Terms Of Rights Research Articles

The Right to Process Data for Machine Learning Purposes in the EU

Europe is now at a crucial juncture in deciding how to deploy data driven technologies in ways that encourage democracy, prosperity and the well-being of European citizens. Normative preferences about how related technology laws ought to be designed should define sustainable exponential innovation policy. These preferences are dynamic and contextual. The upcoming European Data Act provides a major window of opportunity to change the story. In this respect, it is key that the European Commission takes firm action, removes overbearing policy and regulatory obstacles, strenuously harmonizes relevant legislation and provides concrete incentives and mechanisms for access, sharing and re-use of data. The article argues that to ensure an efficiently functioning European data-driven economy, a new and as yet unused term must be introduced to the field of AI & law: the right to process data for machine learning purposes. To make AI and machine learning thrive, we should critically re-examine the applicability and scope of intellectual property rights to data, including copyrights, sui generis database rights and trade secrets. The article demonstrates that exclusive de facto possession or control over machine learning input training, testing and validation datasets hinders healthy competition, a fair level playing field and rapid European innovation. The article rejects exclusive legal ownership rights over autonomously machine generated non-personal data, including AI made creations and inventions: this output belongs to the public domain. Machines do not need incentives, people need freedom of expression and businesses need freedom to operate. Synchronous to harmonized legislation, the social impact of digital transformation can be balanced and regulated by the architecture of digital systems. Embedding values in design should become a fundamental starting point of our data paradigm. Data has become a primary resource that should not be enclosed or commodified per se, but used for the common good. Commons based production and data for social good initiatives should be stimulated by the state. We need not to think in terms of exclusive, private property on data, but in terms of rights and freedoms to use, (modalities of) access, process and share data. If necessary and desirable for the progress of society, the state can implement new forms of property. Against this background the article explores normative justifications for open innovation, drawing inspiration from the works of canonical thinkers such as Locke, Marx, Kant and Hegel. Whether or not data as digital assets are ultimately admitted to the numerus clausus of legal objects i.e. acknowledged as subject matter eligible for private ownership, or whether other modalities and states of property are being developed, the article maintains that there should also be exceptions to (de facto, economic or legal) ownership claims on data that provide user rights and freedom to operate in the setting of AI model training. The article concludes that this exception is conceivable as a legal concept analogous to a quasi, imperfect usufruct in the form of a right to process data for machine learning purposes. A combination of usus and fructus (ius utendi et fruendi), not for land but for primary resource data. A right to process data that works within the context of AI and the Internet of Things (IoT), and that fits in the EU acquis communautaire. Such a right makes access, sharing and re-use of data possible, and helps to fulfil the European Strategy for Data’s desiderata.

Symbolism matters: The effect of same-sex marriage legalization on partnership stability

Registered partnership (RP) and marriage in the Netherlands are identical in terms of rights and obligations but may differ in symbolism. Exploiting same-sex marriage legalization (SSML) in the Netherlands as a policy shock, we investigate the effect of marital symbolism on partnership stability. Applying a mixed competing risks model to administrative micro-data, we disentangle selectivity into marriage from the effect of getting married. Our main finding is that partnerships that transformed into marriage had a substantially lower separation rate. We take this result as evidence of the symbolic effect of marriage stabilizing partnerships. We discuss economic mechanisms of marital symbolism related to marriage premiums.

The Right to Rebel against Violations of Human Rights: A New Role for the Responsibility to Protect?

