Melbourne Law School - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 19
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Inoculating Law Schools Against Bad Metrics
    Weatherall, KG ; Giblin, R ; Bowrey, K (Elsevier BV, 2021-01-25)
    Law schools and legal scholars are not immune to the expanding use of quantitative metrics to assess the research of universities and of scholars working within universities. Metrics include grant and research income, the number of articles produced in journals on ranked lists, and citations (by scholars, and perhaps courts). The use of metrics also threatens to expand to measure other kinds of desired activity, with various metrics suggested to measure the impact of research beyond scholarly circles, and even more amorphous qualities such as leadership and mentoring. Many working legal scholars are (understandably) unaware of the full range of ways in which metrics are calculated, and how they are used in universities and in research policy. What is more, despite a large and growing research policy literature and perhaps an instinct that metrics are inherently flawed as a means to recognise research 'performance', few researchers are aware of the full scope of known and proven weaknesses and biases in research metrics. In this contribution to a forthcoming book, we describe the use of metrics in university and research and higher education policy (with a focus on Australia). We review the literature on the many flaws and biases inherent in metrics used, with a focus on legal scholarship. Most importantly, we also want to promote a conversation about what it might look like for academic researchers working in law faculties or on legal issues to assess research contributions that promote the shared values of the legal academy. Our focus is on two areas of research assessment: research impact and the bucket of concepts variously described as mentorship, supervision, and/or leadership. We reframe the questions that researchers and assessors should ask: not, “what impact has this research had”, but “what have you done about your discovery?”; not “what is your evidence of research leadership”, but, “what have you done to enable the research and careers of others?”. We also present concrete suggestions for how working legal scholars and faculties can shift the focus of research assessment towards the values of the legal academy. The chapter incorporates some of our thinking on developing meaningful legal research careers - something that will hopefully be of interest to any working legal scholar.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    We Need to Talk About Aereo: Copyright-Avoiding Business Models, Cloud Storage and a Principled Reading of the 'Transmit' Clause
    Giblin, R ; Ginsburg, JC (Columbia University School of Law, 2014)
    Businesses are exploiting perceived gaps in the structure of copyright rights by ingeniously designing their technologies to fulfill demand for individual access through a structure of personalized copies and playback engineered in ways intended to implicate neither the public performance nor the reproduction rights. The archetypal example is Aereo Inc.’s system for providing online access to broadcast television. Aereo allows users to tune into individual antennae to stream TV to themselves, near-live, online. Aereo’s activities look a lot like the retransmission of broadcast signals, an activity which Congress has made very clear must result in remuneration for rightholders. However, Aereo’s careful design, which assigns each user her own antenna to generate an individual transmission copy from which she can access only the signals she could freely pick up from her own rooftop, means that it can also be argued that Aereo is simply enabling consumers to engage in legitimate non-remunerable uses. If the legality of this design is upheld by the Supreme Court this term, Aereo and subsequent comers will be able to offer consumers on-demand access to content, in a way that competes with licensed services, without any obligation to remunerate the rightholder. The implications of these business models are significant: in the case of audio and audiovisual works, for example, the on-demand access market may soon exceed the value of the retention copy-based market. When some participants are licensed but their competitors are not, the imbalance may provoke licensees to revise or forego their agreements. More generally, opportunistic engineering choices that obscure some courts’ perceptions of the impact on the on-demand access market risk removing evolving markets from the scope of copyright owners’ exclusive rights. Businesses that free-ride on copyrighted works also obtain an unfair competitive advantage over copyright licensees. The authors of this paper approach copyright from very different perspectives, but are united in the view that it is undesirable for legal outcomes to depend so heavily on technical design. This article addresses the U.S. caselaw that encouraged businesses such as Aereo to design technologies that could rival or even displace copyright-remunerative modes of making works of authorship available to the public. We consider the implications for copyright owners were Aereo and its supporters to succeed in their reading of the Copyright Act, as well as the implications for other technologies, particularly those involving “cloud” storage, were the broadcasters to prevail. Finally, each author offers her own analysis to demonstrate how it is possible to read the U.S. Copyright Act’s transmit clause in a way that does not make technological design determine the outcome. Either one of our readings, we argue, enables copyright’s exclusive rights to remain effective without discouraging technological innovation.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    What Happens When Books Enter the Public Domain? Testing Copyright’s Underuse Hypothesis Across Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada
    Flynn, J ; Giblin, R ; Petitjean, F (Melbourne Law School, 2019)
    A key justification for copyright term extension has been that exclusive rights encourage publishers to make older works available (and that, without them, works will be ‘underused’). We empirically test this hypothesis by investigating the availability of ebooks to public libraries across Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada. We find that titles are actually less available where they are under copyright, that competition apparently does not deter commercial publishers from investing in older works, and that the existence of exclusive rights is not enough to trigger investment in works with low commercial demand. Further, works are priced much higher when under copyright than when in the public domain. In sum, simply extending copyrights results in higher prices and worse access. We argue that nations should explore alternative ways of allocating copyrights to better achieve copyright’s fundamental aims of rewarding authors and promoting widespread access to knowledge and culture.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Submission to the Select Committee on Job Security
    McDonald, P ; Marston, G ; Hardy, T ; Charlesworth, S ; Mayes, R ; Williams, P ( 2021)
    Work is a central human activity, critical to social cohesion and social identity, future economic prospects and the fulfilment of human potential. Yet over successive decades, paid employment has become more precarious and insecure. Insecure work includes fixed-term contracts; seasonal work; marginal part-time, casual and on-call work; labour hire and temporary agency work; and ‘dependent’ or ‘disguised’ self employment. .
