice the normally payable remuneration for this form of exploitation which the infringing party has effected without his permission (Art. 65 (2), Greek Copyright Act), otherwise to pay the amount of 6,000 Euro which the defendant accrued from the unlicensed exploitation of his work (Art. 65 (3), Copyright Act) and d) to pay the amount of 5,000 Euro for moral damages suffered by the acts of the defendants.
In the present proceedings before the Court of First Instance of Athens filed an application for provisional measures against the defendants and requested that the court issued an order for the precautionary seizure of the items in the possession of the defendants. The Court ordered instead of the seizure, the detailed description of the infringing items, including the taking of photographs (Article 64 (1), Copyright Act). The decision was issued without the defendant being heard, in accordance with Article 64 (5) of the Copyright Act, which is in line with Article 50 (2) of the TRIPS Agreement and Article 7 of the Enforcement Directive. It held that this measure is necessary, since it is possible that the defendants destroy all the material evidence and thus, the right holder would not be protected. It is notable that the description of the infringing items order by the Court can be carried out by a bailiff and not by a notary public, as it is the case in ordinary court proceedings. The claimant was allowed by the Court to use special advisors, IT-experts, to assist him.
In a pending case before the Multi-Member Court of First Instance of Athens, issued an order against the alleged infringer of copyright.[28] The court applied the provision of Article 63 A, Copyright Act transposing Article 6 of the Enforcement Directive, stating that: “On application by a party which has presented reasonably available evidence sufficient to support its claims of infringement or threat of infringement of the rights under this law and has, in substantiating those claims, specified evidence which lies in the control of the opposing party, the court may order, on application by a party, that such evidence be presented by the opposing party. In the case of an infringement committed on a commercial scale, the court may also order, on application by a party, the communication of banking, financial or commercial documents under the control of the opposing party. The existence of a substantial number of copies shall be considered to constitute reasonable evidence of an infringement committed on a commercial scale. In any event, the court shall ensure the protection of confidential information.”
The claimant in this case invoked his right according to the aforementioned provision with his pleadings in the ordinary court proceedings. The Court postponed the issuance of final decision and ordered the defendant company to present the documents under its control. It is noteworthy that the Court held that the requirement of an infringement committed on a commercial scale was fulfilled, since it was proven that there were multiple infringing copies in the possession of the defendant.
Belgium
In Belgium, the transposition of the enforcement directive took place with the amendment of the Act on civil law aspects of the protection of intellectual property rights [29] and the Act on judicial law aspects of the protection of intellectual property rights, issued on 10 May 2007.[30]
The two separate acts apply to all intellectual property rights, save for trademarks and models and designs, as these are dealt with on the Benelux level. Because Belgian legislation does not have a single intellectual property code, the implementation acts necessarily affect several national intellectual property acts, including the Patent Act, the Act on Copyright and Neighbouring rights, the Software Copyright Act, the Act on Plant breeders’ rights, the Act on Legal protection of semiconductor layouts, the Database Act and the Trade Practices Act which provides for protection of denominations of origin. Furthermore, the acts also include changes to the Judicial Code.
France
In France the Enforcement Directive has been implemented by Law 2007-1549 of October 29th 2007 known as “anti counterfeiting law”. The new law concerns designs, patents, semi-conductors, trademarks and copyright. It introduces accelerated and simplified procedures to bring matters before court, in particular in order to obtain summary orders against the alleged infringer or his intermediaries so as to prevent imminent acts of infringement or to stop such acts. The law also reinforces the measures that can be ordered against infringers, and improves the remedies that can be awarded. Moreover, the law provides for a limited number of courts to specialise in the enforcement of intellectual property: litigation relating to the application of intellectual property rules may only be brought before specific High Courts of First Instance (‘Tribunaux de Grande Instance’). The text provides that a Decree will set out these courts.
It should also be noted that the French legislator reinforces the penal sanctions incurred where the acts of infringement concern products that are dangerous for the health and security of mankind and animals. Finally, the law sanctions any violation of intellectual property rights, whether they are carried out on a commercial scale or not.
ITALY
By Legislative Decree no.140 of 16 March 2006, Italy implemented the Enforcement Directive by amending law no.633/1941, which has already been the subject of so many modifications since its inception that several parties are calling for its complete re-drafting. The most notable modifications to the Italian copyright law include the presumption of ownership of the neighbouring rights, as it was already the case for author's rights; the possibility for collective and "representative" organizations to independently promote judicial actions in order to defend their members' rights; the possibility to ask judges to inhibit activities, including those by intermediaries, that can be construed as an infringement of authors' or neighbouring rights; the possibility for judges in the case of infringement "on a commercial scale"- on request of the interested party - to order banking, financial and other commercial data to be produced by the counterpart; a more detailed procedure to calculate damages.
The Italian implementation of IPRED has been severely criticized, among others by Andrea Monti of ALCEI (Associazione per la Liberta` nella Comunicazione Elettronica Interattiva - EDRi-member). In an article published on the Italian journal "InterLex", Monti considered that the Legislative Decree is too vague in its key parts - including the definition of what is an "intermediary" and the type of evidences that must be produced in order for a judicial injunction to be issued.
Netherlands
The implementation of the Enforcement Directive took place with the Act of 8 March 2007.[31] A new part has been added to Book 3 of the Dutch Code of Civil Procedure with the sections 1019a up to and including 1019i. In addition, some separate intellectual property acts, including the Copyright Act, have been amended. On the basis of the new legislation, any holder of an intellectual property right has a number of far-reaching instruments to enforce his intellectual property rights.
UK
In the UK, the Enforcement Directive was implemented with the Intellectual Property Regulations 2006.[32] This act transposes effectively the provisions of the Directive.
Particularly, as regards damages, Section 3 of the Regulation states that:
“(1) Where in an action for infringement of an intellectual property right the defendant knew, or had reasonable grounds to know, that he engaged in infringing activity, the damages awarded to the claimant shall be appropriate to the actual prejudice he suffered as a result of the infringement.
(2) When awarding such damages—
(a) all appropriate aspects shall be taken into account, including in particular: (i) the negative economic consequences, including any lost profits, which the claimant has suffered, and any unfair profits made by the defendant; and
(ii) elements other than economic factors, including the moral prejudice caused to the claimant by the infringement; or
(b) where appropriate, they may be awarded on the basis of the royalties or fees which would have been due had the defendant obtained a licence.”
IV. Conclusions
The Enforcement Directive brought about significant changes in the law of the EU Member States in the area of enforcement of intellectual property rights. The already existing legal remedies in English law, know as Anton Pillar order and Mareva injunctions are new to the legal order of the other EU countries and their introduction in EU law, which resulted into transposition in the national law of the Member States, are powerful instruments in the hands of right holders. But also the provision of Art. 10 of the Directive allows right holders to enforce their rights effectively.