The right to rebel is a neglected topic in international law. The reasons for this lack of interest are to be found in the centrality of States as subjects of international law and their understandable reluctance to address non-State violence in terms of right. This approach is reflected in the tendency to look at opposition groups as illegitimate, frequently labeling them as terrorists. However, non-State armed groups are highly heterogeneous and their aims and motivations to use violence should matter at the international law level. This paper argues that the responsibility to protect (R2P) could provide the theoretical basis for the right to rebel against gross and systematic violations of human rights. The R2P doctrine maintains that each State bears the primary responsibility to protect the population within its borders; when it fails to do so, this responsibility is shared with the international community. In extreme circumstances, and where authorized by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), foreign States may use force in order to stop gross and systematic violations of human rights. If international law accepts forcible interventions by States into the internal affairs of other States in order to guard against gross human rights violations, why should it negate the right of the victims of such violations to mount a resistance of its own? International law has increasingly addressed the use of force by States within their borders. International humanitarian law (IHL) regulating non-international armed conflicts (NIACs) is now a fully developed field of studies. On the other hand, State violence in peaceful times has been taken away from the domaine reservee: the respect of international human rights law (IHRL) does matter at the international level, as confirmed by the R2P doctrine. Both R2P and the increasing attention for the respect of human rights by governments are in line with a top-down approach that pervades nearly all fields of international law. States are the central subjects at the international level; what happens within their borders might affect their legitimacy in the eyes of their peers, inter alia, but in no way does it grant a right to rebel to non-state actors within those borders. This paper challenges this traditional top-down approach. Several scholars have demonstrated that non-State actors can become subjects of specific branches of international law, such as IHL and IHRL. Now may be the time to take a step further and recognize a more active role for non-State actors. Victims of heinous human rights violations should not be passive subjects, waiting for foreign States to react to violations of their human rights: granting them rights would be pointless without a related right to defend and protect them. International law would thus regulate both state and non-State violence, and the latter would be legitimate at least when directed to stop massive and systematic human rights violations. This article is organized as follows. First, it focuses on the attempts of international law to address the right to rebel. Generally speaking, international law does not prohibit, nor expressly allow rebellions. Nevertheless, the right to rebel has been at the center of an animated debate through the centuries; furthermore, it has been object of codification at the domestic, regional, and international level. This paper then examines the ways in which the R2P doctrine could operate as legal basis for the right to rebel against human rights violations. Finally, it investigates what could mean, in practice, to recognize a right to rebel, especially with regard to foreign interventions.

The Limits of Liberal Democracy

This critical commentary discusses Stephan Lessenich’s recent work on democracy. It argues that—to understand the structural boundaries of welfare capitalist democracy—we must critically unearth the limits of liberal democracy. This article first maintains that the absence of an economic democratization dimension is an outcome of liberal democracy’s shrinking of the meaning of the political. It next claims that defining democracy in terms of rights does not duly consider how these unfolded historically and recently, nor clarifies their relation with negative freedom. The article then contends that the environmentally destructive dialectic of democracy and the belittlement of reproductive work stem from the constitution of a narrowly defined economic sphere, from which “reproductive activities” are excluded. Finally, the text reflects on what “democratizing democracy” should entail.

DALIT MIGRANT WORKERS AND THEIR RIGHT TO THE CITY

Increasing migration is a result of a consequence and a cause of the growth of cities. As such cities are now becoming crucibles of peoples of different socio-cultural and economic backgrounds and origins. Generally, people migrate to cities for various reasons such as possibility of jobs and employment opportunities and freedom from poverty, unemployment, limited job opportunities and the socio-political unrest at the place of origin. However, their life and experiences at the place of destination are usually characterized by various uncertainties, discriminations, and so on, In this context, the paper will try to conceptually locate the “Dalit migrant workers” at the place of destination and their relationship with the city and their claims in terms of rights to the city and also try to understand their negotiations with the urban commons; physical, social, economic, and cultural. The paper will also try to explore what fails the migrant workers to get “recognition” as other city dwellers. And lastly, the paper will also analyze the role of the state apparatus and their policies in providing equal access and recognition of migrant workers in Indian cities. The paper will make use of descriptive method based on secondary sources and field experiences. KEYWORDS: Migration, Dalit migrant workers, right to the city, urban commons

