Appropriatio Platonica

Decision-makers and legislatures around the world have recently placed copyright limitations and exceptions on their agenda. The main reference point is the American fair use defence. The policy debates focus on the advantages and disadvantages to the content industries, intermediaries and users. Unfortunately, too often missing from this discussion is the underlying theory of the exceptions. The risk is that a foreign concept will be detached from its origin and transplanted within a different legal setting, without sufficient attention as to how it should be absorbed within the recipient legal body. Theory can fulfil the crucial function of enabling the successful absorption of the transplant. The article strives to redirect us back to the theoretical avenue. It classifies fair use justifications in two categories: those that are internal to copyright law and those external thereto. These justifications should be read against the background of the overall conception of copyright law. The case study at stake is Israeli copyright law. Israel was the first common law country to shift from a British-based, relatively narrow rule of fair dealing defence to the American, open standard of fair use, in its 2007 Copyright Act. However, courts began the shift more than a decade before the legislation, inserting American considerations into the British statutory structure. In so doing, courts relied on a partial, slightly outdated version of fair use, in what I call a judicial snapshot. The result was two decades of incoherent and unstable doctrine. Accordingly, this article warns against the perils of un-theorized transplant.

Previous articleNext article FreeSecond LookComment A Last JudgmentJ. L. HeilbronJ. L. Heilbron Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe Last Judge, or Final Retrospective Reviewer, has written, “By [Leviathan’s] sneezings a light doth shine” (Job 41:18). What He declared of the beast applies as well to the book. Despite some coughs and wheezes, Leviathan and the Air-Pump breathed life into the historical sociology of scientific knowledge. It also invigorated our discipline and helped bring it before a wider public. Although the award to Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer (S4) of the prestigious Erasmus Prize in 2005 may not have “thrust the [history of science] into the center of discussions about what can count as knowledge,” as stated in the award’s citation, it gave the subject a welcome if passing presence among acknowledged bearers and assessors of European culture. For that, S4 deserve thanks as well as congratulations.My assignment is not to praise Leviathan and its authors but to state how I would modify my original review of it if I were writing it freshly now. As a dinosaur contesting my extinction, I answer, “Very little.” My opinion then was favorable, and it still is. I would be hard pressed to explain the cult status the book has achieved, however, except to hazard that not all its admirers have read it. It is a book with not only a thesis but also a close historical analysis: and it takes some attention to see that its central thesis, “Solutions to the problem of knowledge are solutions to the problem of social order,” is a very great extrapolation from the case study offered and does not fit it without qualification.This thesis, or “kind of thing being gestured at,”1 which I attributed in my review to excessive enthusiasm, is, indeed, only a gesture, since it does not specify what sorts of knowledge or order are in question and to what sorts of groups the connection applies. In the case study, Hobbes’s “group,” consisting of exactly one member, holds that “knowledge” is made by axioms and that “order” is government by absolute authority. For Boyle’s group, which identified with the program of the Royal Society of London, natural “knowledge” is made via experiment and “order” consists in the rules of gentlemanly engagement set down in the History of Bishop Spratt. So apparently “problem of knowledge” stands for “method of acquisition,” “social order” for the fundamental constitution of the state (Hobbes) and the bylaws of a coopting group (Boyle); and the test of the connection is whether the method and the order look similar to the historian.A better test might be to inquire whether a big change in method brings in, or is accompanied by, a big change in social order, or vice versa. The persistence and dominance of Laplace’s style of physics across the upheavals of the French Revolution, and the similarity of the practices of classical physicists in Imperial Germany, Parliamentary Britain, Republican