Important provisions are also those concerning damages in Article 13 of the Directive, which are new to most Member States, but existed in the case-law of others. These contribute to the harmonization of civil liability in case of infringement of intellectual property rights.
It is argued that the imposition of civil liability alone does not provide sufficient protection and more efficient mechanisms are needed for the enforcement of intellectual property rights. Certainly, criminal sanctions are also important, as well as provisions on administrative functions of competent authorities. Nevertheless, the harmonization of the enforcement of intellectual property law must be seen as a prerequisite for an effective system of protection of intellectual property in the fight against infringements of such rights, particularly as regards counterfeiting and piracy.
FOOTNOTES
1. According to the European Commission, counterfeiting and piracy cost the EU 8 billion Euro between 1998 and 2001. Notably, the number of optical discs and cassettes seized by EU custom officers rose from 9 million items in 2000 to nearly 40 million items in 2001; see MEMO/03/20, 2003.
2. See Explanatory Memorandum, Proposal for a Directive on measures and procedures to ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights, COM (2003) 46 final, p. 3, 6-8, 12-13.
3. The latest Commission Community Customs Report warns that the threat to consumer health and safety is increasing dramatically, with the seizure of items more than doubling in 2008 to 178 million, of which about 20 million potentially dangerous to health and safety of EU citizens, or 11% of all items intercepted; IP/09/1106 of 9.7.2009. In particular, the increase in fake medicines is of growing concern; See http://www.ip-talk.eu/?p=607 ‘Medi-Fake’ action results (February 2009) – over 34 million illegal medicines seized.
4. Explanatory Memorandum, op. cit., p. 12.
5. See Communication of 30.11.2000, COM (2000) 789 final, Follow-up to the Green Paper on combating counterfeiting and piracy in the single market.
6. OJ L 157 of 30.04.2004, p. 45 and Corrigendum, L 195 of 02.06.2004, p. 16.
7. Recital Nr. 10 of Directive 2004/48.
8. Recital Nr. 3 of Directive 2004/48; Explanatory Memorandum, op. cit., pp. 4-6, 19-21.
9. See Cornish/Drexl/Hilty/Kur, Procedures and Remedies for Enforcing IPRs: the European Commission’s Proposed Directive, EIPR 2003, pp. 447-449; Cornish/Drexl/Hilty/Kur, Proposal for a Directive on Measures and Procedures to Ensure the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights – A First Statement, IIC 2003, pp. 530-535.
10. See S. M. Kierkegaard, Taking a sledgehammer to crack the nut: The EU Enforcement Directive, CLSR 2005, pp. 488-495.
11. P. Meller, EU backs deal on copyright piracy, International Herald Tribune, NY 2004.
12. MEMO/03/20, 2003.
13. See Art. 61: “Members shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied at least in cases of wilful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale”.
14. See Recital Nr. 28: “In addition to the civil and administrative measures, procedures and remedies provided for under this Directive, criminal sanctions also constitute, in appropriate cases, a means of ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights”.
15. Statement by the Commission concerning Article 2 of Directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the enforcement of intellectual property rights (2005/295/EC), OJ L 94 of 13.4.2005, p. 37.
16. ECJ, decision of 29.1.2008, case C-275/06, Promusicae.
17. See S. M. Kierkegaard, op. cit., p. 491-492.
18. S. M. Kierkegaard, op. cit.
19. MEMO/03/20 of 30/01/2003.
20. See Case of Chappell v. UK, decision of 30.03.1989 (Application no. 10461/83).
21. German Federal Supreme Court, 1973 GRUR 379 – Doppelte Lizenzgebühr. For the reasons not to accept this proposal see D. Amschewitz, Die Durchsetzungsrichtlinie and ihre Umsetzung im deutschen Recht, 2008, p. 89; Dreier, GRUR Int. 2004, pp. 706-707.
22. See, e.g., for UK law: Cornish & Llewely, Intellectual Property: Patents, Copyright, Trade Marks and Allied Rights, 2003, pp. 2-43, 44.
23. See Recital Nr. 26 of the Directive, which states that the aim of the Directive is not to introduce an obligation to provide for punitive damages but to allow for compensation based on an objective criterion while taking account of the expenses incurred by the right holder, such as the costs of identification and research.
24. OLG Karlsruhe, decision of 01.09.2009, 6 W 47/09, JurPC Web-Dok. 218/2009, Abs. 1 – 36.
25. OLG München, Urteil vom 21.09.2006, 29 U 2119/06, Haftung von eBay als Mitstörer für Urheberrechtsverletzungen, JurPC Web-Dok. 124/2006, Abs. 1 – 76.
26. Decision of 21.04.2010, Az. 28 O 596/09.
27. Decision Nr. 7842/2009, www.dsanet.gr
28. Case Nr. 5144/2009, www.dsanet.gr
29. Loi relative aux aspects civils de la protection des droits de proprietι intellectuelle, Moniteur Belge, 10 May 2007, 2nd edition, p. 25694.
30. Loi relative aux aspects de droit judicaire de la protection des droits de propriιtι intellectuelle, Moniteur Belge, 10 May 2007, 2nd edition, p. 25694.
31. Dutch Bulletin of Acts and Decrees. 2007, 108.
32. Statutory Instrument 2006 No. 1028.
Τρίτη 29 Ιουνίου 2010
The XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law / Le XVIIIe Congrès International de droit comparé
The XVIIIth International Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law
Hosted by
American University Washington College of Law
George Washington University Law School
Georgetown University Law Center
takes place in Washington D.C. (The Ritz-Carlton Hotel) from July 25 to August 1, 2010.
Program:
List of subjects and general reporters:
Website:
http://www.wcl.american.edu/events/2010congress/
Last update : 24/06/2010
Τρίτη 8 Ιουνίου 2010
Call for Papers JURIX 2010
Call for Papers
JURIX 2010
The 23rd International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems
University of Liverpool (U.K.), 16th-17th December 2010
http://conference.jurix.nl/2010
For more than 20 years the Jurix Conference has provided an international forum for academics and practitioners in the field of legal informatics for sharing ideas and experiences on the representation of legal content and its representation in computer systems.
The 23rd edition of Jurix will be organised by the University of Liverpool.
