Ownership Claims Research Articles

Forging Ethno-Nationalism in Tigray (1943–1975)

ABSTRACT In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ethiopia’s Tigrayan elites harbored deep-seated resentments toward the Shewa Amhara ruling class, mainly driven by the suppression of the 1943 Tigrayan peasant rebellion. These resentments catalyzed the rise of ethnonational consciousness within Tigray, manifested through deliberate attempts to undermine Ethiopian culture, tradition, and heritage with a paradoxical ownership claim of Abyssinian history. Tigray’s pivotal role as the nucleus of the Aksumite civilization within the broader Abyssinian context is palpable memory. This civilization extended across territories such as Eritrea and Amhara, encompassing various less-visible groups. Tigrayans featured prominently in the Solomonic Dynasty, stretching from the legendary Queen of Sheba to the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution that toppled Emperor Haile Selassie (r. 1930–1974). Before the advent of Italian imperialism in Eritrea and the Southward expansion of Menelik II (r. 1889–1913), the Tigrigna-speaking regions, along with the Amhara, had served as the epicenter of the Abyssinian politics and cultural sphere. This paper scrutinizes the emergence of Tigrayan ethno-nationalism amid the Marxist Revolution, juxtaposing it against entrenched Ethiopian values. It also highlights the historical significance of Welkait (a generic term used to refer to an area west of river Tekezé that includes Welkait itself, Telemt, Teg,edé, and Humera) and Raya – areas annexed by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in 1991 and still in contention. The author offers an all-encompassing analysis, incorporating a wealth of secondary and primary historical sources, including archives, chronicles, inscriptions, memoirs, traveler accounts, and oral narratives.

Patient public perspectives on digital colorectal cancer surgery (DALLAS)

IntroductionThe importance of patient perspectives is increasingly appreciated in clinical practice and academia with formal engagement processes developing worldwide. Digital surgery encompasses intraoperative patient data (including surgical video) analysis and so requires public-patient involvement (PPI). MethodsEngagement events were conducted based on NIHR and GRIPP2 LF guidelines. Following informative talks on digital surgery, invited patients and patient relatives were split into focus groups regarding 1) Research; 2) Data; 3) Industry Involvement; and 4) Artificial Intelligence in surgery. Scribed feedback was thematically analysed by two researchers independently. A pre and post event survey was sought voluntarily. Results36 participant perspectives were analysed. In general, patients were enthusiastic about having a voice in surgical research and sharing their journey, with most groups concluding that capturing this was most appropriate after treatment recovery. The use of patient data for surgical development (i.e. research and education) was endorsed unanimously for the purpose of future patient benefit when responsibly and transparently managed and the value of industry was acknowledged. From 30 pre/post surveys (all p > 0.05), participants afforded the greatest data (including video) ownership claim to the surgical team (52 %/48 %) versus patients (32 %/24 %) and the hospital (12 %/24 %). While most (73 %/80 %) agreed that AI should be applied in surgical care, most felt the surgeon most valuable (93 %/80 %) with participants disagreeing that AI should make diagnoses (57 %/64 %) or treat patients (70 %/70 %) without human input. ConclusionPatients capably represent stable views and expectations that can strengthen modern and evolving surgical development involving data privacy, ownership and management.

Resolving Conflicts between Corporate Cultivation Rights and Indigenous Community Property Rights: A Study of Abandoned Land in Indonesian Palm Oil Plantations

We discovered a blank point in the study of palm oil conflicts in Indonesia, namely abandoned land. This is critical in determining the ontology of the conflicts that frequently occur between palm oil firms and communities surrounding plantation areas, conflicts that are generated by land rights. We conducted research in the Bengkayang district. Observations, desk studies, and in-depth interviews that we conducted revealed that there were four main factors causing land to be indicated as abandoned in the area of palm oil companies' cultivation rights (HGU). First, inconsistencies and uncertainties in HGU determination procedures, for example, produce challenges and tensions with indigenous groups. Second, data fabrication practices by related parties, including local governments, result in inaccurate information. Third, the lack of formal legal rights over customary land makes maintaining land ownership claims difficult for groups. Fourth, unequal acknowledgment of traditional regions' sovereignty leads to inequity in natural resource management. The phenomenon of abandoned land in this study occurs due to the duality of property rights, which reduces land productivity. The ontological implications of this research concern land development and management, regulatory simplification in maintaining customary land rights, and contemplation of overlapping land rights. This research increases understanding of the dynamics of development and management of abandoned land.

