Sharing Service Providers Research Articles

Round-up of national decisions on online intermediaries and platforms 2023

Abstract Online enforcement of intellectual property rights has for a long time relied on the involvement of online intermediaries and platforms. Besides injunctions against ‘innocent’ intermediaries, questions surrounding the type of and conditions for establishing liability of online intermediaries and platforms have also gained increasing prominence. In Europe, for example, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has repeatedly tackled these issues. European Union (EU) legislature has also legislated in this area: on the one hand, Article 17 of Directive 2019/790 is premised on the direct responsibility of certain types of online platforms—online content sharing service providers—for user-uploaded content; on the other hand, the Digital Services Act (Regulation 2022/2065), while reiterating the importance of safe harbours for online intermediaries, has introduced due diligence and transparency obligations that are not premised on any liability of their addressees. In 2023, national courts in Australia, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain delivered a series of important rulings in connection with the treatment of online intermediaries and platforms This contribution provides a round-up of the most significant judgments issued in the period 1 January to 31 December 2023, with a special focus on copyright. The analysis is divided by area (liability of online intermediaries and platforms, enforcement aspects and other issues) and country (Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain).

Shared e-scooter service providers with large fleet size have a competitive advantage: Findings from e-scooter demand and supply analysis of Nashville, Tennessee

Shared e-scooter systems are one of the fastest-growing micromobility modes in the United States. In response to service providers’ rapid deployment of e-scooter vehicles, several city governments have regulated shared e-scooters through permits and pilot programs, including the number of service providers, their fleet size, and provisions for expanding/downsizing the fleet size. However, the literature lacks an empirical analysis of the demand elasticity of shared e-scooters. We used a Poisson fixed effects regression to evaluate the demand elasticity of e-scooter vehicle deployment using the Shared Urban Mobility Device (SUMD) dataset from Nashville, Tennessee, between March 1, 2019 and February 2020. This dataset included disaggregated e-scooter trip summary data and vehicle location data that updates approximately every five minutes. We also estimated land-use specific demand elasticity of e-scooter vehicle deployment by clustering Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs) using the K-means algorithm. We found that the average daily demand elasticity of e-scooter vehicle deployment is inelastic (0.64). Service providers with large fleet sizes (>500 average daily e-scooters) have a demand elasticity of e-scooter deployment that is 1.8 times higher than that of medium fleet-sized service providers (250–500 average daily e-scooters). Fleet size is likely correlated to service provider-specific attributes such as vendor popularity, brand loyalty, and rideshare services. We also found a significant difference in demand elasticity of e-scooter deployment for land use types, with university and park & waterfront land uses having the highest elasticity values. These findings could be helpful for city governments to identify the optimal number of service providers and fleet sizes to permit so that demand is fulfilled without an oversupply of e-scooter vehicles in public spaces.

Digital user rights and their enforcement: What is the copyright directive asking for?

AbstractArt 17 Directive 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (CDSMD) offers not only a new perspective on service provider liability but also on user rights in the digital sphere of copyright law. The Directive obliges Member States to enable users of online content sharing service providers to assert the use of an exception or limitation before a court or another judicial authority. Hence, art 17 CDSMD foresees a subjective, that is, enforceable, right of the user deriving out of the exceptions and limitations of copyright and related rights. Yet, there is no clear guidance on how to transpose this requirement into national law, neither in art 17 CDSMD nor within the judgment of the CJEU in the annulment proceeding or the guidance of the EU Commission. This generates uncertainty for Member States, for which the concept of enforceable user rights is novel. The paper examines the requirements which art 17 CDSMD sets out for digital user rights and the difficulties for Member States to comply with them. The example of the German transposition of art 17 CDSMD shows that a high standard of user protection is not necessarily accompanied by a respective enforceability mechanism.

Past and Present of Press Publishers’ Rights in the EU

Past and Present of Press Publishers’ Rights in the EU

Multi-OLT PON-based open access network for multi-service performance tuning via the Event-Horizon algorithm

