Copyright law and mash-ups: A policy paper

This report provides an analysis of the cultural, policy and legal implications of ‘mash-ups’. This study provides a short history of mash-ups, explaining how the current ‘remix culture’ builds upon a range of creative antecedents and cultural traditions, which valorised appropriation, quotation, and transformation. It provides modern examples of mash-ups, such as sound recordings, musical works, film and artistic works, focusing on works seen on You Tube and other online applications. In particular, it considers - * Literary mash-ups of canonical texts, including Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Wind Done Gone, After the Rain, and 60 Years Later; * Artistic mash-ups, highlighting the Obama Hope poster, the ‘Column’ case, and the competition for extending famous album covers; * Geographical mash-ups, most notably, the Google Australia bushfires map; * Musical mash-ups, such as The Grey Album and the work of Girl Talk; * Cinematic mash-ups, including remixes of There Will Be Blood and The Downfall; and This survey provides an analysis of why mash-up culture is valuable. It highlights the range of aesthetic, political, comic, and commercial impulses behind the creation and the dissemination of mash-ups. This report highlights the tensions between copyright law and mash-ups in particular cultural sectors. Second, this report emphasizes the importance of civil society institutions in promoting and defending mash-ups in both copyright litigation and policy debates. It provides a study of key organisations – including: * The Fair Use Project; * The Organization for Transformative Works; * Public Knowledge; * The Electronic Frontier Foundation; and * The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse This report suggests that much can be learnt from this network of organisations in the United States. There is a dearth of comparable legal clinics, advocacy groups, and creative institutions in Australia. As a result, the public interest values of copyright law have only received weak, incidental support from defendant companies – such as Network Ten and IceTV – with other copyright agendas. Third, this report canvasses a succinct model for legislative reform in respect of copyright law and mash-ups. It highlights: * The extent to which mash-ups are ‘tolerated uses’; * The conflicting judicial precedents on substantiality in Australia and the United States; * The debate over copyright exceptions relating to mash-ups and remixes; * The use of the take-down and notice system under the safe harbours regime by copyright owners in respect of mash-ups; * The impact of technological protection measures on mash-ups and remixes; * The possibility of statutory licensing in respect of mash-ups; * The use of Creative Commons licences; * The impact of moral rights protection upon mash-ups; * The interaction between economic and moral rights under copyright law; and * Questions of copyright law, freedom of expression, and political mash-ups.

Urban informatics and sustainable cities (Workshop)

One way to build more sustainable cities through network technologies is to start with monitoring the level and usage of resources as well as encourage citizens to participate in sustainable everyday practices. This workshop focuses on three fundamental areas of sustainable cities through urban informatics and ubiquitous computing: Environment: climate change adaptation Health: Food practices and cultures Civic engagement: citizen participation and interaction In particular, the workshop seeks to come up with locally (Oulu) specific ‘mash-up’ solutions that enhance the interactions of citizens with the physical city using data from various sources such as sensor networks. Students will work in groups to research, analyze, design, and develop local mash-ups. The workshop is designed to help students gain understanding of sustainability in a techno-social context, such as how the existing data can be effectively utilized, how to gather new data, and how to design efficient and engaging computer-human interactions. Further issues of consideration include access to and privacy of information and spaces, cultural specificities, and transdisciplinary research.

Remixing social media for location sharing on public urban screens

This paper introduces Sapporo World Window (hereafter SWW), an interactive social media mash-up deployed in a newly built urban public underground space utilising ten public displays and urban dwellers’ mobile phones. SWW enables users to share their favourite locations with fellow citizens and visitors through integrating various social media contents to a coherent whole. The system aims to engage citizens in socio-cultural and technological interactions, turning the underground space into a creative and lively social space. We present first insight from an initial user study in a real world setting.