France, and Federalist America around 1900, when all four countries were making the same per capita investment in the subject, would make good case studies. In struggling to fit these episodes to the “kind of thing being gestured at,” historians might learn something new: including the discovery that it is not easy to “draw out leviathan” (Job 41:1). This truth is no doubt one reason that, as S4 say in “Up for Air,” their introduction to the 2011 edition of the book, Leviathan has had no sequel.The dinosaur had and has one other criticism. Granting the historical analysis, generalization from the state and acquisition of natural knowledge during the early years of Charles II of England, Scotland, etc., to distant times and places is illegitimate. S4 defend their imperialism in “Up for Air” by another gesture: the extrapolation is justified because they “could not think of particular passages of knowledge making and order making in which [their] principle did not apply” (p. xliii). It demands faith rather than reason to derive reassurance from this sort of authority. Perhaps here we might discern the basis of a cult.Another cultist feature of Leviathan is that it contains the rudiments of a liturgy. I have in mind the invention of the trinity of “material, literary, and social technologies.” This was a brilliant innovation, catchy enough for those who run to read and remember and pregnant with meaning. It could be read benignly, as the means of acquisition, dissemination, and acceptance of natural knowledge, or darkly, as the creation, advertisement, and enforcement of arbitrary belief—or, no doubt, in other ways. Terms of historical analysis, even fuzzy ones, can turn into shibboleths. Would The Structure of Scientific Revolutions have sold in its millions without its peculiar usage of “paradigm” and “normal science”?The lack of further case studies in the style of Leviathan, despite the assertion that, as the laudatio for S4’s Erasmus Prize has it, “modern history of science would be unthinkable without their innovative and pioneering work,” provides further links to Structure. Kuhn’s basic model was the millennium-long accumulation of “anomalies” that prompted the century-long Copernican “Revolution.” It does not fit other cases very well, and Kuhn explicitly avoided trying to impose it on his major historical work on the invention of quantum theory. Perhaps the primary reason for the dearth of plausible instantiations of the scenario of Structure is the nebulousness of its terms. Thus to capture some shades of difference and anomaly, the adherents of a paradigm might shrink to one, like a Hobbes, or swell to encompass the entire “community of practitioners,” perhaps all the scientists in the world. Kuhn did not think that the scenario of Structure was a theory that could or should be fully realized throughout the history of science but, rather, an inventory of approaches, analyses, and resources. In short, some gestures. That is also the way to look at Leviathan. Like Structure, it is a much more sophisticated book than might appear on first acquaintance.In their eloquent introduction to the second edition, S4 rate their book as a thing of its time, which is of course literally true. It does not follow, as they suppose, that its time is past. The historical detail and analysis will have the usual shelf life of a solid scholarly work, and the suggestive method will remain vital until we return to Koyré. Although eager to welcome Leviathan and its creators among the dinosaurs of our profession, I must insist that their time has not yet come.NotesJ. L. Heilbron is Professor of History Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley. He has published several books on the history of science, most recently Physics: A Short History from Quintessence to Quarks (2015), and hopes to write a few more. April House, Shilton, Burford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom; [email protected].1 Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, “Up for Air: Leviathan and the Air-Pump a Generation On,” introduction to Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, 2nd ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 2011), pp. xii–xlix, on p. xliii (hereafter cited in text as “Up for Air,” with page number). Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 108, Number 1March 2017 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/691401 © 2017 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:JAMES POSKETT SCIENCE IN HISTORY, The Historical Journal 63, no.22 (Nov 2018): 209–242.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X18000195