Perlindungan Hukum dan Hak Waris Istri Kedua dalam Perkawian Poligami Tanpa Izin

Polygamy marriage must be done with the consent or permission of the wife so that this creates a new legal problem regarding the position of the second wife, both in terms of rights and obligations, children, assets in the marriage as well as problems in the distribution of inheritance. The purpose of this paper is to determine the legal protection of a second wife to their legal status in polygamy marriage and to find out the rights of wife's inheritance in polygamy marriage according to Islamic fiqh and positive law. This research method is normative juridical with descriptive analysis research type. Legal protection for the second wife to get the rights and recognition must legalize marriage (isbat nikah) in the Religious Court. The second inheritance right of the wife to the polygamy marriage without permission is the right to inheritance with her husband since the marriage took place and all wives have the same rights to the inheritance within 1/8 if they have children and ¼ if they do not have children.

Intersecting and dynamic gender rights to néré, a food tree species in Burkina Faso

This study examines women's bundles of rights to exploit the pods of a valuable food-tree species in Burkina Faso, Parkia biglobosa , locally known as néré. In West Africa, néré pods have traditionally been collected and processed by women and sold as soumbala , a highly-valued condiment. Given its value to local livelihoods, néré is a prized tree that is subject to a particular tenure regime. This study investigates the social factors that define women's harvesting rights to néré pods in the centre-west region of Burkina Faso through the lens of intersectionality. Whereas customary land tenure in Burkina Faso grants men primary ownership and use rights to land, different groups of women are entitled to harvest food-tree products such as néré pods, in defined spaces. This study shows how women, who are usually presented as a homogeneous group in terms of rights, are socially differentiated on the basis of several factors, such as residence status, ethnicity and seniority within their lineage. This differentiation shapes the nested bundles of rights held by different groups of women on different land types. Amid broad-ranging demographic, market, and environmental changes, rights to exploit néré pods are shifting and contested, and insecurity of rights challenges the sustainability and equitability of néré harvesting. • Complex spatial and social dynamics shape women's access to land and néré fruits. • Such access rights depend on the intersection of gender, ethnicity and marital status. • Women negotiate and develop coping strategies to address insecure access conditions. • Oversimplified land policies fail to address complex, shifting tree tenure systems.

Cornered by PAs: Adopting rights-based approaches to enable cost-effective conservation and climate action

Abstract We analyze how governments and the international community expand protected areas (PAs) to reduce biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation at a cost to indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) in terms of rights and conflict. This contradicts commitments made by the conservation community to UNDRIP and Indigenous Peoples’ (IPs) and other human rights and Aichi Biodiversity Target 11. We build on information indigenous and conservation organization leaders shared with the UN Special Rapporteur for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the 2016 UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues of complaints against governments for violation of IPs’ rights, and link these to extensive, like evidence in the literature. Case studies from countries of priority biodiversity (Panama, Peru, India, Republic of Congo and Indonesia) broaden the evidence. Globally IPs and local communities conserve nearly 2 billion hectares of land for diverse reasons (sacred, critical resource areas, water). Much of their contributory effort goes unrecognized and disrespected, even though IPLCs invest significant time and money in forest and land conservation—concentrated in low and middle-income countries of priority biodiversity with spending gaps. While more of these countries endorse IPLC conservation, the rights still remain limited in many countries. Across much of the world, IPLCs have become ‘cornered’ by PA boundaries that overlap their lands while PA policies and neighboring commercial concessions further separate them from land and livelihoods and justify killings and evictions, and livelihood and identity loss. Though IUCN PA governance types embrace IPLC management, the reality is a preponderance of State-owned-and-managed PAs. This does not help meet conservation targets. Globally endorsed principles for grievance and reconciliation exist but have not been applied; meanwhile IPLCs invest heavily in conservation with limited support from governments and donors who play a predominant role in setting global biodiversity targets.

