Policy implications of technology for detecting P2P and copyright violations

The effectiveness of many proposed policies regarding both online copyright protection and network neutrality depend on the extent to which it is technically possible to detect peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), the transfer of copyrighted files, or both. There are many detection approaches, some performed primarily by network operators and some by application-layer agents. This paper describes capabilities, limitations, privacy issues, and policy implications of detection technologies and their countermeasures, in part through quantitative analysis of empirical data. Different approaches are better for different purposes. Network operators are well-positioned to estimate how widespread copyright violations are, but application-layer detection from outside entities has important advantages when the purpose is punishment. Detection is also imperfect, so policies should require more transparency regarding how it is done than we see today. It is shown that, although network operators may not detect every transfer, and they typically miss more video than audio, they can identify most individuals who share copyrighted files via P2P after several weeks of monitoring provided that traffic is unencrypted, which is useful for some purposes. However, it is also shown that encryption is already in use, and it effectively prevents network operators from detecting transfers of copyrighted content. Thus, if network operators are held responsible for monitoring illegal file sharing, there is a tension between using detection to identify violators of copyright law for punishment, which may motivate even greater use of encryption, and using detection for other purposes such as creating fair compensation schemes for copyright-holders, warning users that they may be violating copyright law, or allocating network resources. Alternatively, there are forms of detection that are not evaded through encryption, and application-layer agents rather than network operators are primarily responsible for these. These copyright policy issues are intertwined with network neutrality policy in subtle ways. Network neutrality rules do not protect illegal transfers of copyrighted content, but if network operators are responsible for enforcement (as in “graduated response”) then regulators must determine when it is reasonable to terminate or degrade service based on allegations of copyright violation given the limitations of detection technology to prove those allegations. Allegations of copyright violation should be considered invalid unless they are accompanied with information about how detection was performed and an opportunity for rebuttal. Such transparency has been routinely lacking in both laws and industry agreements.     

Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales

The growth of Internet-based piracy has led to a wide-ranging debate over how copyright policy should be enforced in the digital era. In this paper we analyze the impact of the US government's shutdown of a major piracy site – Megaupload.com – on digital sales and rentals of movies.Exploiting cross-country variation in pre-shutdown usage of Megaupload, we find that the shutdown of Megaupload and its associated sites caused digital revenues for three major motion picture studios to increase by 6.5–8.5%. Our results suggest that some consumers will turn to legal channels when a major filesharing site is shut down, and by extension that illegal filesharing displaces digital movie sales.     

我国上市公司信息披露违规的动因实证研究

本文以2001—2005年间因为信息披露违规行为被监管层处罚的188家A股上市公司及其188家配对公司为研究对象,运用条件Logistic回归模型对公司信息披露违规的动因进行实证研究,结果表明:大股东掏空程度、内幕交易程度以及盈余管理程度与公司信息披露违规行为显著正相关。本文丰富了信息披露研究的内容,为监管层加强监管、引导和规范上市公司信息披露行为提供了经验证据。     

Australian consumer attitudes to health claim – food product compatibility for functional foods

This study with Australian consumers investigated how appealing different health claims combined with particular food carriers were to Australian consumers, and compared the results of a similar study with Dutch consumers. 149 shoppers considered up to 30 different food concepts, rating how ‘attractive’, ‘believable’, and ‘new and different’ they found each concept and their ‘intention to try’. Each variable was significantly related to intention to try (p < 0.001) and together explained 56% of the intention score. Claims and carriers independently had a significant effect on ratings of attractiveness and intention to try but, unlike the Dutch study, the carrier was a more important predictor of intention to purchase than the claim. Implications for regulation of health claims for food are discussed.     

Evaluating Employer Sanctions: Farm Labor Contractor Experience

This article examines two decades of experience enforcing a federal employer sanctions law on farm labor contractors (FLCs) who knowingly hire illegal aliens. Enforcement experience indicates that employer sanctions laws have had little effect on the number of illegal aliens hired by FLCs; indeed, FLC activity has expanded and the proportion of illegal alien workers hired appears to have increased.     