Intra-familial dynamics of knowledge and ignorance experienced by donor-conceived adults in Germany

This study explores how donor-conceived adults experience pre- and post-disclosure intra-familial dynamics of knowledge and ignorance in relation to their means of conception. Data were collected through an online survey of 59 individuals aged 21–46 years, who were recruited through the German support and advocacy group Verein Spenderkinder (the Association of Donor-conceived Children). Participants were born into families with heterosexual parents and learned about their conception via anonymous sperm donation between 5 and 46 years of age. Thematic qualitative text analysis revealed four main themes regarding the challenges donor-conceived adults face in reconciling their sense of identity and their relationships within the family: non-absoluteness of pre-disclosure ignorance, new fields of ignorance emerging post-disclosure, ways of dealing with the newly acquired knowledge, and conflicting ownership claims on knowledge and ignorance. These challenges pertain not only to knowledge and ignorance of the participants’ means of conception but also to the way in which (non-)knowing is perceived and managed by family members. Utilizing Peter Wehling’s taxonomy of ignorance as a theoretical framework, the study argues that intra-familial conflicts and challenges experienced by the participants can be attributed to either shifts in or stakeholders’ colliding claims to control the epistemic, social, and temporal dimensions of (non-)knowing in relation to the participants being donor-conceived.

Claims of ownership, claims of dignity

Claims of ownership, claims of dignity

A spatiotemporal chaos based deep learning model watermarking scheme

With deep learning techniques achieving great results in modern industry, the intellectual property (IP) protection for deep learning models has attracted the attention of academics and engineers. However, training a commercially viable deep learning model usually needs professional resources and time. Once a malicious user clones, illegally distributes and uses the model, it can infringe on the model owner's IP and even steal its market share. Among the existing IP protection methods, scholars prefer the black-box watermarking approaches, of which the content of the trigger set and the label are the key part of the watermarking technique. However, most schemes do not consider the security and invisibility of the trigger set, which allows attackers to easily trigger the model by creating a fake trigger set, thereby committing a fraudulent ownership claim attack and claiming the ownership belongs to themselves. To overcome these drawbacks, we proposed a spatiotemporal chaotic data annotation method. Firstly, the unpredictability and acyclicity of chaos make the model resistant to fraudulent ownership claim attacks, statistical inference and other common machine learning attacks; Secondly, the trigger set and parameters are independent of each other, guaranteeing the security of the key; Thirdly, the spatiotemporal chaotic system provides a large key space, which meets the commercialization needs of deep learning models. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that our scheme has security, practicality and robustness. To further validate the superiority of the proposed method, we also compare it with the Logistic chaotic annotation watermarking-based method, and the results show that our method performs better in terms of robustness, effectiveness, completeness, fidelity, security and practicality.

LEGAL EFFECTS ON CONTROL OF RIGHTS TO LAND OF THE FORMER EIGENDOM VERPONDING STATE IN DISPUTES BETWEEN HEIRS THE MULLER FAMILY WITH CITIZENS OF DAGO ELOS BANDUNG