We invite submission of original papers on the advanced management of legal information and knowledge (foundations, methods, tools, systems and applications), including but not limited to the following:
systems supporting lawyers, in legal reasoning, document drafting, negotiation
systems supporting the production and management of legislation, in agenda setting, policy analysis, drafting, workflow management, monitoring implementation
systems supporting the judiciary, in application of the law, analysis of evidence, management of cases
systems supporting police activities, in forensic inquiries, search and evaluation of evidence, management of investigations
systems supporting public administration, in applying regulations and managing information
systems for the retrieval of legal information
systems supporting legal education
systems for digital-rights management
systems supporting the acquisition, management or use of legal knowledge, using rules, cases, neural networks, intelligent agents or other methods
systems supporting alternative dispute resolution, particularly on-line
systems and methods to support regulatory compliance and compliance of business processes
systems and method to support policies and legal issues for social networks
theoretical foundations for the use of Artificial Intelligence in the legal domain
models of legal knowledge, including concepts (legal ontologies), rules, cases, principles, values and procedures
models of legal inference and argumentation
methods for verifying and validating legal knowledge systems
methods and techniques for managing legal information in the semantic web
methods for managing organizational change when introducing legal knowledge systems
XML standards for legal documents, including legislative, judicial, administrative acts as well as private documents, such as contracts
methods for modelling the legal interactions of autonomous agents and digital institutions
Deadline for paper submission is September 5th, 2010. Papers should be submitted through the Jurix Conference Management System, using PDF, PostScript or Word format, and should not exceed 10 pages when formatted using the styles and guidelines in the Instructions for Authors. Author instructions and style sheets can be found at the IOS Press site.
The conference proceedings will be published by IOS Press (Amsterdam, Berlin, Oxford, Tokyo, Washington DC) in their series “Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications” before the Conference.
The Jurix conferences are held under the auspices of the Dutch Foundation for Legal Knowledge Systems (www.jurix.nl).
Proposals for tutorials and workshops are invited and strongly encouraged. All proposals, including a short description of the topic, should be sent to the Program Chair by email.
Important Dates
August 29th, 2010 Deadline for submission of abstracts
September 5th, 2010 Deadline for submission of papers
September 19th, 2010 Deadline for submission of tutorials, workshops and demonstration proposals
October 1st, 2010 Notification of paper acceptance
October 17th, 2010 Camera-ready papers due
December (14th and) 15th, 2010 Jurix Workshops/Tutorials
December 16th-17th, 2010 Jurix 2010 Main Conference
Contacts
You can contact us by sending an email to: jurix2010@jurix.nl.
Program Committee Chair
Radboud Winkels, Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Organisation Committee Chair
Katie Atkinson, University of Liverpool, U.K.
Program Committee
Radboud Winkels (Chair) Leibniz Center for Law, Netherlands
Kevin D. Ashley University of Pittsburgh, USA
Katie Atkinson University of Liverpool, UK
Daniθle Bourcier CNRS CERSA, University of Paris 2, France
Joost Breuker University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Pompeu Casanovas Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
Jack Conrad Thompson Reuters, USA
Tom van Engers Leibniz Center for Law, The Netherlands
Enrico Francesconi ITTIG-CNR, Florence, Italy
Thomas F. Gordon Fraunhofer FOKUS, Berlin, Germany
Guido Governatori NICTA, Australia
Carole D. Hafner Northeastern University, USA
Rinke Hoekstra VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Arno R. Lodder VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Thorne M cCarthy Rutgers University, USA
Marie-Francine Moens KU Leuven, Belgium
Laurens Mommers Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands
Monica Palmirani University of Bologna, Italy
Henry Prakken Universiteit Groningen & Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Paulo Quaresma Universidade de Evora & Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
Giovani Sartor European University Institute, Florence - Cirsfid, University of Bologna, Italy
Burkhard Schafer University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Uri Schild Bar Ilan University, Israel
Bart Verheij Universiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
Fabio Vitali University of Bologna, Italy
Douglas N. Walton University of Windsor, Canada
Adam Wyner University of Leeds, UK
John Zeleznikow Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
Κυριακή 6 Ιουνίου 2010
Copyright protection in information society in the European Union: initiatives, results and lessons
Ioannis Iglezakis
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law,
Thessaloniki, Greece
I. Introduction to Directive 2001/29
In the information society, new challenges for copyright appear. To address the issues posed, Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society was adopted. With the adoption of the Directive one of the priority objectives is fulfilled, which is set by the Lisbon European Council as part of the process to preparing the transition to a competitive, dynamic and knowledge-based economy in the EU. The final outcome is a result of over three years of thorough discussion and a fine example of co-decision making where the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission have all had a decisive input. The Directive entered into force on 22 June 2001 and has been implemented by all EU Member States.
The objectives of the Directive were to adapt legislation on copyright and related rights to reflect technological developments, and transpose into Community law the main international obligations arising from the two treaties on copyright and related rights adopted within the framework of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in December 1996.
The Directive was enacted in order to adjust and complement the existing framework so as to ensure the smooth functioning of the internal market and bring about a favourable environment which protects and stimulates creativity and innovative activities within the Community. It addresses the need to take into account the new digital environment and in more particular, the ability to produce, copy, manipulate and distribute works in digital form over the Internet. The easiness of the production and dissemination of digital works comes, however, together with the practical difficulties of exercising control over the dissemination of works without consent of the copyright owner and/or obtaining redress for the unauthorised reproduction, due to the existence of multiple jurisdictions and divergence of laws to be applied for unauthorised reproduction. Thus, the harmonization of national legislation on the basis of the Directive is a great change for the protection and stimulation of development and marketing of digital content.
II. Overview of the Directive
The Directive harmonizes the right to reproduction, communication and distribution. It also includes limitations to the aforementioned rights and regulations on the protection of technological measures, and on rights management. The reproduction right gives authors the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit direct, indirect, temporary or permanent reproduction by any means and in any form, in whole or in part. Similar rights are provided for performers of fixations, for record producers, film makers and broadcasters of fixations of their broadcasts. The communication right requires authors to be provided with the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any communication to the public of originals and copies of their works, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that member of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them. Similar rights are also provided for the aforementioned categories of right holders. Authors are granted the exclusive right of distribution to the public of their works or copies thereof. This right is exhausted where the first sale or first other transfer of ownership in the Community of a copy is made by the right holder or with his consent.
The Directive lays down a number of exceptions to the right of reproduction and the right of communication. A mandatory exception to the right of reproduction is introduced in respect of certain temporary acts of reproduction which are integral to a technological process, the purpose of which is to enable the lawful use or transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary of a work or other subject-matter and which has no separate economic significance. The Directive also makes provision for other non-mandatory exceptions to the rights of reproduction or communication. These are optional and particularly concern the "public" domain. For three of these exceptions - reprography, private use and broadcasts made by social institutions - the right holders are to receive fair compensation.
Furthermore, the Directive provides for legal protection of technological measures and in more particular, it requires Member States to provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services for the circumvention of any effective technological measures. It also provides for the protection of rights-management information. Member States are obliged to provide for legal protection against any person knowingly performing without authority any of the following acts: the removal or alteration of any electronic rights-management information; the distribution, broadcasting, communication or making available to the public of works or other protected subject matter from which electronic rights-management information has been removed.