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Strengthening Australia’s cybersecurity regulations and incentives: Response to the Department of Home Affairs Discussion Paper
    Achrekar, A ; Ahmad, A ; Chang, S ; Cohney, S ; Dreyfus, S ; Leckie, C ; Murray, T ; Paterson, J ; Pham, VT ; Sonenberg, E ( 2021)
    The development of the regulatory and incentives framework is a key opportunity to align Australian enterprises’ cybersecurity practice with latest research, particularly on consumer protections, and emerging cyber threats and security challenges. The Australian Government has an essential role in establishing incentives to encourage best practice and consequences to combat poor practice. It will be increasingly important for government at all levels to act as a role model, by following best practice in the conduct of its public business.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Inclusion of Combatants in Constitution-Building
    Dziedzic, A ; Ramirez, SM (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and the Constitutional Transformation Network, 2020)
    Where constitution-building occurs in a conflict-affected context, the inclusion and participation of combatants in constitution-building processes raises challenging and distinctive issues. In such contexts, constitution-building is likely to overlap with a wider peace process that comprises the negotiation of peace agreements, and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Constitutional beginnings: Making and amending constitutions
    Dziedzic, A (International IDEA and the Constitution Transformation Network, 2018)
    When considering substantive changes to a written constitution, constitution-makers must decide whether to make an entirely new constitution or amend the existing constitution. The distinction between making a new constitution and amending an existing constitution is not always clear cut. Much depends on the criteria used to make the distinction.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Consultation, Deliberation and Decision-Making: Direct Public Participation in Constitution-Building
    Dziedzic, A (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and the Constitution Transformation Network, 2020)
    Direct public participation is now regarded as an essential part of a constitution-building process. In the 21st century, almost every exercise in constitutional reform has involved an opportunity for members of the public to engage in the process. The right to participate in public affairs is internationally recognized and a consensus has emerged that public participation is good practice in constitution-building.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Implementing Federalism
    Dziedzic, A (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and the Constitution Transformation Network, 2018)
    More than 25 countries around the world operate as a federation of some kind. Many more devolve power in other ways, across the country or in particular regions with special autonomy. Some of the older federations are well-established; India, Malaysia and Pakistan are examples. Others are much more recent, however. Many new constitutions provide for federation or some form of devolution. In Asia and the Pacific, for example, the new Constitution of Nepal establishes a federation, and federalism is under consideration in Myanmar, the Philippines and Solomon Islands.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Review of domestic violence deaths involving non-fatal strangulation in Queensland.
    Sharman, L ; Douglas, H ; Fitzgerald, R (The University of Melbourne and The University of Queensland, 2021-11-01)
    This report draws on files held by the Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Unit in the Coroners Court of Queensland to examine 20 intimate partner homicides where strangulation was either present in the relationship before death, was the cause of death, or both. All deaths occurred between 2011 and 2020, before and after the introduction of the non-fatal strangulation legislation (Queensland Criminal Code Qld, s. 315A) in 2016. Research for this report was conducted on closed coronial investigations only and is not necessarily reflective of all deaths of this nature within the time period.