Indonesia's Basic Agrarian Law (UUPA) sets out the requirements for the conversion of verponding eigendom land, regulating the rights of Westerners to be included in the applicable land law system. Based on the UUPA, land rights must be converted until September 24 1980. However, there are still frequent claims of land ownership resulting from eigendom disputes that have not been legally resolved, which causes land disputes. Case of verponding eigendom land dispute between the heirs of the Muller Family, PT. Dago Inti Graha versus Dago Elos residents is a clear example of the complexity that can occur in land ownership issues. Since it started in 2016, this dispute has been decided four times, one of which was at the PK level with Case Register Number 109 PK/Pdt/2022. Normative juridical and analytical descriptive approaches, in legal studies and relevant legal cases are analyzed. Result: According to the provisions of UUPA and its implementing regulations, as well as Government Regulation no. 24 of 1997, if there is no land eigendom verponding convention, the land then becomes state property. Through the trial, the Panel of Judges considered that the heirs of the Muller Family had succeeded in proving that they were the legal holders of land rights, compared to the claims of Dago Elos Residents who did not have proof of ownership and that the Muller Family heirs had more complete and valid supporting documents than the Residents. Dago Elos. Based on these considerations, the judge decided that the heirs of the Muller family had stronger and more legal rights to the disputed land than the Dago Elos residents. Therefore, the legal consequences for control of disputed land are that the heirs of the Muller family have the right to register the land and obtain legal recognition of ownership of the disputed land.

Local Conflicts Around Mining Activities in Ibise-Komu Community in Oyo State, Nigeria

The conflict between the mining companies and the people of Ibise-Komu community of Oyo State has become perennial. The interventions to manage the conflict have also been continuously applied with limited success. This study is motivated by this background to better understand the dimensions of the miners-community conflict and analyze the immediate and remote causes of the conflict. To do this, the researcher visited the community and implemented a purposive random sampling technique to select 200 locals to participate in the study. A self-designed questionnaire was administered among all the respondents while only 20 of them participated in the semi-structured interview sessions. The empirical analysis was guided by frequency counts, percentages, descriptive statistics and logit regression. Findings revealed that the miners-community conflict has indeed become existential. While the community lays claim of ownership and control over the mineral deposits in their land, the behaviors of the miners seem to be in opposite of the perspectives of the general members of the community. In particular, the respondents argued that the miners recruit less of the indigenes in their mining activities, destroy their roads, pollute their environment and contribute minimally to the growth and development of the community. It follows that the solutions to the miners-community conflict should be addressed from the ends of the miners. This may be labelled with hurdles if the miners enjoy discriminatory backing of the government.

InvestGuru

The stock market is basically an aggregation of various buyers and sellers of stock. A stock also known as shares more commonly in general represents ownership claims on business by a particular individual or a group of people. The attempt to determine the future value of the stock market is known as a stock market prediction. The prediction is expected to be robust, accurate and efficient. The system must work according to the real-life scenarios and should be well. suited to real-world settings. The system is also expected to take into account all the variables that might affect the stock's value and performance. There are various methods and ways of implementing the prediction system like Fundamental Analysis, Technical Analysis, Machine Learning, Market Mimicry, and Time series aspect structuring. With the advancement of the digital era, the prediction has moved up into the technological realm. The most prominent and promising technique involves the use of algorithms such as Random Forest, LSTM, that is basically the implementation of machine learning. Machine learning involves artificial intelligence which empowers the system to learn and improve from past experiences without being programmed time and again. Traditional methods of prediction in machine learning use algorithms like Backward Propagation, also known as Back propagation errors. Lately, many researchers are using more of ensemble learning techniques. It would use low price and time lags to predict future highs while another network would use lagged highs to predict future highs. These predictions were used to form stock prices

Farmer managed natural regeneration to reconstitute agroforestry parklands in Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso is facing an accelerated degradation of natural resources, exacerbated by natural phenomena and human activities which, coupled with the impact of climate change and poverty, have caused food insecurity in the arid province of Passoré. To address these challenges, farmers have been implementing initiatives rooted in local knowledge and traditional practices. The practice of interest is farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR), an ancestral agroforestry practice that protects and tends to spontaneous tree growth in agricultural fields. A qualitative study conducted in the province of Passoré revealed farmers’ reasons for adopting FMNR. As a low-cost practice that requires few technical or financial resources, farmers are attracted to its affordability. FMNR also enables farmers to circumvent customary prohibitions regarding tree planting, and navigate land ownership dynamics, as it involves tending to spontaneous growth rather than deliberate planting. Since FMNR does not involve tree planting, it does not imply land ownership claims, making it inclusive for migrants and women who have limited land rights. By introducing indigenous species such as Piliostigma reticulatum (bangandé) FMNR helps meet energy needs called for by women, and improves the density of plant cover, restoring clearings while improving livelihoods. FMNR has been instrumental in empowering women by providing commercial opportunities in the non-timber forest product (NTFP) sector, enabling them to earn an independent income, strengthening their autonomy within the household. FMNR has thus become integral to farming systems in Passoré due to its many tangible agronomic, environmental and socioeconomic benefits, offering solutions to land degradation, exclusion from tree planting projects, food insecurity and gender inequality. Broader dissemination of its potential for rapid restoration of forest resources at low cost is, therefore, recommended to help other regions of Burkina Faso overcome their challenges of degradation and climate change.