III. News challenges for copyright in the knowledge economy
Internet and digitisation technologies are opening up new possibilities for the distribution on creative content online. Consumers are thus enabled to access creative content online at any place in the EU internal market. The availability of creative content can be a key driver in the take-up of new technologies, such as broadband Internet, digital television and mobile communication.
New regulative initiatives are required, however, in this new environment, since obstacles still stand in the way of free movement of creative people, cultural activities and of the digital distribution of products and services, and since illegal downloads on a large scale can jeopardize the development of an economically viable single market for digital content. The new millennium has seen the spectacular rise, both in popularity and in performance, of online business models offering vast amounts of copyrighted content (music, video, software, images and even books).
The European Digital Agenda presented by the Commission President Barroso in September 2009 set the objective of creating in Europe a modern, pro-competitive and consumer friendly legal framework for a genuine single market for creative content online. This requires creating a favourable environment for creators and right holders by ensuring appropriate remuneration for their creative works, encouraging the provision of attractive legal offers to consumers with transparent pricing and terms of use and promoting a level playing field for new business models and innovative solutions for the distribution of creative content.
As a prerequisite for any future action of the EU, the evolution of technology and content markets should be taken into account. Today, there is a co-existence of two types of content, i.e. professionally produced content and user-created content. So, a new framework is needed to guarantee freedom of expression and an appropriate remuneration for professional creators, who play an essential role for cultural diversity. Furthermore, traditional practices for licensing rights are not always adapted for digital distribution, as new actors and new roles are brought into the value chain and previously separate services are converging and thus change conditions for the distribution of digital content.
The biggest challenges with regard to online licensing are caused by the online dissemination of music, which is characterised by multiple layers of ownership. Rights of authors are administered by authors’ societies and music publishers, while rights performers and record producers are related rights administered by collective rights management organisations (CMOs). In the digital distribution of music two sets of rights have to be cleared, the right to reproduction and communication to the public. A certain difficulty is that public performance of music works is licensed on a national basis.
Another issue concerns the online distribution of literary works and e-books. The mass digitization of out-of-print books or orphan books creates insurmountable problems with regard to licensing, since the owner of the digital rights is unknown or is difficult to locate. In the audiovisual sector there are problems concerning the clearance of rights and particularly, the new video-on-demand (VOD) services, as statutory and contractual provisions concerning release windows for VOD may act as a barrier to the availability of digital content across borders.
It is notable that problems in the digital market are created despite the absence of technical barriers to the circulation of content online, due to territorial licensing, which is prevalent with respect to performance rights in some sectors in Europe, mainly music. Territorial restrictions are the result of commercial decisions by right holders and providers of audiovisual services.
Possible actions on EU level to address the challenges in the digital market include the following :
1. Extended collective licensing
This is one of the options proposed to tackle with the issue of orphan works and also out-of-print works . In this system, a rights manager is deemed to represent “outsiders” – right holders not formally members of the clearing system – in respect of certain forms of digitisation and online usage could create easier access to creative content for consumers. However, it is required that orphan works could only be included in such a scheme after a diligent search has confirmed their orphan status.
The High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries adopted a Final report on Digital Preservation, Orphan Works and out-of-print works and a memorandum of understanding on orphan works, which contains a set of guidelines on diligent search for right holders and general principles concerning databases of orphan works and rights clearance mechanisms.
2. Further harmonisation of copyright laws in Europe.
The regulations of Directive 2001/29 harmonised the exclusive rights, but without providing clear boundaries for those rights by means of uniform exceptions. The harmonisation of the different and optional limitations and exceptions would create more certainty for consumers about their rights.
3. Internet licensing
Commercial users’ access to diverse creative content on a multi-territory basis with legal certainty and fair tariffs would be beneficial for the development of online services. The objective is to simplify the cross-border management of rights for online uses, such as online music services (e.g., iTunes) and video services (e.g. user generated services on YouTube) and on-demand TV programmes as well as film services.
Possible solutions: a) consolidation of the digital right of reproduction and the digital performance right (making available right) in a unitary licence, b) creating a “one-stop shop”, which implies the re-aggregating of manifold layers of different rights and right holders that are contained in a particular work or sound recording and integrating them into a single licence, c) freely accessible ownership and licence information on world repertoire would ease the operation of multi-territory and multi-repertoire licensing and thus help overcome market fragmentation.
A different approach would be the introduction of alternative forms of remuneration, alongside the copyright licences given to operators of legal services. Accordingly, ISPs would owe right holders a form of compensation for mass reproductions and dissemination of copyright protected works undertaken by their customers and would concern only unauthorised file-sharing and reproductions.
4. Protection of right holders
New media offer right holders the opportunity for disseminating their works across different platforms and to a larger audience. Easier access to creative content will have to be combined with adequate protection of right holders. This would include certain options: a) an extended or mandatory collective management system for the administration of the making available right and the right to remuneration, b) measures for the governance and transparency of collective rights management organisations, so that the interests of creators are administered in the most efficient manner, c) more collaboration with ISPs and other companies providing access technologies, and introduction of new business models based on access subscription rather than payment fro every single work, together with advertising-supported or feels-like-free services, and d) financial incentives for online multi-territory offers of audiovisual works.
5. Limitations and exceptions
Certain questions arise with regard to possible copyright limitations and exceptions .
Firstly, it is considered to amend the existing regime concerning the production of digital copies of materials held in libraries’ collection for preservation purposes and the electronic dissemination of these copies to users . Currently, libraries and archives do not enjoy a blanket exception to digitise their collections and thus, such act requires prior authorisation from the right holders. Libraries argue that the system of prior authorisation entails considerable transactional burdens, while publishers and collecting societies do not see any justification to broaden the current exceptions on preservation and making available for libraries and archives. The EU Commission aims at adopting a sustainable system of prior authorisation for library initiatives and a cost efficient rights clearance system.
Teaching, learning and research in the modern information society acquires international and cross-border dimensions, as access and use of information is not limited to physical space. Problems arise in this area with regard to licensing agreements for the publishing of digital research material. Libraries and universities assert that it would be more practical to have one central organisation to grant a wide range of online rights with respect to digital material. They also call for mandatory teaching and research exceptions .
As for copyright exceptions for persons with disabilities, a degree of legal uncertainty remains, as the existing exceptions are not fully harmonised and most importantly, the cross-border transfer of the already limited supply of material is hampered by the territorial limitation of exceptions under national laws. To export a converted work to another country, an organisation needs to buy the rights in the destination country. The EU Commission undertakes to encourage publishers to make more works in accessible formats available to disabled persons. TPMs should prevent the conversion of legally acquired works into accessible formats. And also, contractual licensing should respect statutory exceptions for persons with disabilities including visually impaired persons .