A multi-optical line terminal (multi-OLT) passive optical network (PON) is gaining attention for its multi-access, wide coverage, and integration capabilities. It outperforms conventional single OLT PON, reducing operational complexities, packet delay, and loss. A novel multi-OLT PON-based open-access network (OAN) architecture is proposed that integrates various service providers (SPs) as well as different access networks. Optical network unit structure is also designed to support differential access. The challenging issue here is to incorporate heterogeneous SPs and provoke downstream service with their application diversity. This paper presents what we believe is a novel algorithm named Event-Horizon (EH) to afford heterogeneous downstream services from different SPs for IEEE PONs [Ethernet PON (EPON) and 10 gigabit EPON (10G EPON)]. It incites SP competitiveness and ensures a user experience of seamless migration from service to service. Downstream resource allocation is an atypical issue in the PON area. There are reported numerous online schemes with prediction for the upstream side. Since network data is highly bursty and unpredictable, the EH algorithm uses the machine-learning-based bootstrapping method as its prediction tool. The algorithm improves downstream performance by four distinctive features. First, bandwidth is guaranteed among shared SPs according to service level agreements. Second, bandwidth is allocated for reported data; then excess bandwidth is reallocated as predicted (by bootstrapping) differed data. Third, a donor SP preserves margin before excess bandwidth release, which is a nonlinear process featuring network dynamics. Fourth, the margin satisfaction factor is formulated for tuning multi-service user satisfaction according to quality of service. The simulation is performed by a model OAN showing an emergency medical wireless sensor network (WSN) as the master shareholder OLT and a fiber to the home (FTTH) as a subsidiary one. Performance tuning on the margin reservation of 1% for the WSN case study shows 99.4% network efficiency with maximum jitter of 50 µs up to the full load owing 97.26% throughput. Network delay justifies CISCO and ITU-T requirements for real-time IP traffic. FTTH experiences the packet loss of 0.68% using the EH algorithm at the full load, maintaining WSN emergency service packet loss<0.003%.

Shared Accommodation Services in the Sharing Economy: Understanding the Effects of Psychological Distance on Booking Behavior

The sharing economy has risen rapidly in the past decade. The development of shared accommodation encourages more hotels and guesthouses to attract customers through online accommodation-sharing platforms, which has become a meaningful way to fight against the competition of the traditional hotel industry. In this condition, what the hosts are concerned about most is how to attract customers’ attention through the platform display to increase reservations. Based on construal level theory, this paper explores how hosts’ information displayed on online accommodation-sharing platforms determines consumers’ booking behavior by influencing their psychological distance. We use machine learning methods to mine the raw data and extract the representational factors of psychological distance. Based on the data-driven behavior decision-making approach, we collected valid large-scale fine-grained secondary actual consumption data from Airbnb, the world’s leading online accommodation-sharing platform, and scientifically and intelligently processed the data using machine learning methods, then tested the hypotheses using the regression analysis software STATA15. Our findings suggest that both social distance and temporal distance have a negative impact on booking behavior of guests. In detail, subject diversity, perspective taking, and facial attractiveness in the dimension of social distance positively influence guests’ booking behavior; instant bookable in the temporal distance dimension positively affects booking behavior, while response time has a negative effect. This study contributes to the literature by empirically examining psychological distance in the booking behavior of guests in shared accommodation through the processing and analysis of actual consumption data. The findings have important practical implications for how shared accommodation service providers and sharing economy platform managers can operate better.

A New Era in Data Sharing (Data Governance Act): Data Sharing Service Providers and the Obligations for Providing Data Sharing Services

A New Era in Data Sharing (Data Governance Act): Data Sharing Service Providers and the Obligations for Providing Data Sharing Services

Safety monitoring system of personal mobility driving using deep learning

Abstract Although the e-scooter sharing service market is growing as a representative last-mile mobility, the accident rate is increasing proportionally as the number of users increases. This study proposes a deep learning-based personal mobility driver monitoring system that detects inattentive driving by classifying vibration data transmitted to the e-scooter when the driver fails to concentrate on driving. First, the N-back task technique is used. The driver was stimulated by external visual and auditory factors to generate a cognitive load, and vibration data were collected through a six-axis sensor. Second, the generated vibration data were pre-processed using short-time Fourier transform and wavelet transform (WT) and then converted into an image (spectrogram). Third, four multimodal convolutional neural networks such as LeNet-5, VGG16, ResNet50, and DenseNet121 were constructed and their performance was compared to find the best architecture. Experimental results show that multimodal DenseNet121 with WT can accurately classify safe, slightly anxious, and very anxious driving conditions. The proposed model can be applied to real-time monitoring and warning systems for sharing service providers and used as a basis for insurance and legal action in the case of accidents.

