Stakeholders' perceptions of the benefit of introducing an Australian intermediary system for vulnerable witnesses

Vulnerable witnesses (e.g. children and adults with communication impairment) face many barriers to testifying and achieving justice when participating in the criminal justice system. To date, reforms have been implemented in Australia to address these, yet the barriers remain. Several other countries have implemented an intermediary scheme, whereby an independent third party assists vulnerable witnesses to understand the questions and processes encountered during interviews and trials, and helps witnesses to be understood. This study provides a qualitative analysis of stakeholders' (N = 25 professionals) perceptions regarding the potential benefits of implementing an intermediary scheme in Australia. While all participants demonstrated an open-minded attitude to new reform in this area, their perspectives did not support the introduction of an intermediary scheme at this time. Stakeholders highlighted the need for improved use and effectiveness of current measures, and expressed concern about adding further complication to the system.

Moments of flux in intermediary liability for copyright infringement

This chapter provides an overview of a recent shift in regulatory strategies to address copyright infringement toward enlisting the assistance of general purpose Internet Service Providers. In Australia, the High Court held in 2012 that iiNet, a general purpose ISP, had no legal duty to police what its subscribers did with their internet connections. We provide an overview of three recent developments in Australian copyright law since that decision that demonstrate an emerging shift in the way that obligations are imposed on ISPs to govern the actions of their users without relying on secondary liability. The first is a new privately negotiated industry code that introduces a 'graduated response' system that requires ISPs to pass on warnings to subscribers who receive allegations of infringement. The second involves a recent series of Federal Court cases where rightsholders made a partially successful application to require ISPs to hand over the identifying details of subscribers whose households are alleged to have infringed copyright. The third is a new legislative scheme that will require ISPs to block access to foreign websites that 'facilitate' infringement. We argue that these shifts represent a greater sophistication in approaches to enrolling general purpose intermediaries in the regulatory project. We also suggest that these shifts represent a potentially disturbing trend towards enforcement of copyright law in a way that does not provide strong safeguards for the legitimate constitutional due process interests of users. We conclude with a call for greater attention and research to better understand how intermediaries make decisions when governing the conduct of users, how those decisions may be influenced by both state and non-state actors, and how the rights of individuals to due process can be adequately protected.

Intermediary Analysis in Propellant Decomposition

Formation of benzaldehyde and benzoic acid have been observed during the slow decomposition of polystyrene/ammonium perchlorale propellant. This has been attributed to the formation of polystyrene peroxide intermediate which on decomposition gives the above producis. The chemical scheme for the formation of polystyrene peroxide has been presented.

Toward a business-to-business channel incentives classification scheme

A recent focus on intermediary compensation underscores the need to organize the many complex incentives used by channel practitioners. Employing a grounded theory methodology, a channel incentives classification scheme is induced from 170 unique channel incentives used in 59 high technology suppliers’ channel programs. The incentives are organized into 16 subcategories and 5 major categories: Credible Channel Policies, Market Development Support, Supplemental Contact, High-Powered Incentives, and End-User Encouragements. Each incentive subcategory is discussed as a means of controlling reseller behaviors. Also, the conditions that give rise to the implementation of incentives are investigated through four testable research propositions.

Developing capabilities for ongoing learning and change in intermediary programs

In dynamic environments, firms seek to build capabilities which will permit them to become innovation and change ready. Programs offered by intermediaries, while varying greatly in content and format, are designed to support those firms wishing to enhance their competitiveness. Firms which participate in intermediary programs have displayed their willingness to overcome deficiencies or barriers to competitiveness through acquiring knowledge which is external to the firm. This paper reports on interviews with 24 firms who were involved in a MAP or TAP program offered by QMI Solutions. The findings of the research suggest that knowledge intermediaries serve to disrupt organisational paths and in so doing establish mechanisms for ongoing learning and change. They do this first by disrupting the firm with a positive learning experience and also by establishing processes for developing new relationships and access to knowledge which are critical for learning and change. It is the experience of learning through knowledge exchange which can trigger the pursuit of new paths and it is the processes involving new relations and knowledge processing that provides the micro-foundations for ongoing learning and change. This suggests that the role of intermediaries goes well beyond merely knowledge transfer to include longer term effects on the capability of organisations to innovate, which is critical to economic competitiveness and the survival rate of firms.

A novel nonrepudiable threshold multi-proxy multi-signature scheme with shared verification

Tzeng et al. proposed a new threshold multi-proxy multi-signature scheme with threshold verification. In their scheme, a subset of original signers authenticates a designated proxy group to sign on behalf of the original group. A message m has to be signed by a subset of proxy signers who can represent the proxy group. Then, the proxy signature is sent to the verifier group. A subset of verifiers in the verifier group can also represent the group to authenticate the proxy signature. Subsequently, there are two improved schemes to eliminate the security leak of Tzeng et al.’s scheme. In this paper, we have pointed out the security leakage of the three schemes and further proposed a novel threshold multi-proxy multi-signature scheme with threshold verification.