Finally, no consensus exists as far as user-created content (UCC) is concerned . Namely, Internet users are able to produce and share text, video and pictures with application of Web 2.0, such as blogs, podcasts, wiki, file or video sharing, thus becoming creators of content, while occasionally other copyright-protected material is used as a basis. In the Green Paper it is ascertained that the Directive 2001/29 does not include any exception that would allow the use of existing copyrighted works fro creating new or derivative works. It was further examined if a new exception would be necessary to make available “creative, transformative or derivate works”. Such an exception would need the amendment of the Directive and it supported that it would favour innovative uses of works and stimulate the production of added value .
After consultation on this issue, it has been considered that it is too early to regulate UCC, as the scope of UCC is still uncertain and it is not clear whether amateurs and professionals should benefit from special rules on UCC or how such rules would relate to existing limitations .
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law,
Thessaloniki, Greece
I. Introduction to Directive 2001/29
In the information society, new challenges for copyright appear. To address the issues posed, Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society was adopted. With the adoption of the Directive one of the priority objectives is fulfilled, which is set by the Lisbon European Council as part of the process to preparing the transition to a competitive, dynamic and knowledge-based economy in the EU. The final outcome is a result of over three years of thorough discussion and a fine example of co-decision making where the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission have all had a decisive input. The Directive entered into force on 22 June 2001 and has been implemented by all EU Member States.
The objectives of the Directive were to adapt legislation on copyright and related rights to reflect technological developments, and transpose into Community law the main international obligations arising from the two treaties on copyright and related rights adopted within the framework of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in December 1996.
The Directive was enacted in order to adjust and complement the existing framework so as to ensure the smooth functioning of the internal market and bring about a favourable environment which protects and stimulates creativity and innovative activities within the Community. It addresses the need to take into account the new digital environment and in more particular, the ability to produce, copy, manipulate and distribute works in digital form over the Internet. The easiness of the production and dissemination of digital works comes, however, together with the practical difficulties of exercising control over the dissemination of works without consent of the copyright owner and/or obtaining redress for the unauthorised reproduction, due to the existence of multiple jurisdictions and divergence of laws to be applied for unauthorised reproduction. Thus, the harmonization of national legislation on the basis of the Directive is a great change for the protection and stimulation of development and marketing of digital content.
II. Overview of the Directive
The Directive harmonizes the right to reproduction, communication and distribution. It also includes limitations to the aforementioned rights and regulations on the protection of technological measures, and on rights management. The reproduction right gives authors the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit direct, indirect, temporary or permanent reproduction by any means and in any form, in whole or in part. Similar rights are provided for performers of fixations, for record producers, film makers and broadcasters of fixations of their broadcasts. The communication right requires authors to be provided with the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any communication to the public of originals and copies of their works, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that member of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them. Similar rights are also provided for the aforementioned categories of right holders. Authors are granted the exclusive right of distribution to the public of their works or copies thereof. This right is exhausted where the first sale or first other transfer of ownership in the Community of a copy is made by the right holder or with his consent.
The Directive lays down a number of exceptions to the right of reproduction and the right of communication. A mandatory exception to the right of reproduction is introduced in respect of certain temporary acts of reproduction which are integral to a technological process, the purpose of which is to enable the lawful use or transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary of a work or other subject-matter and which has no separate economic significance. The Directive also makes provision for other non-mandatory exceptions to the rights of reproduction or communication. These are optional and particularly concern the "public" domain. For three of these exceptions - reprography, private use and broadcasts made by social institutions - the right holders are to receive fair compensation.
Furthermore, the Directive provides for legal protection of technological measures and in more particular, it requires Member States to provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services for the circumvention of any effective technological measures. It also provides for the protection of rights-management information. Member States are obliged to provide for legal protection against any person knowingly performing without authority any of the following acts: the removal or alteration of any electronic rights-management information; the distribution, broadcasting, communication or making available to the public of works or other protected subject matter from which electronic rights-management information has been removed.
III. News challenges for copyright in the knowledge economy
Internet and digitisation technologies are opening up new possibilities for the distribution on creative content online. Consumers are thus enabled to access creative content online at any place in the EU internal market. The availability of creative content can be a key driver in the take-up of new technologies, such as broadband Internet, digital television and mobile communication.
New regulative initiatives are required, however, in this new environment, since obstacles still stand in the way of free movement of creative people, cultural activities and of the digital distribution of products and services, and since illegal downloads on a large scale can jeopardize the development of an economically viable single market for digital content. The new millennium has seen the spectacular rise, both in popularity and in performance, of online business models offering vast amounts of copyrighted content (music, video, software, images and even books).
The European Digital Agenda presented by the Commission President Barroso in September 2009 set the objective of creating in Europe a modern, pro-competitive and consumer friendly legal framework for a genuine single market for creative content online. This requires creating a favourable environment for creators and right holders by ensuring appropriate remuneration for their creative works, encouraging the provision of attractive legal offers to consumers with transparent pricing and terms of use and promoting a level playing field for new business models and innovative solutions for the distribution of creative content.
As a prerequisite for any future action of the EU, the evolution of technology and content markets should be taken into account. Today, there is a co-existence of two types of content, i.e. professionally produced content and user-created content. So, a new framework is needed to guarantee freedom of expression and an appropriate remuneration for professional creators, who play an essential role for cultural diversity. Furthermore, traditional practices for licensing rights are not always adapted for digital distribution, as new actors and new roles are brought into the value chain and previously separate services are converging and thus change conditions for the distribution of digital content.
The biggest challenges with regard to online licensing are caused by the online dissemination of music, which is characterised by multiple layers of ownership. Rights of authors are administered by authors’ societies and music publishers, while rights performers and record producers are related rights administered by collective rights management organisations (CMOs). In the digital distribution of music two sets of rights have to be cleared, the right to reproduction and communication to the public. A certain difficulty is that public performance of music works is licensed on a national basis.
Another issue concerns the online distribution of literary works and e-books. The mass digitization of out-of-print books or orphan books creates insurmountable problems with regard to licensing, since the owner of the digital rights is unknown or is difficult to locate. In the audiovisual sector there are problems concerning the clearance of rights and particularly, the new video-on-demand (VOD) services, as statutory and contractual provisions concerning release windows for VOD may act as a barrier to the availability of digital content across borders.
It is notable that problems in the digital market are created despite the absence of technical barriers to the circulation of content online, due to territorial licensing, which is prevalent with respect to performance rights in some sectors in Europe, mainly music. Territorial restrictions are the result of commercial decisions by right holders and providers of audiovisual services.