Strolls project and website

The Strolls project was originally devised for a colleague in Finland and a cross cultural event event called AU goes to FI – the core concept is both re-experience of and presentation of the ‘everyday’ experience of life rather than the usual cultural icons. The project grew and was presented as a mash-up site with google maps (truna aka j.turner & David Browning). The site is now cob-webbed but some of the participant made strolls are archived here. The emphasis on the walk and taking of image stills (as opposed to the straightforward video) is based on a notion of partaking of the environment with technology. The process involves a strange and distinct embodiment as the maker must stop and choose each subsequent shot in order to build up the final animated sequence. The viewer becomes subtly involved in the maker’s decisions.

Open GeoGadget Framework. Entorno de explotación de geoservicios basados en EzWeb

El objetivo del proyecto Open Geogadget Framework es el desarrollo de una plataforma Software que posibilite la composición y compartición de Interfaces para obtener conocimiento de Servicios Web de Información Geográfica estándares, mediante componentes tipo gadget's inteligentes, de una manera sencilla y rápida para el usuario; permitiendo explotar geo-información, sin necesidad de programar complicadas aplicaciones Web tipo mash-up

Moodle & Co. auf dem Weg zur Personal Learning Environment

Ausgehend von der typischen IT‐Infrastruktur für E‐Learning an Hochschulen auf der einen Seite sowie vom bisherigen Stand der Forschung zu Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) auf der anderen Seite zeigt dieser Beitrag auf, wie bestehende Werkzeuge bzw. Dienste zusammengeführt und für die Anforderungen der modernen, rechnergestützten Präsenzlehre aufbereitet werden können. Für diesen interdisziplinären Entwicklungsprozess bieten sowohl klassische Softwareentwicklungsverfahren als auch bestehende PLE‐Modelle wenig Hilfestellung an. Der Beitrag beschreibt die in einem campusweiten Projekt an der Universität Potsdam verfolgten Ansätze und die damit erzielten Ergebnisse. Dafür werden zunächst typische Lehr‐/Lern‐bzw. Kommunikations‐Szenarien identifiziert, aus denen Anforderungen an eine unterstützende Plattform abgeleitet werden. Dies führt zu einer umfassenden Sammlung zu berücksichtigender Dienste und deren Funktionen, die gemäß den Spezifika ihrer Nutzung in ein Gesamtsystem zu integrieren sind. Auf dieser Basis werden grundsätzliche Integrationsansätze und technische Details dieses Mash‐Ups in einer Gesamtschau aller relevanten Dienste betrachtet und in eine integrierende Systemarchitektur überführt. Deren konkrete Realisierung mit Hilfe der Portal‐Technologie Liferay wird dargestellt, wobei die eingangs definierten Szenarien aufgegriffen und exemplarisch vorgestellt werden. Ergänzende Anpassungen im Sinne einer personalisierbaren bzw. adaptiven Lern‐(und Arbeits‐)Umgebung werden ebenfalls unterstützt und kurz aufgezeigt.

A Personal Agent Architecture for Task Automation in the Web of Data. Bringing intelligence to everyday tasks