The Responsibility of Natural Resources Conservation Center in Preventing Encroachment of Conservation Forest Areas in East Nusa Tenggara

This research aims to examine the relationship between the increase in encroachment on conservation forests and the classification of forests based on their ownership status, as well as assess the East Nusa Tenggara BBKSDA's responsibility in addressing conservation forest encroachment. This research uses an empirical legal research method. All collected data is then qualitatively analyzed to describe the problem and answer the research objectives. The results show that land ownership claims, boundary disputes, and a lack of community understanding regarding conservation forest status are the primary causes of encroachment. Although the East Nusa Tenggara BBKSDA has taken various proactive steps to address conservation forest encroachment, the issue has not yet been fundamentally resolved. Therefore, it is recommended that the Local Government and East Nusa Tenggara BBKSDA take concrete measures to tackle the ambiguity of land ownership status, which is one of the root problems of conservation forest encroachment. These measures could begin with reviewing and updating data related to land boundaries and ownership status, followed by mediation between the government and the community to resolve border disputes fairly and transparently. Furthermore, it is essential for traditional institutions and local communities to actively participate in this process actively, utilizing local knowledge and traditions in determining fair and mutually recognized land boundaries. The Local Government and BBKSDA must also enhance efforts to socialize and educate the community about the importance of conservation forests, including the long-term benefits of forest conservation for environmental sustainability and the local economy. These efforts should be carried out through effective communication appropriate to the local cultural context so that the community can accept and value the importance of conservation forests.

Legal Protection of Bambu Gila Dance as a Traditional Cultural Expression

This study aims to examine the bambu gila dance as a potential intellectual property for traditional cultural expressions in Maluku which should receive legal protection as part of efforts to defend cultural heritage from claims of ownership by other parties or other countries. Bambu Gila Dance is one of the famous traditional arts from Maluku. The traditional cultural expression in the form of the Bambu Gila dance is expressly protected by the Indonesian intellectual property rights system. However, protection for Bambu Gila Dance as a traditional cultural expression cannot be realized so that it can only be used by other parties illegally. This research is a normative juridical research supported by primary legal materials and secondary legal materials with a conceptual approach and statutory approach. Legal protection for the traditional Bambu Gila dance from Maluku Province has not been effectively implemented, both based on Article 38 of Law Number 28 of 2014 Concerning Copyright, as well as in terms of the actions of government officials who have not been able to inventory traditional dance performance artworks as an expression traditional culture in Maluku including the Bambu Gila Dance. The role of the Provincial and Regency Governments in Maluku is crucial in realizing legal protection for traditional dances, including the Bambu Gila Dance, as intangible cultural heritage through the establishment of regional regulations. These regulations serve as legal basic to provide legal certainty as part of efforts for preventive legal protection for the Bambu Gila Dance.

SecNLP: An NLP classification model watermarking framework based on multi-task learning

The popularity of ChatGPT demonstrates the immense commercial value of natural language processing (NLP) technology. However, NLP models like ChatGPT are vulnerable to piracy and redistribution, which can harm the economic interests of model owners. Existing NLP model watermarking schemes struggle to balance robustness and covertness. Typically, robust watermarks require embedding more information, which compromises their covertness; conversely, covert watermarks are challenging to embed more information, which affects their robustness. This paper is proposed to use multi-task learning (MTL) to address the conflict between robustness and covertness. Specifically, a covert trigger set is established to implement remote verification of the watermark model, and a covert auxiliary network is designed to enhance the watermark model’s robustness. The proposed watermarking framework is evaluated on two benchmark datasets and three mainstream NLP models. Compared with existing schemes, the framework not only has excellent covertness and robustness but also has a lower false positive rate and can effectively resist fraudulent ownership claims by adversaries.