This paper explores the intricate challenges of translating modern Hindi drama into English, emphasizing the translator’s ethical responsibilities and cultural sensitivity. Drama, as a genre, intertwines textual and performative elements, making its translation particularly complex. This paper focuses on Mohan Rakesh's Aadhe Adhure and Bhisham Sahni's Madhavi to examine how translators navigate the balance between fidelity to the source text and adaptation to the target language and culture. The study employs theoretical frameworks from Rita Kothari, Mona Baker, Lawrence Venuti, and Anthony Pym to analyze the translator’s role. Kothari’s emphasis on cultural integrity, Baker’s focus on the translator as a cultural mediator, Venuti’s concepts of foreignization and domestication, and Pym’s stress on cross-cultural communication provide valuable perspectives. These frameworks illuminate the ethical dilemmas in maintaining cultural and emotional authenticity while engaging new audiences. Through theoretical analysis and practical case studies, the paper underscores the significance of the translator’s voice in bridging cultural divides and ensuring that translations retain the essence of the original. It contributes to the discourse on translation ethics and offers insights for translators working within the rich, complex world of modern Hindi drama.

Translation has been considered as a cross-cultural act comprising the transference of the cultural signs, rather than only finding the equivalence of linguistic patterns in the target text. As bridge-builders between different cultures, translators assume a very significant role in order to achieve the most appropriate cognitive, cultural, stylistic, and linguistic equivalence in the target system. This role becomes more challenging and problematic when the target audience are children. By emphasizing the difficulties in translating children’s literature and the required strategies, the present study examines the Turkish translation of culturally-bound words and expressions in Tolkien’s Letters From Father Christmas. Within the framework of Lawrence Venuti’s concepts of domestication and foreignization, and Klingberg’s scheme of cultural context adaptation categories, this study analysed the translator’s strategies and decisions and discussed whether the translator successfully conveys the same impression in the target audience in a context which is foreign to the Turkish culture and children in particular.

If coverture justified patriarchal control and legally erased many aspects of wives’ separate existence, did this mean that husbands in eighteenth-century England also enjoyed absolute authority over their wives’ sexual bodies? This article examines how contemporaries described the sexual boundaries between spouses and what wives could do when they had been violated by their husbands. Wives had few legal protections and limited social and economic resources to escape unwanted marital sex, but the small number who could afford the high costs turned to the ecclesiastical courts to legally separate from their husbands. The five case studies from the ecclesiastical courts explored here are exceptional, first, because sexual problems were at their core, and second, because unusual collateral evidence survives describing attorneys’ and judges’ opinions about spouses’ bodily rights within marriage. Whether they were seeking relief from reproductive toil, venereal infection, threat of sexual violence, or trauma from marital rape, these wives wanted to escape their husbands—but they faced hurdles. Because English ecclesiastical law did not explicitly identify sexual discord as justifying marital separation, the women's attorneys had to demonstrate that unwanted sexual relations were acts of cruelty. By invoking bodily safety, decorum and propriety, and sensibility and sympathy, advocates argued against husbands’ absolute conjugal authority. The author considers how broader transformations in beliefs about gender and sexuality may have resulted in giving wives slightly more room for protection by the second half of the eighteenth century, particularly when they faced the threat of marital rape or venereal infection.

The subject of the paper is an insight into the music philetic practice with theoretical and practical grounding. The theoretical part informs about research and publishing activities, innovative principles and presents foreign music-expressive concepts and methods applicable in the Czech music education environment. The practical part conceives the musical techniques of music philetic work with clear descriptions and case studies. The author focuses on individual music-interaction areas. Since we should be based on the needs and individuality of the student in the educational and formative process, the author perceives the importance of musical and non-musical goals as equal partners in music education.

The social structure, division of political power, and operational mechanisms of modern Central Asian steppe states, dominated by nomadic peoples, are closely related to their foreign policy concepts and the formulation of diplomatic strategies. This paper uses a comparative case study method, focusing on Kalmyk Khanate and the Junior jüz of Kazakh Khanate in the 17th and 18th centuries. Through a comparative analysis of the power structures of these two states and their transformations, the study explores the causal relationship between the characteristics of state power structures and the formulation of foreign policy. The study finds that the internal cohesion formed by the social power structure of steppe states affects their military strength, the legitimacy of the ruler’s power, and the orientation of social demands, which represent the balance between “interest” and “independence” —important conditions for the stable operation of a nomadic society—thus exert practical influence on diplomatic concepts and policies.

Lexical-semantic resources (LSRs), such as online lexicons and wordnets, are fundamental to natural language processing applications as well as to fields such as linguistic anthropology and language preservation. In many languages, however, such resources suffer from quality issues: incorrect entries, incompleteness, but also the rarely addressed issue of bias toward the English language and Anglo-Saxon culture. Such bias manifests itself in the absence of concepts specific to the language or culture at hand, the presence of foreign (Anglo-Saxon) concepts, as well as in the lack of an explicit indication of untranslatability, also known as cross-lingual lexical gaps, when a term has no equivalent in another language. This paper proposes a novel crowdsourcing methodology for reducing bias in LSRs. Crowd workers compare lexemes from two languages, focusing on domains rich in lexical diversity, such as kinship or food. Our LingoGap crowdsourcing platform facilitates comparisons through microtasks identifying equivalent terms, language-specific terms, and lexical gaps across languages. We validated our method by applying it to two case studies focused on food-related terminology: (1) English and Arabic, and (2) Standard Indonesian and Banjarese. These experiments identified 2,140 lexical gaps in the first case study and 951 in the second. The success of these experiments confirmed the usability of our method and tool for future large-scale lexicon enrichment tasks.