Possible actions on EU level to address the challenges in the digital market include the following :
1. Extended collective licensing
This is one of the options proposed to tackle with the issue of orphan works and also out-of-print works . In this system, a rights manager is deemed to represent “outsiders” – right holders not formally members of the clearing system – in respect of certain forms of digitisation and online usage could create easier access to creative content for consumers. However, it is required that orphan works could only be included in such a scheme after a diligent search has confirmed their orphan status.
The High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries adopted a Final report on Digital Preservation, Orphan Works and out-of-print works and a memorandum of understanding on orphan works, which contains a set of guidelines on diligent search for right holders and general principles concerning databases of orphan works and rights clearance mechanisms.
2. Further harmonisation of copyright laws in Europe.
The regulations of Directive 2001/29 harmonised the exclusive rights, but without providing clear boundaries for those rights by means of uniform exceptions. The harmonisation of the different and optional limitations and exceptions would create more certainty for consumers about their rights.
3. Internet licensing
Commercial users’ access to diverse creative content on a multi-territory basis with legal certainty and fair tariffs would be beneficial for the development of online services. The objective is to simplify the cross-border management of rights for online uses, such as online music services (e.g., iTunes) and video services (e.g. user generated services on YouTube) and on-demand TV programmes as well as film services.
Possible solutions: a) consolidation of the digital right of reproduction and the digital performance right (making available right) in a unitary licence, b) creating a “one-stop shop”, which implies the re-aggregating of manifold layers of different rights and right holders that are contained in a particular work or sound recording and integrating them into a single licence, c) freely accessible ownership and licence information on world repertoire would ease the operation of multi-territory and multi-repertoire licensing and thus help overcome market fragmentation.
A different approach would be the introduction of alternative forms of remuneration, alongside the copyright licences given to operators of legal services. Accordingly, ISPs would owe right holders a form of compensation for mass reproductions and dissemination of copyright protected works undertaken by their customers and would concern only unauthorised file-sharing and reproductions.
4. Protection of right holders
New media offer right holders the opportunity for disseminating their works across different platforms and to a larger audience. Easier access to creative content will have to be combined with adequate protection of right holders. This would include certain options: a) an extended or mandatory collective management system for the administration of the making available right and the right to remuneration, b) measures for the governance and transparency of collective rights management organisations, so that the interests of creators are administered in the most efficient manner, c) more collaboration with ISPs and other companies providing access technologies, and introduction of new business models based on access subscription rather than payment fro every single work, together with advertising-supported or feels-like-free services, and d) financial incentives for online multi-territory offers of audiovisual works.
5. Limitations and exceptions
Certain questions arise with regard to possible copyright limitations and exceptions .
Firstly, it is considered to amend the existing regime concerning the production of digital copies of materials held in libraries’ collection for preservation purposes and the electronic dissemination of these copies to users . Currently, libraries and archives do not enjoy a blanket exception to digitise their collections and thus, such act requires prior authorisation from the right holders. Libraries argue that the system of prior authorisation entails considerable transactional burdens, while publishers and collecting societies do not see any justification to broaden the current exceptions on preservation and making available for libraries and archives. The EU Commission aims at adopting a sustainable system of prior authorisation for library initiatives and a cost efficient rights clearance system.
Teaching, learning and research in the modern information society acquires international and cross-border dimensions, as access and use of information is not limited to physical space. Problems arise in this area with regard to licensing agreements for the publishing of digital research material. Libraries and universities assert that it would be more practical to have one central organisation to grant a wide range of online rights with respect to digital material. They also call for mandatory teaching and research exceptions .
As for copyright exceptions for persons with disabilities, a degree of legal uncertainty remains, as the existing exceptions are not fully harmonised and most importantly, the cross-border transfer of the already limited supply of material is hampered by the territorial limitation of exceptions under national laws. To export a converted work to another country, an organisation needs to buy the rights in the destination country. The EU Commission undertakes to encourage publishers to make more works in accessible formats available to disabled persons. TPMs should prevent the conversion of legally acquired works into accessible formats. And also, contractual licensing should respect statutory exceptions for persons with disabilities including visually impaired persons .
Finally, no consensus exists as far as user-created content (UCC) is concerned . Namely, Internet users are able to produce and share text, video and pictures with application of Web 2.0, such as blogs, podcasts, wiki, file or video sharing, thus becoming creators of content, while occasionally other copyright-protected material is used as a basis. In the Green Paper it is ascertained that the Directive 2001/29 does not include any exception that would allow the use of existing copyrighted works fro creating new or derivative works. It was further examined if a new exception would be necessary to make available “creative, transformative or derivate works”. Such an exception would need the amendment of the Directive and it supported that it would favour innovative uses of works and stimulate the production of added value .
After consultation on this issue, it has been considered that it is too early to regulate UCC, as the scope of UCC is still uncertain and it is not clear whether amateurs and professionals should benefit from special rules on UCC or how such rules would relate to existing limitations .
Τρίτη 25 Μαΐου 2010
WikiAI 2010 -- Call for Participation AAAI-2010 Workshop on Collaboratively-built Knowledge Sources and Artificial Intelligence
WikiAI 2010 -- Call for Participation
AAAI-2010 Workshop on Collaboratively-built Knowledge Sources and Artificial Intelligence
Atlanta, Georgia USA, July 11th 2010, in conjunction with AAAI 2010
________________________________________________________________
The goal of this workshop is to foster the research and dissemination of ideas on the mutually beneficial interaction between repositories of user-contributed knowledge and AI.
Until recently, the AI and in particular the NLP community have relied on resources built manually by experts in specific areas (in particular linguists, philosophers, cognitive linguists). User contributed knowledge has opened up a new perspective, in that it captures the kind of knowledge and organization that arises naturally out of the consensus of the masses, and as such represents better our collective knowledge. The outcome is a multi-faceted and extremely rich source of information, revealed through embedded annotations and structural information.
The first such collaboratively developed repository of information to be extensively used in AI and NLP was Wikipedia. Its usefulness was demonstrated through its contributions to a wide range of tasks: text categorization, clustering, word sense disambiguation, information retrieval, information extraction, question answering. The following bibliographies include relevant papers published at established conferences in the area of NLP and AI (ACL, EACL, NAACL, EMNLP, AAAI, SIGIR, IUI and other venues):
Wikipedia in Academic Studies
Wikipedia as an Academic Source
Wiki Research Bibliography
In recent years, more and more resources and collaborative endeavours have started to be incorporated and exploited as knowledge repositories for various tasks. Tags associated with images in Flickr, question-answer collections in Yahoo! Answers are a few examples of such information sources. Amazon's Mechanical Turk gives researchers access to "human computation" power, and is being used more and more as a solution to the difficult problems of large scale evaluations and data annotation, both crucial for the continuous development of the AI and NLP fields.