Mitigating the hostile environment: the role of the workplace in EU migrant experience of Brexit

ABSTRACT The rejection of free movement embodied in the 2016 Referendum vote created tremendous uncertainty regarding the immediate and future legal rights of EU nationals living in the UK. Drawing on interviews with EU staff and management at three universities, this paper asks how Brexit was experienced by highly skilled migrants in a sector reliant on EU migration, and the ways that employment in higher education buffered staff against its impact. Interviews reveal the ways that the Brexit vote disrupted previous perceptions of life in the UK, creating new feelings of vulnerability in terms of rights as well as public acceptance. Symbolic and practical support provided by management, as well as informal support from colleagues, cushioned EU employees against this shock. At the same time, employee satisfaction with employer response was shaped by perceptions of a neo-liberal turn within the University, with a subset of (primarily) academics expecting more personalised support and political involvement in the Brexit debate. Ironically, at the institutional level, the university with the most neo-liberal employment model was the most concerned and proactive in response to the Brexit vote, due to reliance on ready access to the EU to fulfil contingent labour contracts.

The Competent Citizen: Exploring the Normative Side of Qualified Notions of Citizenship

Citizenship is a key notion in political philosophy. Its main content has been discussed in terms of rights and duties. This contribution argues that a recent debate on qualified notions of citizenship sheds new light on the normative discussion. Citizenship is no longer regarded as a unified notion; instead rights, duties and even virtues of political persons are part of a discussion on “economic citizenship”, “the educated citizen” and “environmental citizenship”. This leads to a re-assessment of citizenship in terms of “competences” and its enabling conditions.

Emotional Intelligence Levels among Hearing-impaired and Visually Impaired Students in Jordan

The study examined the differences in the emotional intelligence levels among hearing-impaired and visually impaired students in Mafraq Governorate, Jordan. The study sample consists of 198 students; it is divided into 144 hearing-impaired and 54 visually impaired students who are enrolled in centers, schools, and institutions of special education of the academic year (2018-2019) in Jordan. To achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher developed a 38-item emotional intelligence scale in terms of four domains: Emotional knowledge, Emotional regulation, Empathy, and Social competence. The significance of validity and reliability is verified. The study results showed that the total degree of emotional intelligence among hearing-impaired students was low (M=1.51). The total degree of the emotional intelligence of the visually impaired students was medium (M=3.64). The results also revealed that there were statistically significant differences among hearing-impaired and visually impaired students in emotional intelligence as a whole and in all fields; the differences went in favor of visually-impaired students. The study recommended that the research and educational authorities, psychologists, and media officials should pay attention to individuals with auditory and visual disabilities and give them similar importance compared to normal people in terms of rights, facilities, values, and positive attitudes towards them.

UNESCO’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage: Sustainable development perspectives

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage has not only introduced a conceptual and applicative expansion of the interdisciplinary subjects applied to cultural heritage, but it has also increasingly encouraged an integrated planning of sustainable development policies for territories and communities that convey and shape their relative cultural and anthropomorphic identity, along with the re-thinking of the collective dimension of heritage in terms of rights to creation and fruition as well as the related cultural management. This article presents a reflection on the opportunity to identify and develop the relationship between tangible and intangible heritage as resources that are essential to one another. To this purpose, two illustrative UNESCO application paths are examined. The first relates to the recognition of The Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato as a Cultural Landscape of World Heritage, pursuant to the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, while the second concerns the inscription of the intangible element The Celebration of Celestinian Forgiveness in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of the UNESCO 2003 Convention. Due to differences in paradigms and application criteria under the two UNESCO Conventions, which are also detectable in the Italian regulatory context, these case studies offer the opportunity to advance an interdisciplinary reflection aimed at rethinking safeguarding contexts, as well as enhancement and increasing accessibility of cultural heritage. As a result of the reflection, an analysis of the concept of living in relation to the anthropological definition of organic landscape, representation of collective identities (community-based heritage), inclusive places and sociability (public policy), communicative restitution (universal ethical values), participatory management (participative brand making), and integrated sustainability is derived.