Introduction

This special section of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, “Claiming Property, Claiming Palestine,” explores the paradoxes of Palestinians make ownership claims to agricultural land and urban real estate. Contributors foreground Palestinian thought and action, and demonstrate how Palestinian claim-making practices temporally exceed the colonial condition and trouble dominant assumptions about ownership, property, and sovereignty. Through granular cases studies rooted in the particularities of time and space, they show how claim-making allows for a critique of the settler colonial and Indigenous frameworks in Palestinian studies and points to generative avenues for comparative history and theory-making between Palestine and the global South.

Reputation laundering and museum collections: patterns, priorities, provenance, and hidden crime

ABSTRACT Provenance research in museums has traditionally been reactive and focused on singular objects with dubious histories, such as colonial-era acquisitions, Nazi-looted art, and objects with active ownership claims; the ‘crimes’ we expect to see. But what if what we think we know prevents us from seeing the bigger picture within and across museum collections? We argue that a machine-learning approach to provenance could allow the detection of broader patterns of unethical or even criminal behaviour that are embedded in the relationships underpinning museum collections. To demonstrate the potential of a machine-learning approach, we present a computer-assisted model that predicts plausible patterns and connections, ‘leads’ or ‘hot tips’, derived from a dataset of unstructured texts concerning the antiquities trade. Preliminary results have revealed what may have been a multi-decade scheme involving the donation of low-value Latin American antiquities to museums as a form of ‘reputation laundering’ potentially in advance of criminal fraud. We believe that such patterns could not be identified by an approach to museum provenance that is restricted to known problems within individual institution, demonstrating the need for innovative provenance tools and approaches that consider the complex networks within which museum objects exist.

Reconciling guardianship with ownership: Protecting taonga plants, Māori knowledge, and plant variety rights in Aotearoa New Zealand

AbstractThe Plant Variety Rights Act of Aotearoa New Zealand (PVR Act), recently reformed in 2022, adopts new protections for Indigenous relations with native and culturally significant plants, and for traditional knowledge. The Act specifically aims to protect kaitiaki (guardian or caretaker) relationships that Māori have with taonga (treasured, culturally significant) plant species and mātauranga Māori (Indigenous knowledge) in the PVR system. By taking these reforms into account and examining how they may operate in practice, this article considers whether the PVR Act fulfils the constitutional obligations the government owes to Māori under the Treaty of Waitangi | Te Tiriti o Waitangi framework. In addition to conducting a doctrinal assessment of the revised statute, the article undertakes an intellectual property landscape analysis, revealing how PVR systems, both domestically and overseas, have been used by non‐Māori entities to assert ownership claims to varieties of taonga plants in the past. The article further draws upon a third research methodology, presenting initial results from qualitative interviews conducted with Māori and non‐Māori experts in intellectual property, taonga plants, and mātauranga Māori. Synthesising the results of these three forms of investigation, the article argues that while some of the changes made in the PVR Act support the exercise of partial Māori authority in relation to taonga, it remains to be seen whether the Treaty promise of tino rangatiratanga (chieftainship, sovereignty, or self‐determination) can be fully achieved in the PVR system.

The Significance of State Practises in Enforcing the Principle of Effectiveness in Claims of Territorial Ownership

The state can obtain rights to a territory through various means of ownership, including prescription, accretion, cession, conquest, and occupation, as long as it can effectively control (occupation) the territory with long-lasting control (practical work). The Sipadan and Ligitan Islands dispute is Indonesia's first experience with the concept of effectivity. Effective control over an area dramatically influences the claim to ownership. Several countries claim land ownership based on ratio decidendi analysis of international court decisions. The Research method in this writing uses normative juridical analysis also known as the library research method. The author chose this approach because the analysis results will be discussed and explained concerning international law case studies. This research aims to analyze and describe the Role of State Practices in Implementing the Principle of Effectiveness towards Claims of Territorial Ownership.