The workshop is a successor to the ones organized at AAAI 2008 entitled "Wikipedia and Artificial Intelligence: An Evolving Synergy" (WikiAI 08) and at IJCAI 2009 entitled "User contributed knowledge and Artificial Intelligence: An Evolving Synergy" (WikiAI09). We follow the trend started in 2009 of keeping the scope of the workshop broad, to include a variety of user-contributed sources of knowledge: Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wiki Answers, Yahoo! Answers, Flickr, Freebase, Amazon's Mechanical Turk, blogs, and more.
Program:
9:00 - 9:15 Opening remarks
9:15 - 10:15 Invited talk: Treating Expert Knowledge as Common Sense
Henry Lieberman
10:15 - 10:45 Coffee break
10:45 - 11:15 Mixed-Initiative, Entity-Centric Data Aggregation using Assistopedia
Matthew Michelson, Sofus Macskassy, Steve Minton
11:15 - 11:45 Constructing Folksonomies by Integrating Structured Metadata with Relational Clustering
Anon Plangprasopchok, Kristina Lerman, Lise Getoor
11:45 - 12:15 Bridging Common Sense Knowledge Bases with Analogy by Graph Similarity
Yen-ling Kuo, Jane Yung-jen Hsu
12:15 - 13:30 Lunch break
13:30 - 14:30 Invited talk: Can We (and Should We) Make Formal Sense of General Knowledge Expressed in Ordinary Language?
Lenhart Schubert
14:30 - 15:00 Learning to Extract Quality Discourse in Online Communities
Michael Brennan, Stacey Wrazien, Rachel Greenstadt
15:00 - 15:15 Open Mind Common Sense: Crowd-sourcing for Common Sense
Catherine Havasi, Robert Speer, Kenneth Arnold, Henry Lieberman, Jason Alonso, Jesse Moeller
15:15 - 15:45 Coffee break and demo
15:45 - 16:15 Learning from the Web: Extracting General World Knowledge from Noisy Text
Jonathan Gordon, Benjamin Van Durme, Lenhart Schubert
16:15 - 16:45 Reducing the Dimensionality of Data Streams Using Common Sense
Catherine Havasi, Jason Alonso, Robert Speer
16:45 - 17:15 Approaches for Enriching Wikipedia
Zareen Syed, Tim Finin
17:15 - 17:35 Aligning WordNet Synsets and Wikipedia Articles
Samuel Fernando, Mark Stevenson
17:35 - 18:00 Free discussions and closing remarks
________________________________________________________________
Call For Papers
AI and NLP have the potential to both exploit and dig deeper in the mines of collective knowledge, and to help build them, by providing tools for helping generate more, better and consistent content. As with the previous events, we believe work in this area should be encouraged, followed and popularized, to promote the synergy between repositories of user-contributed knowledge and research in Artificial Intelligence.
The workshop is intended to be highly interdisciplinary. We encourage participation of researchers from different perspectives, including (but not limited to) machine learning, computational linguistics, information retrieval, information extraction, question answering, knowledge representation, human computer interaction and others. We also encourage participation of researchers from other areas who might benefit from the use of large bodies of machine-readable knowledge.
An upcoming special issue of the Artificial Intelligence Journal will be devoted to the topic of Artificial Intelligence, Wikipedia, and Semi-Structured Resources.
Topics
Topics covered by this workshop include, but are not limited to:
Using user-contributed knowledge as a source of training data for AI tasks (both supervised and unsupervised)
Automatic methods for improving the quality of user contributions
Modeling tasks for human computation
Integrating different resources (e.g. Wikipedia and WN/Cyc/other ontologies)
Extracting annotated data from user contributions
Enriching user contributions with new types of structural information
User-contributed knowledge and the Semantic Web/Web 2.0
Automatic extraction and use of cross-lingual information
Computerized use of satellite Wiki projects such as Wiktionary, Wikibooks or Wikispecies
Human computation like Amazon Mechanical Turk to help AI tasks
Data mining on collaboratively-contributed resources
Innovative graph algorithms exploiting collaborative resources
Word Sense Disambiguation with Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc.
For additional information:
http://hal.di.uniroma1.it/WikiAI-10/index.php/AAAI-2010_Workshop_on_Collaboratively-built_Knowledge_Sources_and_Artificial_Intelligence
AAAI-2010 Workshop on Collaboratively-built Knowledge Sources and Artificial Intelligence
Atlanta, Georgia USA, July 11th 2010, in conjunction with AAAI 2010
________________________________________________________________
The goal of this workshop is to foster the research and dissemination of ideas on the mutually beneficial interaction between repositories of user-contributed knowledge and AI.
Until recently, the AI and in particular the NLP community have relied on resources built manually by experts in specific areas (in particular linguists, philosophers, cognitive linguists). User contributed knowledge has opened up a new perspective, in that it captures the kind of knowledge and organization that arises naturally out of the consensus of the masses, and as such represents better our collective knowledge. The outcome is a multi-faceted and extremely rich source of information, revealed through embedded annotations and structural information.
The first such collaboratively developed repository of information to be extensively used in AI and NLP was Wikipedia. Its usefulness was demonstrated through its contributions to a wide range of tasks: text categorization, clustering, word sense disambiguation, information retrieval, information extraction, question answering. The following bibliographies include relevant papers published at established conferences in the area of NLP and AI (ACL, EACL, NAACL, EMNLP, AAAI, SIGIR, IUI and other venues):
Wikipedia in Academic Studies
Wikipedia as an Academic Source
Wiki Research Bibliography
In recent years, more and more resources and collaborative endeavours have started to be incorporated and exploited as knowledge repositories for various tasks. Tags associated with images in Flickr, question-answer collections in Yahoo! Answers are a few examples of such information sources. Amazon's Mechanical Turk gives researchers access to "human computation" power, and is being used more and more as a solution to the difficult problems of large scale evaluations and data annotation, both crucial for the continuous development of the AI and NLP fields.
The workshop is a successor to the ones organized at AAAI 2008 entitled "Wikipedia and Artificial Intelligence: An Evolving Synergy" (WikiAI 08) and at IJCAI 2009 entitled "User contributed knowledge and Artificial Intelligence: An Evolving Synergy" (WikiAI09). We follow the trend started in 2009 of keeping the scope of the workshop broad, to include a variety of user-contributed sources of knowledge: Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wiki Answers, Yahoo! Answers, Flickr, Freebase, Amazon's Mechanical Turk, blogs, and more.