Pirates and Samaritans: A decade of measurements on peer production and their implications for net neutrality and copyright

This study traces the evolution of commons-based peer production by a measurement-based analysis of case studies and discusses the impact of peer production on net neutrality and copyright law. The measurements include websites such as suprnova.org, youtube.com, and facebook.com, and the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems Kazaa, Bittorrent, and Tribler. The measurements show the two sides of peer production, the pirate side with free availability of Hollywood movies on these P2P systems and the Samaritan side exhibited by the quick joining of 400,000+ people in a community to organize protests against events in Burma. The telecommunications and content industry are disrupted by this way of peer production. As a consequence, revenues of both industries are likely to suffer in the coming years. On the other hand, innovative P2P systems could win the battle on merit over classical distribution technologies. As a result, a continuation is expected of both legal actions against P2P and possible blocking actions of P2P traffic, violating net neutrality. It is argued that this hinders innovation and causes a large discrepancy between legal and user perspectives. A reform of copyright laws is clearly needed, otherwise they will be unenforceable around 2010.     

Managerial response to constitutional constraints on shareholder power

Research summary: We examine whether top managers engage in misconduct, such as illegal insider trading, illegal stock option backdating, bribery, and financial manipulation, in response to the presence, or absence, of governance provisions that impose constitutional constraints on shareholder power. Within the agency framework, shareholders typically oppose governance provisions that limit their power because those provisions could undermine shareholder influence and increase agency costs. However, when shareholders support provisions that constrain their power, managers could respond positively by refraining from self‐interested behavior in the form of managerial misconduct. We find this to be especially true in industries where these governance provisions are particularly relevant to managers and in scenarios where CEOs do not also serve as board chair. Managerial summary: In recent years, shareholders have become central to organizations and the managers who run them. Shareholders and managers establish a rapport with one another, such that the behavior of one affects the behavior of the other. One of the most consequential decisions shareholders can make pertains to the reach of their influence: They can choose to impose strict governance over firms they own or they can allow for constitutional constraints that limit shareholder power. When they act in the mutual interest of managers by allowing such constraints, we find that managers respond in kind by refraining from bad behavior, such as illegal stock options backdating, insider trading, and financial manipulation. This is especially true in industries and scenarios in which shareholder pressure is most relevant to managers. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Collaborative buyer-supplier relationships and downstream information in marketing channels

Research on buyer-supplier relationships has emphasized the importance of collaboration and business networks. We aim to study the effects of downstream information on the collaborative buyer-supplier relationship. Downstream information refers to the information a firm obtains from marketing channels, be they wholesalers, distributors or retailers. The approach allows firms to concentrate their efforts on the most relevant sources of information and not on the whole network. Survey data was gathered from the Dutch potted plant and flower industry to test this hypothesis. Our findings demonstrate that collaborative relationships are contingent on downstream information from both the buying perspective (wholesalers) and from the supplying perspective (producers).     

一种基于块效应强度检测和测量的新型图像质量评价方法

摘译目前,大部分图像压缩标准使用基于块的变换编码,图像压缩过程中会产生各种压缩效应。其中,块效应是降低图像压缩质量的最常见的问题之一。对块效应进行量化的图像质量客观评价方法可有效地降低块效应的发生,同时也可优化整个图像压缩系统,例如,其可以用于图像预处理（检测和有选择地补偿块效应）中。     

Flexible labour market and trade unions: Surprising career paths of Dutch sub-Saharan Africans