Combining activities of the сhief editor and the host of information program: new regional specifics (on the example of GTRK “Vladivostok”)

Universality finds new incarnations in practical journalistic activity. In regional editions a different type of universality appears, expressed in the combination of the activities of the chief editor and the news anchor. The article analyzes the experience of the GTRK “Vladivostok”, which broadcasts on the territory of the Primorsky Krai. The problem of the emergence of a new trend in journalism is still poorly understood. Now the chief editor, who is responsible for the work of the whole team and forms the news program, needs to combine various journalistic communicative roles, including technical and managerial skills. Based on a comparative analysis of job descriptions, the author makes assumptions about how compatible these two professions are in terms of rights and functional responsibilities, and what is their fundamental difference. When examining two job descriptions, it becomes clear that the work of the chief editor essentially absorbs the duties of the presenter, which means that it allows you to combine editorial activities with the conduct of broadcasts.

Componentes del derecho a la privacidad

A pesar de las extensas fuentes documentales que existen en materia de derecho a la privacidad, en este trabajo pretendemos hacer algunas aproximaciones metodológicas al contenido y alcance de esta rama compuesta del Derecho. En la propuesta sostenemos que se deben tomar en cuenta tres dimensiones para su entendimiento: la mínima injerencia del poder público tanto en la dinámica como en las relaciones de las personas en la órbita privada; el marco jurídico sobre protección de los datos personales; y la garantía y respeto al libre desarrollo de la personalidad. En esta trilogía podríamos incorporar todas las instituciones que derivan del orden jurídico que de alguna manera regulan o atienden a la privacidad de las personas, enmarcando o proponiendo un concepto objetivo de derecho a la privacidad al que podríamos agregar una idea subjetiva de derecho a la privacidad. También destacamos la importancia que reviste definir el contexto en el que las relaciones transgreden la privacidad, las cuales pueden ser entre el poder público y los particulares o entre particulares.

“If the People Do Not Raise the Issue, the Officials Will Not Investigate”: Moral Citizenship among China’s Fake-Fighters

Are China’s fake-fighters (打假, dajia) heroic consumer activists or morally dubious profit-seekers? Do they make the marketplace safer for ordinary consumers by using the law to “fight” fake, dangerous and falsely advertised goods, or benefit only themselves through the exploitation of legal loopholes? Since the 1994 Consumer Protection Law introduced a fiscal incentive that made fake-fighting a viable career, its practitioners have struggled to define their work against these stereotypical characterisations. In this empirical article, I show that fake-fighters reject criticisms of their motivations while at the same time avoiding censure by party-state authorities wary of activism couched in terms of rights by framing their work as a practice of moral citizenship. Fake-fighters believe it is their responsibility to highlight potential dangers in the marketplace, disseminate legal knowledge, and, crucially, prompt the government to enforce pre-existing laws to better protect consumers and advance national development.

Biodiversity offsets and payments for environmental services: Clarifying the family ties

Biodiversity Offsets (BO) and Payments for Environmental Services (PES) are sometimes used interchangeably to characterize innovative economic tools to conserve or restore biodiversity, ecosystems, or their services. We assume that a confusion between PES and BO can have negative implications for biodiversity conservation. In this paper, we argue that these two tools follow different targets and have different founding principles, and thus, their basic mode of functioning would only coincide under special circumstances and institutional contexts. Here, we propose a new definition of BO, delimiting them more clearly from PES, and use practical examples to underscore conceptual differences. Both tools require specific policy framework conditions, in terms of rights, responsibilities, and enforcement. If unmet, however, the implications for biodiversity conservation outcomes are stronger for BO than for PES since BO are explicitly linked to biodiversity losses, while PES typically are not. PES experiences can certainly inform BO implementation vis-à-vis contract design and enforcement, but these PES lessons need to be enacted vis-à-vis BO specific requirements, in order not to underestimate generic risks in their implementation: if a PES scheme fails, payments can be stopped; if a BO fails, biodiversity losses remain.