Program:
9:00 - 9:15 Opening remarks
9:15 - 10:15 Invited talk: Treating Expert Knowledge as Common Sense
Henry Lieberman
10:15 - 10:45 Coffee break
10:45 - 11:15 Mixed-Initiative, Entity-Centric Data Aggregation using Assistopedia
Matthew Michelson, Sofus Macskassy, Steve Minton
11:15 - 11:45 Constructing Folksonomies by Integrating Structured Metadata with Relational Clustering
Anon Plangprasopchok, Kristina Lerman, Lise Getoor
11:45 - 12:15 Bridging Common Sense Knowledge Bases with Analogy by Graph Similarity
Yen-ling Kuo, Jane Yung-jen Hsu
12:15 - 13:30 Lunch break
13:30 - 14:30 Invited talk: Can We (and Should We) Make Formal Sense of General Knowledge Expressed in Ordinary Language?
Lenhart Schubert
14:30 - 15:00 Learning to Extract Quality Discourse in Online Communities
Michael Brennan, Stacey Wrazien, Rachel Greenstadt
15:00 - 15:15 Open Mind Common Sense: Crowd-sourcing for Common Sense
Catherine Havasi, Robert Speer, Kenneth Arnold, Henry Lieberman, Jason Alonso, Jesse Moeller
15:15 - 15:45 Coffee break and demo
15:45 - 16:15 Learning from the Web: Extracting General World Knowledge from Noisy Text
Jonathan Gordon, Benjamin Van Durme, Lenhart Schubert
16:15 - 16:45 Reducing the Dimensionality of Data Streams Using Common Sense
Catherine Havasi, Jason Alonso, Robert Speer
16:45 - 17:15 Approaches for Enriching Wikipedia
Zareen Syed, Tim Finin
17:15 - 17:35 Aligning WordNet Synsets and Wikipedia Articles
Samuel Fernando, Mark Stevenson
17:35 - 18:00 Free discussions and closing remarks
________________________________________________________________
Call For Papers
AI and NLP have the potential to both exploit and dig deeper in the mines of collective knowledge, and to help build them, by providing tools for helping generate more, better and consistent content. As with the previous events, we believe work in this area should be encouraged, followed and popularized, to promote the synergy between repositories of user-contributed knowledge and research in Artificial Intelligence.
The workshop is intended to be highly interdisciplinary. We encourage participation of researchers from different perspectives, including (but not limited to) machine learning, computational linguistics, information retrieval, information extraction, question answering, knowledge representation, human computer interaction and others. We also encourage participation of researchers from other areas who might benefit from the use of large bodies of machine-readable knowledge.
An upcoming special issue of the Artificial Intelligence Journal will be devoted to the topic of Artificial Intelligence, Wikipedia, and Semi-Structured Resources.
Topics
Topics covered by this workshop include, but are not limited to:
Using user-contributed knowledge as a source of training data for AI tasks (both supervised and unsupervised)
Automatic methods for improving the quality of user contributions
Modeling tasks for human computation
Integrating different resources (e.g. Wikipedia and WN/Cyc/other ontologies)
Extracting annotated data from user contributions
Enriching user contributions with new types of structural information
User-contributed knowledge and the Semantic Web/Web 2.0
Automatic extraction and use of cross-lingual information
Computerized use of satellite Wiki projects such as Wiktionary, Wikibooks or Wikispecies
Human computation like Amazon Mechanical Turk to help AI tasks
Data mining on collaboratively-contributed resources
Innovative graph algorithms exploiting collaborative resources
Word Sense Disambiguation with Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc.
For additional information:
http://hal.di.uniroma1.it/WikiAI-10/index.php/AAAI-2010_Workshop_on_Collaboratively-built_Knowledge_Sources_and_Artificial_Intelligence
Δευτέρα 24 Μαΐου 2010
Νέα υπηρεσία ασφαλούς αναζήτησης από την Google
H Google δίνει τη δική της απάντηση στη λογοκρισία και την παρακολούθηση των χρηστών του διαδικτύου από τις κυβερνήσεις προσφέροντας πλέον τη δυνατότητα κρυπτογραφημένης αναζήτησης.
Οι χρήστες θα μπορούν πλέον να κάνουν τις αναζητήσεις τους στο διαδίκτυο χωρίς να αφήνουν ίχνη και χωρίς οι ειδικές υπηρεσίες κυβερνήσεων να μπορούν να ανακαλύψουν το τι ψάχνουν οι πολίτες εντοπίζοντας τόσο τους ίδιους όσο και τους ιστότοπους που επισκέπτονται.
Η υπηρεσία η οποία βρίσκεται ακόμη σε δοκιμαστική -BETA- περίοδο είναι εξαιρετικά απλή αφού οι χρήστες δεν έχουν παρά να ξεκινούν τις αναζητήσεις τους από τη διεύθυνση https://www.google.com και ξεκίνησε να λειτουργεί από την περασμένη Παρασκευή στις ΗΠΑ και από τις αρχές της εβδομάδας, σταδιακά, στο υπόλοιπο κόσμο.
Οι ασφαλείς αναζητήσεις μέσω Google στηρίζεται στην τεχνολογία SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) η οποία χρησιμοποιείται σε τραπεζικές συναλλαγές μέσω διαδικτύου καθώς και στους ιστότοπους ηλεκτρονικού εμπορίου. Οπως ανακοινώθηκε από την εταιρεία, η ίδια τεχνολογία θα χρησιμοποιηθεί σύντομα και για τις υπόλοιπες υπηρεσίες της Google.
Πηγή: Ελευθεροτυπία
Οι χρήστες θα μπορούν πλέον να κάνουν τις αναζητήσεις τους στο διαδίκτυο χωρίς να αφήνουν ίχνη και χωρίς οι ειδικές υπηρεσίες κυβερνήσεων να μπορούν να ανακαλύψουν το τι ψάχνουν οι πολίτες εντοπίζοντας τόσο τους ίδιους όσο και τους ιστότοπους που επισκέπτονται.
Η υπηρεσία η οποία βρίσκεται ακόμη σε δοκιμαστική -BETA- περίοδο είναι εξαιρετικά απλή αφού οι χρήστες δεν έχουν παρά να ξεκινούν τις αναζητήσεις τους από τη διεύθυνση https://www.google.com και ξεκίνησε να λειτουργεί από την περασμένη Παρασκευή στις ΗΠΑ και από τις αρχές της εβδομάδας, σταδιακά, στο υπόλοιπο κόσμο.
Οι ασφαλείς αναζητήσεις μέσω Google στηρίζεται στην τεχνολογία SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) η οποία χρησιμοποιείται σε τραπεζικές συναλλαγές μέσω διαδικτύου καθώς και στους ιστότοπους ηλεκτρονικού εμπορίου. Οπως ανακοινώθηκε από την εταιρεία, η ίδια τεχνολογία θα χρησιμοποιηθεί σύντομα και για τις υπόλοιπες υπηρεσίες της Google.
Πηγή: Ελευθεροτυπία
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