This article explores how the western concept of “organic agriculture” has been applied in the traditional Chinese tea industry and how it has been tested during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using in-depth interviews and observations made during 2017–2020, we analyzed different meanings of organic agriculture and values that were given by Chinese farmers who are certified organic producers. Although organic agriculture, particular certified by international certification standards, is a foreign concept, producers invested efforts that go beyond the commercial pursuit for profit. Most importantly, the combination of the reiterated cultural meaning and health benefits of the certified organic tea with the visionary strategy has allowed these producers to shift in a timely manner from export to domestic markets and adapt to the pandemic’s barriers presented to the global trade.

Over the past decades major oil companies left the Appalachian Basin, leaving only small independents to operate the mature oil fields. Many of the regions drilling contractors worked under turnkey operations to drill shallow, vertical wells, developing a "get things done fast" working approach. During the same period of time, major oil companies in the US adopted and implemented the health, safety and environment management system concept. This along with the maturing of OSHA as a regulatory body during the 1990’s drove significant change in the approach to safety and environmental matters. Larger independent oil companies followed suit. The industry began to realize the good safety and environment practices prevented loss and could even be viewed as a profit center. The discovery of the Marcellus Shale brought major and large independents back to the Appalachian Basin, as they began to acquire regional independents and merge them into their operations. The safety and environmental performance expectations changed as well and service companies were confronted with the need to change their culture and implement process systems. The work force was not prepared for the increased demand for trained and competent personnel. Those who had worked in the existing oil and gas industry had a hard time adapting to what seemed to be foreign concepts, such as conducting risk assessments, JSA and reporting every incident. While the concept of accountability was introduced, it took time and repetition of the message to make it take root. This is a two-year case study of a company effort to change corporate culture and behaviors, while at the same time growing the business at a fast pace.

The overarching objective of this study is to explore and understand how Black African Learners (BAL) reconstruct their identity and how this influences their lives. Learner identity ‘reconstruction’ is still under-researched, especially in Muslim schools. This is supported in literature, where it is highlighted that regarding learner identity studies, the becoming and changing process is either neglected or not ascribed much significance (Lundgren & Scheckle, 2019, Kerr, Dean & Crowe, 2019). The rationale for conducting this study is mainly rooted in my personal experiences and observations as a teaching practice assessor, an employee in one of the higher education institutions in KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. The framework that underpinned this study was Social Identity Theory (SIT) by Henri Tajfel (1974). This theory assisted me in exposing what learners think and how they interpret their educational experiences, which include what they see and how they feel about multiple realities in their school, across, within, and between cross-cultural and post-disciplinary boundaries, as proposed by Wilber (2005) and Marquis (2007). An interpretivist paradigm and qualitative case study was adopted. One Muslim Primary School (MPS) and five learner participants were purposely selected. Data was generated utilising written narratives, semi-structured one-on-one interviews, and focus groups discussions where these were transcribed and thematically analysed. The findings of the study revealed that identity reconstruction of BAL in MPS represent a lever that can perpetuate or decrease inequality; depending on how it is philosophically interpreted. Immigration was viewed as one of the precursors for identity reconstruction sparked by immigration of BAL families from other parts of the continent into South Africa. Furthermore, BAL encounter a wide range of experiences that incorporate more painful, positive, and even contradictory, perceptions about self. The study concludes that identity reconstruction in an MPS ought not to be framed by foreign conceptions, but should rather be anchored in local, indigenous knowledge systems and practices. Instead, BAL should build up their Black African dignity and reclaim African-Muslimcentric identity; something to look forward to as democracy matures in South Africa, as BAL individually and uniquely reconstruct their identity.