Shared E-Scooter Service Providers with Large Fleet Size Have a Competitive Advantage: Findings from E-Scooter Demand and Supply Analysis of Nashville, Tennessee

Shared E-Scooter Service Providers with Large Fleet Size Have a Competitive Advantage: Findings from E-Scooter Demand and Supply Analysis of Nashville, Tennessee

Conformity of the liability mechanisms in the UrhDaG with Art. 17 DSMDirective – The limits of legislative creativity

Article 17 DSM-Directive is unquestionably one of the most controversial regulations the European Union has enacted in recent years. In German copyright law, the Act on the Copyright Liability of Online Content Sharing Service Providers (UrhDaG) aimed at implementing this provision, which resulted in divergent views among legal scholars. While the initially strong opposition to Art. 17 of the DSM-Directive gradually subsided in society, considerable doubts about the conformity of the UrhDaG and its liability rules arose among legal scholars. This article aims to shed light on these matters and to systematically review the points of contention on the basis of the principles of conformity with the Directive under European law. The focus here is, in particular, on the implementation of such liability rules under the UrhDaG that found their way into German copyright law via the implementation of provisions that are particularly open to interpretation, such as Art. 17(5) DSM-Directive or Art. 17(7) DSM-Directive. Should a provision prove to be incorrectly implemented, suggestions will also be given on the basis of interpretation and further development of the law in conformity with the Directive as to how the provisions concerned could still be saved while preserving their substantive meaning to the greatest possible extent.

Open Innovation in the Shared Mobility Market

The market for shared mobility services is growing very quickly. New types of vehicles have been introduced, and the offer of available services and functionalities has expanded, the purpose of which is to improve the quality of service. Despite all the improvements, it is still not possible to speak of achieving full availability of systems that meet the needs of users. This is due to the reluctant involvement of operators of shared mobility systems in joining Mobility as a Service platforms based on the idea of open innovation. The aim of the article is to analyze the factors influencing the limitations in the development of open innovations in the form of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) services. The authors focus on identifying the challenges and concerns faced by shared mobility service providers. The article supports the development of the concept of open innovation in shared mobility services. It also contains practical recommendations for the development of MaaS systems. The results of the developed research can be used by operators of shared mobility services, transport authorities, or IT service providers providing MaaS services to strengthen cooperation and integration using the language of mutual benefit.

It’s all linked: How Communication to the Public Affects Internet Architecture

The architecture of the Internet is changing. A novel expansive construction of communication and making available to the public has been shaking the Internet ecosystem. It reaches into basic online activities, such as linking. Departing from well-established international approaches, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has recently decided a multitude of cases that redesigned the notion of communication to the public in the Internet, while discussing linking activities in particular. This jurisprudence stands against a fluid legal framework searching for the optimal allocation of intermediary liability of information service providers. Communication to the public is at the center stage of this legislative process as well. EU copyright legislative reform makes Online Content Sharing Service Providers (OCSSP) — the large majority of UGC platforms — communicating to the public. In doing so, the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive changes the fundamental rules under which online platforms operate and UGC content is created for a large portion of the connected world. This, in turn, is forcing online intermediaries to remodel the architecture of the Internet accordingly. Proactive filtering — rather than ex post review of allegedly infringing content and links — is set to become the first commandment governing the Internet of tomorrow.

The Interplay between the Digital Services Act and Sector Regulation: How Special is Copyright?

On 15 December 2020, the European Commission published its proposal for a Regulation on a Single Market for Digital Services (Digital Services Act). It carries out a regulatory overhaul of the 21-year- old horizontal rules on intermediary liability in the Directive and introduces new due diligence obligations for intermediary services. Our analysis illuminates an important point that has so far received little attention: how would the Digital Services Act’s rules interact with existing sector-specific lex specialis rules? In this paper, we look specifically at the intersection of the Digital Services Act with the regime for online content sharing service providers (OCSSPs) set forth in art. 17 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive). At first glance, these regimes do not appear to overlap as the rules on copyright are lex specialis to the Digital Services Act. A closer look shows a more complex and nuanced picture. Our analysis concludes that the DSA will apply to OCSSPs insofar as it contains rules that regulate matters not covered by art. 17 CDSM Directive, as well as specific rules on matters where art. 17 leaves margin of discretion to Member States. This includes, to varying degrees, rules in the DSA relating to the liability of intermediary providers and to due diligence obligations for online platforms of different sizes. Importantly, we consider that such rules apply even where art. 17 CDSM Directive contains specific (but less precise) regulation on the matter. From a normative perspective, this might be a desirable outcome, to the extent that the DSA aims to establish “uniform rules for a safe, predictable and trusted online environment, where fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter are effectively protected”. Based on our analysis, we suggest a number of clarifications that might be help achieve that goal.