The Rights of Queer Children

The ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (crc) has long been hailed as a major event in the realisation of children’s human rights, combining the need for protection with a desire to grant agency through recognition of the evolving capacities of the child. Yet the idea of children’s agency as articulated in the crc excluded sexual identity and expression, and ushered in an incomplete emancipation for lgbtiq children; children who are gender non-conforming; and children whose sexual expression otherwise conflicts with heterosexuality – hereafter queer children. I argue that while the crc granted children agency in terms of rights to expression, thought and conscience, it denied children sexual agency. Queer children’s political agency is intimately connected to sexual identity and agency, because unlike their heterosexual counterparts, queer children’s identity and expression is sexualised while, at the same time, they are excluded from adult, identity-based movements.

Legal rights and nature’s contributions to people: Is there a connection?

It has been claimed that approaches to conservation framed in terms of nature’s contributions to people are congenial to ones framed in terms of rights. This paper provides what has so far been lacking – namely, an argument in support of this claim. The argument takes its cue from the observation that nature’s contributions to people can take the form of contributions to cultural identity. It is then argued that in some such cases one can justify conserving the relevant natural entities by appealing to the relevant people’s legal right to their own cultural identity. In such instances, it is proposed, appeals to nature’s contributions to people really are consonant with appeals to legal rights. The argument is developed by means of a discussion of the cultural value of reindeer herding in Saami communities in northern Europe.

Thresholds of Empire: Women, Biosecurity, and the Zika Chemical Vector Program in Puerto Rico

The recent emergence of a new strand of the Zika virus evinces the global entwinement of viral, human, and animal ecologies on a dynamic planet. Capable of shaping physiological development in utero and transmittable by both mosquitoes and sex, Zika ignited fears about the plasticity of the human form in the face of infectious disease, the permeability of nation-state borders to infectious disease, and the lifetime health care costs of infectious disease. In the United States, these fears were mapped onto the “unincorporated territory” of Puerto Rico, where one fifth of the population was predicted to contract the virus. This article examines U.S. government chemical intervention in Puerto Rico, which I argue was underpinned by a contradictory mapping of the island as inside the United States in terms of risk and outside the United States in terms of rights. Puerto Rican women were spatialized as the threshold between the agency of the virus and the future of the U.S. population. When they were perceived to fail in properly managing their bodies and homes, aerial chemical fumigation was threatened in an aggressive display of U.S. sovereign power. This article offers careful and critical geographic analysis of how imperial state power is extended in the name of health and how women in different places are made into biosecurity objects. It also notes a broader destructive logic that positions the reproductive capacities of poor women outside of Northern states as the pivot between an increasingly unruly nonhuman world and the future. Key Words: biosecurity, chemical geographies, empire (Puerto Rico), gender, Zika.

Deklaracje interpretacyjne jako instrument transformacji międzynarodowego prawa inwestycyjnego. Ku ograniczeniu aktywizmu sędziowskiego

Międzynarodowe prawo inwestycyjne przynajmniej od dekady jest przedmiotem znaczącej krytyki z powodu sposobu orzekania trybunałów arbitrażowych. W rezultacie zarówno państwa, jak i organizacje międzynarodowe poszukują środków ograniczenia aktywizmu sędziowskiego tych trybunałów. Do najczęściej stosowanych mechanizmów w tym zakresie zalicza się renegocjacje istniejących traktatów inwestycyjnych, zawieranie nowych porozumień, jak również wypowiadanie istniejących traktatów. Mechanizmy te, zasadniczo najbardziej pożądane i gwarantujące największą pewność w zakresie praw i obowiązków stron umów, posiadają również istotne mankamenty, przede wszystkim związane z czasem wymaganym, aby osiągnąć pożądany rezultat. Niniejszy artykuł postuluje, że dla ograniczenia aktywizmu sędziowskiego w międzynarodowym prawie inwestycyjnym stosunkowo optymalnym rozwiązaniem mogą być deklaracje interpretacyjne. Mimo że nie zapewniają one takiej pewności prawnej, jak nowy traktat, to jednak z uwagi na relatywną łatwość ich uzgodnienia i akceptacji deklaracje te pozwalają znacznie szybciej osiągnąć skutek prawny w zakresie rozumienia traktatu zgodnie z intencją jego stron.