Starting from the empirical evidence that minorities are more likely to work on flexible contracts, we investigated the existence of an ethnic gap in flexible contracts between the native Dutch population and sub-Saharan African immigrants between 2006 and 2012. The migrant group is taken as a test case of ‘outsiders’. This study found, quite surprisingly and contrary to what several theories predict, that the expected ethnic gap in job status between the two groups disappeared in the 6 years between 2006 and 2012. Many sub-Saharan Africans successfully transformed their flexible contracts into permanent ones, catching up with the native Dutch by 2012. The analysis of the statutory provisions showed that the workforce numerical composition in the cleaning industry was important for the inclusiveness of sub-Saharan immigrants. This numerical compositional effect was facilitated by the collective agreements negotiated by trade unions, agreements that were extended to temp workers. Sub-Saharan Africans, overrepresented in the cleaning industry, have benefited disproportionally from the settled agreements. We thus conclude that trade unions can improve the inclusion of migrants not only by explicitly focusing on migrant representation but also by targeting sectors with an overrepresentation of migrants.     

“资源劫难”假说的实证检验及政策启示

世界许多资源型国家的发展实践显示，自然禀赋与一些国家或地区的经济增长之间存在显著的负相关关系，由此形成所谓的“资源劫难”假说。从中心-外围论、贸易条件恶化论、荷兰病到资源诅咒论等也均揭示出资源禀赋与经济发展之间的悖论。本文以此现实问题为背景，在分析相关理论的基础上，深入讨论了资源劫难或诅咒的成因，并以中国煤炭资源大省山西为例进行验证，进而提出了相应的对策建议。     

DOES COPYRIGHT ENFORCEMENT ENCOURAGE PIRACY?*

When copyright enforcement is targeted at high‐value buyers such as corporate and government users, the copyright holder charges super‐monopoly prices, thereby encouraging low‐value buyers to switch to inferior pirated copies. We show that enlarging the copyright holder's captive market through more extensive copyright enforcement reduces prices toward the monopoly level, increases sales of legitimate copies and can increase consumer surplus. Therefore, in contrast with the case of more intensive copyright enforcement, more extensive copyright enforcement over some range can increase the incentive to generate intellectual property while also reducing the loss to consumers from monopoly power.     

Border Effects in House Prices

This article estimates the effect of the Dutch–German border on house prices. We argue that the difference between house prices at the border indicates the willingness to pay to stay in a country compared to living across the border. After a change in the tax rules in 2001, migration from the Netherlands to Germany increased substantially and the gradient of Dutch house price towards the German border steepened. Combining a German and Dutch real estate dataset and using different estimation strategies, we find that asking prices of comparable housing drop by about 16% when one crosses the Dutch–German border.     

Linking corporate strategy to capital structure: diversification strategy,type and source of financing

This study examines the relationship between corporate strategy and capital structure, specifically the diversfication and financing strategies of a firm. The results show that equity financing is preferred for related diversification and unrelated diversification is associated with debt financing. Additionally, firms diversifying through acquisitions are more likely to use public sources of financing and those emphasizing internal development of new businesses depend primarily on private sources of financing. Using simultaneous equation estimation, we found a reciprocal relationship between a firm's financial strategy and its corporate diversification strategy. Mode and nature of diversification are also reciprocally interrelated. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Digital piracy: Causes,consequences, and strategic responses

What should copyright holders do about the piracy of digital media? This paper first discusses the causes of piracy, with particular reference to the factors that lead consumers to engage in piracy en masse. Then it explores the consequences of piracy for copyright holders. The final section of the paper builds upon the proceeding sections to look at the different strategic responses copyright holders can adopt to deal with piracy. Given widespread digital piracy in Asia, these insights have particular relevance for the region.     

Information sources used to select different types of management consultancy services

Understanding how professional services are purchased is vital to the success of the firms that provide such services. Although recent research has provided some insights into how consumers purchase professional services, little is known about how organisations buy these services. Our study, using data collected from 253 Australian organisations, describes an important part of the organisational buying process, namely pre-purchase information search. More specifically, we examine the influence of a range of information sources on the choice of a management consultant in the following areas: strategic and economic planning; marketing; human resource management; information technology; production planning and logistics. The results show that information sources related to an organisation's internal network (ie, discussions inside the company, and past dealings with a consulting firm) were by far the most influential information sources in choosing a consultant. Further, the least influential sources were impersonal advertising (ie, advertising in the business press, corporate brochures and professional directories). Only minor differences in the influence of the information sources were found across the various types of consulting assignment.(The authors' names are in alphabetical order.)     

