Active Jurisdiction Research Articles

User-Oriented Privacy Policies: An Optimal Tool for Mitigating the Risks of Collecting User Data from Californians

Recent high-profile, corporate data breaches demonstrate the significant costs a company incurs when its data about users is compromised. In turn, this increases the risk associated with collecting and utilizing user data for targeted advertising, the current tentpole of the online economy. As a result, more companies may seek to reallocate their budgets, and invest in mitigating the risks of collecting user data.This paper analyzes risk mitigation strategies in the informational privacy landscape in three parts:1) why privacy policies are a useful tool for mitigating the risks of data collection in the current environment; 2) why companies are better served by taking a best practices approach, rather than a minimalist approach, to comply with data collection standards and what that approach might look like; and 3) why user-oriented privacy policies are likely to mitigate risk more effectively than machine-based preferences at this time. Data collection companies who collect data from users in California are the primary subject of this paper because California has been one of the most active jurisdictions in the United States in enacting privacy-related legislation.The takeaway from this paper is that the benefits that flow from these companies' proactive adoption of user-oriented privacy policies outweigh the advantages of adhering to minimum standards.

What Happens in the Cloud: Software as a Service and Copyrights

What happens in the cloud? Copyright owners are concerned. Users of cloud services upload, share, and download copies of software and other files without their owners’ permission and access copyrighted works beyond or in violation of access limitations. Also, copyright owners find it hard to keep up with initiatives of cloud service providers, which constantly introduce new technologies that make copyrighted works available in new formats and business models. What happens in the cloud stays in the cloud. In the cloud, software is no longer commercialized by distributing physical copies to users. Instead, users remotely access and use software copies that remain on the cloud provider’s servers. Software copies stay in the cloud. This raises questions as to if and how copyright law protects the interests of software copyright owners, users, and the public in the cloud. Answering such questions requires an understanding of exactly what happens in the cloud in terms of copying software. This is the focus of the Article. Although cloud offerings are often global and multi-jurisdictional, the copyright laws governing the services remain territorial and national. This Article examines primarily U.S. copyright law, which applies where companies have been most innovative and active in developing cloud offerings, but also briefly takes a look at copyright laws in the EU, the second most developed and active jurisdiction with respect to software copyrights. After Part I provides a general introduction to the topic, Part II gives a technological overview. Part III assesses in detail when and how the exclusive statutory rights under U.S. copyright law are implicated in a number of typical software-as-a-service scenarios. Part IV analyses the same scenarios under copyright laws in Europe for comparison purposes. Part V briefly looks at the complexities of cross-border scenarios and Part VI concludes with an outlook regarding potential legal and policy implications of what happens in the cloud to software copies. © 2014 Lothar Determann. † Lothar Determann teaches computer, Internet, and data privacy law at Freie Universitat Berlin, University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco and practices technology law as a partner with Baker & McKenzie LLP, admitted in California and Germany. The Author thanks Bruce Perens for contributions and explanations on technical details, his partner Ben Allgrove (Baker & McKenzie, London) for comments on EU and U.K. copyright law, and Helena Engfeldt for assistance with research and edits. As with all articles, opinions expressed are those of the Author only, not his firm’s, clients’, or others’. 1096 BERKELEY TECHNOLOGY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 29:1095

The Influence of Spatial Setting and Socioeconomic Profile in Urban Areas in the Diffusion of Residential Photovoltaic Systems

In recent years Connecticut has been one of the most active jurisdictions to support the adoption of residential photovoltaic systems (PV). The distribution of PV is still quite uneven across the state because of the combination of metering policies and current incentive design, (Graziano and Gillingham, 2014). In the present work, we focus on the different profiles of adopters within four towns in Connecticut. We draw from the previous studies of Graziano and Gillingham (2014), and Bollinger and Gillingham (2012) to understand the role of the jurisdictional and built environment in the adoption of PV systems, through their effect on other socioeconomic drivers such as spatial peer effects. We use partition our four towns in to block groups, and conduct a typology analysis of the block groups with higher adoption rates of PV systems in 2013. We find that the profile of the potential adopters changes between towns, with Hartford and Glastonbury providing two quite interesting conflicting results in terms of area geography and socioeconomic status. In addition, we use the area-wide profile to understand how this matches the findings provided by empirical estimations based on Graziano and Gillingham (2014), for which we use more refined density values. We find that the built environment affects the diffusion of PV systems indirectly, as it limits the temporal and distance extent of spatial peer effects.

Carbon Management in British Columbia’s Forests: An Update on Opportunities and Challenges

Forest carbon management is rapidly evolving in British Columbia. The province is perhaps the most active jurisdiction on this front in Canada as it seeks to meet the requirements of its new suite of greenhouse gas legislation, regulations, and policies that influence the management of forest carbon.This report provides an update since 2008 on British Columbia's position on managing for greenhouse gas emissions, with a focus on the role of forests. Essentially, it is an update of Carbon Management in British Columbia's Forests: Opportunities and Challenges, published as FORREX Series No. 24 (Greig and Bull 2008).This report includesa summary of legislative changes since late 2007;a review of the evolving institutional and market rules needed for the further development of a carbon offset market, which would include forests;some recent advances in forest carbon management in the province; andimportant opportunities and challenges that lay ahead.Forest carbon management policy and practices will continue to evolve. Forest carbon is now a recognized forest value, at both the carbon offset project level and the sustainable forest management landscape level. Although many pieces of forest carbon management are in place, more work is required to realize the full potential. It is clear that British Columbia's vast forests represent a significant opportunity to manage greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change.

A Consistory Court in the Middle Ages

Some years ago Professor Powicke wrote of the possibility that a study of the surviving records of the medieval church courts would ‘reveal unexpected possibilities of insight into the daily lives of men and women in a pre-Reformation diocese as subjects of an active jurisdiction, parallel to that of the common law. That this jurisdiction existed we already knew, but the prospect of seeing it at work is exciting’. Since then, it has become increasingly clear that the exploration of the working of the church courts would throw light on the whole relationship between Church and People in medieval, and indeed post-medieval, England. Unfortunately, the records, although quite voluminous, have survived only in a haphazard and intermittent way, and it is, as yet, impossible to form any general conclusions about the subject as a whole. In the hope of contributing to this process, I propose to examine the working of the consistory court in the diocese of Lincoln, one of the largest and most populous dioceses in pre-Reformation England.