A Robustness-Assured White-Box Watermark in Neural Networks

Recently, stealing highly-valuable and large-scale deep neural network (DNN) models becomes pervasive. The stolen models may be re-commercialized, e.g., deployed in embedded devices, released in model markets, utilized in competitions, etc, which infringes the Intellectual Property (IP) of the original owner. Detecting IP infringement of the stolen models is quite challenging, even with the white-box access to them in the above scenarios, since they may have experienced fine-tuning, pruning, functionality-equivalent adjustment to destruct any embedded watermark. Furthermore, the adversaries may also attempt to extract the embedded watermark or forge a similar watermark to falsely claim ownership. In this paper, we propose a novel DNN watermarking solution, named <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$HufuNet$</tex-math></inline-formula> , to detect IP infringement of DNN models against the above mentioned attacks. Furthermore, HufuNet is the first one theoretically proved to guarantee robustness against fine-tuning attacks. We evaluate HufuNet rigorously on four benchmark datasets with five popular DNN models, including convolutional neural network (CNN) and recurrent neural network (RNN). The experiments and analysis demonstrate that HufuNet is highly robust against model fine-tuning/pruning, transfer learning, kernels cutoff/supplement, functionality-equivalent attacks and fraudulent ownership claims, thus highly promising to protect large-scale DNN models in the real world.

The state of forensic accounting: South Africa versus the United States of America

As a multi-faceted emerging profession, forensic accounting is surrounded by some issues, controversies, and challenges among them lack of consensus on the entry requirements and certification of the profession, misconstruction of the innate goal of forensic accounting, and the lack of consensus on the teaching pedagogies of forensic accounting. The claim of ownership of forensic accounting by different professional bodies in different jurisdictions also exacerbates these challenges. With these issues surrounding the profession, this study sought to examine the state of affairs of forensic accounting in a developed economy, USA, and a developing economy South Africa. The comparison was based on the following criteria: certification; the profession issues; constitutional and judicial issues; and legal and regulatory issues. The study employed a desktop literature review methodology involving an in-depth review of relevant and current literature. The paper found that both countries share a similar status of the forensic accounting profession only on the profession issues. Differences were noted on the certification; constitutional and judicial issues; as well as the legal and regulatory issues. To date, the profession is regulated in both jurisdictions but it happened in 2000 in the US and 2013 in South Africa. It can therefore be concluded that the similarity in forensic accounting profession status for the two jurisdictions is based only on the profession criteria with differences existing in the certification; constitutional and judicial; and legal and regulatory issues. The paper recommends more studies on comparing the status of the profession in other jurisdictions because extant literature still alludes to unresolved issues and challenges on forensic accounting in some jurisdictions.

Heritagising the South China Sea: appropriation and dispossession of maritime heritage through museums and exhibitions in Southern China

ABSTRACT With the emergence of critical heritage studies, scholars show that ‘bottom up’ initiatives that blur the boundaries between private, civil, and state have arisen not as a modernising vision to legitimise national authority but as ‘rooted in identification with local community’, linking past and future. In China, such studies demonstrate the emergence of a different kind of museology – with ‘private’ heritage initiatives on behalf of individuals and groups – tolerated by the state authorities through investments that link heritage tourism to development. However, when a maritime vision of national history is at stake, the central state would co-opt ‘private’ heritage initiatives to subsume them under the wider, sanitised narrative of Chinese maritime civilisation that requires a different relation to the past and its extraction from the localities that do not inscribe their heritage into these universalised visions. Zooming in on three museums in Hainan related to the South China Sea (SCS), I reveal the contradictory claims made by different actors regarding the use, representation and ownership claims of historical seafaring in terms of cultural heritage. Therefore, I argue that heritagisation of seafaring in the SCS represent proprietary and thus territorial claims for China’s rhetoric of maritime ecological civilisation.