The overarching objective of this study is to explore and understand how Black African Learners (BAL) reconstruct their identity and how this influences their lives. Learner identity ‘reconstruction’ is still under-researched, especially in Muslim schools. This is supported in literature, where it is highlighted that regarding learner identity studies, the becoming and changing process is either neglected or not ascribed much significance (Lundgren & Scheckle, 2019, Kerr, Dean & Crowe, 2019). The rationale for conducting this study is mainly rooted in my personal experiences and observations as a teaching practice assessor, an employee in one of the higher education institutions in KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. The framework that underpinned this study was Social Identity Theory (SIT) by Henri Tajfel (1974). This theory assisted me in exposing what learners think and how they interpret their educational experiences, which include what they see and how they feel about multiple realities in their school, across, within, and between cross-cultural and post-disciplinary boundaries, as proposed by Wilber (2005) and Marquis (2007). An interpretivist paradigm and qualitative case study was adopted. One Muslim Primary School (MPS) and five learner participants were purposely selected. Data was generated utilising written narratives, semi-structured one-on-one interviews, and focus groups discussions where these were transcribed and thematically analysed. The findings of the study revealed that identity reconstruction of BAL in MPS represent a lever that can perpetuate or decrease inequality; depending on how it is philosophically interpreted. Immigration was viewed as one of the precursors for identity reconstruction sparked by immigration of BAL families from other parts of the continent into South Africa. Furthermore, BAL encounter a wide range of experiences that incorporate more painful, positive, and even contradictory, perceptions about self. The study concludes that identity reconstruction in an MPS ought not to be framed by foreign conceptions, but should rather be anchored in local, indigenous knowledge systems and practices. Instead, BAL should build up their Black African dignity and reclaim African-Muslimcentric identity; something to look forward to as democracy matures in South Africa, as BAL individually and uniquely reconstruct their identity.

This paper is concerned with the case study of a women’s nongovernmental organization (NGO) which is engaged in public-interest litigation and legislative advocacy. This study attempts to analyze the development of Chinese Women’s NGOs under the influence of the international community and the state after the fourth World Conference on Women. The opportunities for the occurrence and development of these NGOs are due to transnational feminism, and may also be influenced by the agendas of developed countries; but the foreign concepts, discourses, and funding provide resources and weapons for activists in women’s NGOs. These international factors also play a role as a bonding agent in the interaction between the NGOs and the domestic government. Another aspect is that, with the appearance of NGOs, some innovative elements can be seen in the dynamic interaction between society and the state. However, the relationship between NGOs and the state has not yet been institutionalized. The ambiguity and uncertainty of the status of NGOs affect their development.

In the Nyāyasūtra s (NS) , the fundamental text of the Nyāya tradition, testimony is defined as a statement of a reliable speaker ( āpta ). According to the NS, such a speaker should possess three qualities: competence, honesty and desire to speak. The content of a discourse, including the prescriptions, is also considered reliable due to the status of a given author and the person that communicated it. The Polish philosopher J.M. Bochenski similarly stresses the role of a speaker; he holds that an authoritative source (whose discourse is called testimony) should be competent and truthful. The conditions of trust and superiority also apply. According to Bochenski, being an authority entails a special relation—it has a subject, object and field. Notably, Bochenski develops his own typology of testimony by distinguishing between what he calls epistemic and deontic authority. He asks questions such as: Who can be the subject of an authoritative statement? Which features should the speaker possess? How is authority recognised? Is there a universal or an absolute authority? What is the field of authority? Moreover, which qualities should the listener possess? The Nyāya philosophers, both the ancient ones, like Akṣapāda Gautama, Vātsyāyana, Vācaspati Miśra, and the contemporary scholars of Nyāya, such as B. K. Matilal and J. Ganeri, were also concerned with these issues. The aim of this paper is to discuss the above points in a comparative manner. I will argue that both Bochenski’s and the Nyāya accounts share very similar perspectives and encounter analogous problems.

As the guardian of the constitution, Indonesia’s Constitutional Court (MK) exercises absolute judicial authority, with decisions that are final and binding. However, in practice, the Court also performs institutional administrative actions, such as appointing officials and managing internal structures. This study examines the jurisdictional boundary between the Court’s judicial and administrative functions, questioning whether the latter can be subject to administrative judicial review before the Administrative Court (PTUN). Using a normative legal approach supported by a case study (Decision No. 604/G/2023/PTUN.JKT) and comparative analysis from Germany, India, and South Korea, the study finds that constitutional immunity does not extend absolutely to administrative actions of judicial bodies. Administrative decisions that are concrete, individual, and have legal consequences must adhere to the principles of administrative law and good governance (AAUPB). The findings highlight the importance of a functional distinction between judicial and administrative authority and emphasize the need for legal oversight to ensure accountability of constitutional bodies in a democratic rule of law state.