Penilaian Keamanan Aplikasi Berbagi Berkas Aufratia Menggunakan Standar Iso 27001

Abstract 
 Background - The Covid-19 pandemic has an impact on the educational aspect of using online internet media. however, storage media for online activities is still lacking. Especially the lack of flexibility, space for modification and privacy controls provided free of charge by existing file sharing service providers provide various obstacles in accelerating and exchanging information and data using file sharing media services, this is what makes various universities and their academics to develop their file sharing services. Purpose - to evaluate the results of the quality of information security from the Aufratia file sharing application developed independently by the UMG academic community. Design / methodology / approach - This research is a descriptive qualitative research type, while the root cause analysis uses the Fishbone Diagram. Findings - The Aufratia application still does not meet the ISO 27001 standard. Information protection is minimal and almost non-existent, making Aufratia unfit to be a release application and currently it is more suitable to be a beta version (tested) application. Research implications - This research provides a contribution in terms of developing file sharing application software that utilizes the internet. Research limitation - Research only examines one software, further research can be modified or compared with other software to assess the advantages and disadvantages that can be used to complement each other.

Online content sharing service providers’ liability in the directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market

Digital technologies have transformed the way creative content protected by copyright is created, produced, distributed and accessed. The Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market aims to update copyright rules, taking into account changes in these paradigms. Of all the aspects of the reform, this paper critically analyses the content of Article 17, in order to deal with the so-called value gap that forced a change in the liability regime of the online content sharing service provider.

판례평석: 온라인콘텐츠 공유서비스 제공자의 책임

이 글은 유럽연합 디지털싱글마켓 저작권지침에 따른 온라인 콘텐츠공유서비스 제공자의 저작권법 위반 책임의 변화가능성을 검토하고 관련 판례를 평석한 것이다. 이 글은 전부 4개의 장으로 구성되어 있다. 제1장은 서론, 제2장은 유럽연합 디지털싱글마켓 저작권지침에 대한 소개, 제3장은 판례평석으로 대법원 2019. 2. 28. 선고 2016다271608 판결(공2019상, 803)에 대하여 검토하고, 동일한 사안에 대하여 유럽연합 디지털싱글마켓 저작권지침을 기준으로 하였을 때 가능한 결론에 대하여 추론해 본다. 제4장은 결론을 기술하였다.

It's all linked: How communication to the public affects internet architecture

The architecture of the Internet is changing. A novel expansive construction of communication and making available to the public has been shaking the Internet ecosystem. It reaches into basic online activities, such as linking. Departing from well-established international approaches, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has recently decided a multitude of cases that redesigned the notion of communication to the public in the Internet, while discussing linking activities in particular. This jurisprudence stands against a fluid legal framework searching for the optimal allocation of intermediary liability of information service providers. Communication to the public is at the centre stage of this legislative process as well. EU copyright legislative reform makes Online Content Sharing Service Providers (OCSSP)—the large majority of UGC platforms—communicating to the public. In doing so, the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive changes the fundamental rules under which online platforms operate and UGC content is created for a large portion of the connected world. This, in turn, is forcing online intermediaries to remodel the architecture of the Internet accordingly. Proactive filtering—rather than ex post review of allegedly infringing content and links—is set to become the first commandment governing the Internet of tomorrow.

DAPA: A Decentralized, Accountable, and Privacy-Preserving Architecture for Car Sharing Services

Car sharing offers a flexible peer-to-peer or station based car rental service to customers. On one hand, it requires customers to expose identifications (e.g., valid driving licenses) to car sharing service providers (CSSPs) for accountability, i.e., the driving qualification of customers can be verified and misbehaving customers can be traced by CSSPs. On the other hand, privacy concerns arise when customers identities are exposed as honest-but-curious CSSPs may secretly extract customers privacy information by linking their car rental records to their identities. To resolve this contradiction, we propose a decentralized, accountable, and privacy-preserving architecture for car sharing services, named DAPA. In specific, to overcome the limitation of the single point of failure, multiple dynamic validation servers are employed to substitute a single trusted third-party authority and assist in building decentralized trust for customers. In addition, to protect customers’ privacy and achieve accountability simultaneously under the decentralized architecture, a new privacy-preserving identity management (PPIM) scheme is introduced as a basic module for DAPA. Customers’ identities are protected in a distributed and dynamic manner but publicly verified based on a well-designed zero-knowledge proof protocol. Only the misbehaving customers’ identities can be recovered by a majority of validation servers using adaptive verifiable secret sharing/redistribution techniques. Detailed security analysis shows that DAPA can minimize privacy breaches and guarantee the accountability. Performance evaluations via extensive simulations demonstrate that DAPA is efficient in terms of computational costs and communication overheads.