Media diversity and communications policy: Impact of VCRs and satellite TV

Videocassettes and satellite-delivered television programmes are having a profound effect on existing communication policies in the world. Set up to protect local media industries and preserve native cultures, communication policies are being threatened by both legal and illegal uses of the VCR and communication satellite. Because the VCR has not been considered a mass medium and the piracy of broadcast signals is illegal, most nations have not accounted for the impact of foreign films and television programmes flooding their borders. A desire for more media diversity is cited as the prime reason for the popularity of the content carried by these new technologies.     

Illegal activity in the UK halal (sheep) supply chain: Towards greater understanding

Food supply chain theory and practice assumes that the processes involved are legal and value adding. In this paper, using examples from the UK halal (sheep) meat supply chain, we outline a value extracting value chain through a mixed methods qualitative approach consisting of face-to-face-interviews and a documentary research strategy underpinned by Narrative Inquiry. Building on previous theoretical work on Illegal Rural Enterprise, we present a narrative of an individual rogue-farmer, and explore his involvement in the illegal halal (‘smokies’) trade over a fifteen-year period. The paper provides a compelling story that will enable investigators to better understand illegal enterprise from a supply chain perspective and more adequately address the concerns stated in the UK Fraud Act 2006. The paper will be useful to food standards agencies in that furthers our understanding of entrepreneurial practice and morality in the food industry. The results demonstrate that illegal rural enterprise is a multi-faceted concept that requires an understanding of business practices and processes alongside a multi-agency approach to enterprise orientated crime. Our approach suggests that supply chains can be ‘flipped’ in order to understand illegal processes in addition to conventional legal processes.     

How to leverage the impact of R&D on product innovation? The moderating effect of management innovation

Although research and development (R&D) is a key indicator of (technological) innovation, scholars have found mixed results regarding its effect on product innovation and firm performance. In this paper, we claim that variations in R&D effectiveness can be explained by changes in a firm’s social system, in particular in its management innovation. It is still unclear how management innovation influences R&D effectiveness in terms of product innovation. In this study, we address this theoretical and empirical gap in the innovation literature. Our theoretical arguments and findings from a large-scale survey among Dutch firms show that R&D has a decreasingly positive relationship with product innovation, particularly for firms with low levels of management innovation. However, in firms with high levels of management innovation, this relationship becomes more J-shaped, especially in small and medium-sized firms. Our findings also appear to indicate that management innovation may be more important for competitive advantage than just R&D. Overall, our insights reveal that management innovation is a key moderator in explaining firms’ effectiveness in transforming R&D into successful product innovation.     

Value creation by knowledge‐based ecosystems: evidence from a field study

A growing number of research and development‐driven companies are located in knowledge‐based ecosystems. Value creation by these ecosystems draws on the dynamics of single firms (interacting and partnering) as well as the ecosystem at large. Drawing on a field study of a Dutch high‐tech campus, two key sources of value creation are identified: (1) facilitation of the innovation process for individual companies and (2) creation of an innovation community. Furthermore, the coevolution of the ecosystem's business model with firm‐level business models explains why technology‐based firms join, stay in, or leave the ecosystem at a certain point in time. A remarkable finding is that ecosystem managers have to deliberately facilitate exit routes for companies that no longer fit the ecosystem in order to enhance and reinforce its business model. As such, this study suggests a dynamic capability perspective on knowledge‐based ecosystems that need to develop a business model at the ecosystem level to create sufficient innovative capacity and entrepreneurial fitness.