D3P

The future of urban mobility is expected to be shared and electric. It is not only a more sustainable paradigm that can reduce emissions, but can also bring societal benefits by offering a more affordable on-demand mobility option to the general public. Many car sharing service providers as well as automobile manufacturers are entering the competition by expanding both their EV fleets and renting/returning station networks, aiming to seize a share of the market and to bring car sharing to the zero emissions level. During their fast expansion, one determinant for success is the ability of predicting the demand of stations as the entire system is growing continuously. There are several challenges in this demand prediction problem: First, unlike most of the existing work which predicts demand only for static systems or at few stages of expansion, in the real world we often need to predict the demand as or even before stations are being deployed or closed, to provide information and decision support. Second, for the new stations to be deployed, there is no historical data available to help the prediction of their demand. Finally, the impact of deploying/closing stations on the other stations in the system can be complex. To address these challenges, we formulate the demand prediction problem in the context of fast expanding electric vehicle sharing systems, and propose a data-driven demand prediction approach which aims to model the expansion dynamics directly from the data. We use a local temporal encoding process to handle the historical data for each existing station, and a dynamic spatial encoding process to take correlations between stations into account with Graph Convolutional Neural Networks (GCN). The encoded features are fed to a multi-scale predictor, which forecasts both the long-term expected demand of the stations and their instant demand in the near future. We evaluate the proposed approach with real-world data collected from a major EV sharing platform for one year. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms the state of the art, showing up to three-fold performance gain in predicting demand for the expanding EV sharing systems.

The Role of Economic, Social and Environmental Benefits for Customer Loyalty in Different Sharing Services

Across five samples (i.e., apartment, car, garment, bike and food sharing), this paper shows that there are several reasons why customers want to maintain a relationship with a sharing service provider. Our paper contributes to research on the sharing economy and loyalty research by showing the diverse effects of economic, social and environmental benefits on customer loyalty. In contrast to the sharing industry’s communication to “serve a better world”, community or environmental motives do not generally drive consumers’ intentions to use a sharing provider again. Economic reasons dominate in all five sharing sectors. Thus, the economic perspective on the sharing economy trumps the motive of “doing good for others”. In the case of all five samples, it is self-centered benefits that drive customers to remain loyal. In consequence, sharing providers that would focus primarily on the social and environmental reasons of their customers would implement less effective means. Thus, their customers might be less loyal. One reason for the lower impact of social and environment benefits might be due to the industry itself. Consumers might for example lack comprehensive and reliable information about the environmental effects of sharing services. Thus, evaluating and communicating potential effects for the environment might help to increase consumers’ loyalty in the future. Furthermore, it is in the field of mobility services where all three benefits increase customer loyalty. Whereas carsharing consumers are mostly motivated by economic benefits, bike sharing consumers mostly maintain their relationship because of their desire to belong to a group. These different findings illustrate that specific transport services are used because of the different motives of consumers. The economic benefits of carsharing stem very probably from the high(er) costs of car purchases and their maintenance costs. Buying a bike requires less effort and, thus, economic reasons are less relevant. The importance of social benefits for bike sharing might result from several bike sharing firms investing vast sums of money in recent years and, thus, the visibility of the bikes in public. Moreover, on social media, these firms particularly emphasize the use of bikes in touristy and big cities, thus signaling belonging to a group of mindful and knowledgeable citizens. In consequence, consumers might feel that they are part of a voguish group as it was shown that trend affinity increase repurchase intentions for Airbnb accommodation. The findings also show that loyalty towards providers of apartment sharing is mostly driven by economic benefits. This can be explained by two reasons. First, the apartment sharers mainly advertise that people can save money. Second, consumers of apartment sharing might prefer apartment sharing because they travel more frequently than others. Thus, they need to focus on reasonable prices to continue to travel frequently. The benefit of belonging also increases loyalty, but to a lesser extent. Thus, pursuing the idea of belonging to a group of similar-minded people increases customer loyalty. However, we explain the rather small effect on loyalty with the lack of intense contact with the apartment provider and/or neighbors of the apartment or house. It appears that apartment users seem to cognitively prefer the idea of being a part of a group but not necessarily engage with others in the tourist spot. Furthermore, there is no proven effect of environmental motives on the loyalty of apartment sharers. This can be explained with either the lack of knowledge about the environmental effect, or the knowledge that apartment sharing might be less beneficial to the environment than communicated. To conclude, our paper provides not only detailed findings about five industries of the sharing economy but also delineates management implications for each single sector. In summary, we suggest that sharing providers should not transfer marketing means from other sharing sectors without reflecting upon this beforehand. The drivers of consumers’ loyalty are diverse and marketing means in one industry will be less effective in another.