Internet está evolucionando hacia la conocida como Live Web. En esta nueva etapa en la evolución de Internet, se pone al servicio de los usuarios multitud de streams de datos sociales. Gracias a estas fuentes de datos, los usuarios han pasado de navegar por páginas web estáticas a interacturar con aplicaciones que ofrecen contenido personalizado, basada en sus preferencias. Cada usuario interactúa a diario con multiples aplicaciones que ofrecen notificaciones y alertas, en este sentido cada usuario es una fuente de eventos, y a menudo los usuarios se sienten desbordados y no son capaces de procesar toda esa información a la carta. Para lidiar con esta sobresaturación, han aparecido múltiples herramientas que automatizan las tareas más habituales, desde gestores de bandeja de entrada, gestores de alertas en redes sociales, a complejos CRMs o smart-home hubs. La contrapartida es que aunque ofrecen una solución a problemas comunes, no pueden adaptarse a las necesidades de cada usuario ofreciendo una solucion personalizada. Los Servicios de Automatización de Tareas (TAS de sus siglas en inglés) entraron en escena a partir de 2012 para dar solución a esta liminación. Dada su semejanza, estos servicios también son considerados como un nuevo enfoque en la tecnología de mash-ups pero centra en el usuarios. Los usuarios de estas plataformas tienen la capacidad de interconectar servicios, sensores y otros aparatos con connexión a internet diseñando las automatizaciones que se ajustan a sus necesidades. La propuesta ha sido ámpliamante aceptada por los usuarios. Este hecho ha propiciado multitud de plataformas que ofrecen servicios TAS entren en escena. Al ser un nuevo campo de investigación, esta tesis presenta las principales características de los TAS, describe sus componentes, e identifica las dimensiones fundamentales que los defines y permiten su clasificación. En este trabajo se acuña el termino Servicio de Automatización de Tareas (TAS) dando una descripción formal para estos servicios y sus componentes (llamados canales), y proporciona una arquitectura de referencia. De igual forma, existe una falta de herramientas para describir servicios de automatización, y las reglas de automatización. A este respecto, esta tesis propone un modelo común que se concreta en la ontología EWE (Evented WEb Ontology). Este modelo permite com parar y equiparar canales y automatizaciones de distintos TASs, constituyendo un aporte considerable paraa la portabilidad de automatizaciones de usuarios entre plataformas. De igual manera, dado el carácter semántico del modelo, permite incluir en las automatizaciones elementos de fuentes externas sobre los que razonar, como es el caso de Linked Open Data. Utilizando este modelo, se ha generado un dataset de canales y automatizaciones, con los datos obtenidos de algunos de los TAS existentes en el mercado. Como último paso hacia el lograr un modelo común para describir TAS, se ha desarrollado un algoritmo para aprender ontologías de forma automática a partir de los datos del dataset. De esta forma, se favorece el descubrimiento de nuevos canales, y se reduce el coste de mantenimiento del modelo, el cual se actualiza de forma semi-automática. En conclusión, las principales contribuciones de esta tesis son: i) describir el estado del arte en automatización de tareas y acuñar el término Servicio de Automatización de Tareas, ii) desarrollar una ontología para el modelado de los componentes de TASs y automatizaciones, iii) poblar un dataset de datos de canales y automatizaciones, usado para desarrollar un algoritmo de aprendizaje automatico de ontologías, y iv) diseñar una arquitectura de agentes para la asistencia a usuarios en la creación de automatizaciones. ABSTRACT The new stage in the evolution of the Web (the Live Web or Evented Web) puts lots of social data-streams at the service of users, who no longer browse static web pages but interact with applications that present them contextual and relevant experiences. Given that each user is a potential source of events, a typical user often gets overwhelmed. To deal with that huge amount of data, multiple automation tools have emerged, covering from simple social media managers or notification aggregators to complex CRMs or smart-home Hub/Apps. As a downside, they cannot tailor to the needs of every single user. As a natural response to this downside, Task Automation Services broke in the Internet. They may be seen as a new model of mash-up technology for combining social streams, services and connected devices from an end-user perspective: end-users are empowered to connect those stream however they want, designing the automations they need. The numbers of those platforms that appeared early on shot up, and as a consequence the amount of platforms following this approach is growing fast. Being a novel field, this thesis aims to shed light on it, presenting and exemplifying the main characteristics of Task Automation Services, describing their components, and identifying several dimensions to classify them. This thesis coins the term Task Automation Services (TAS) by providing a formal definition of them, their components (called channels), as well a TAS reference architecture. There is also a lack of tools for describing automation services and automations rules. In this regard, this thesis proposes a theoretical common model of TAS and formalizes it as the EWE ontology This model enables to compare channels and automations from different TASs, which has a high impact in interoperability; and enhances automations providing a mechanism to reason over external sources such as Linked Open Data. Based on this model, a dataset of components of TAS was built, harvesting data from the web sites of actual TASs. Going a step further towards this common model, an algorithm for categorizing them was designed, enabling their discovery across different TAS. Thus, the main contributions of the thesis are: i) surveying the state of the art on task automation and coining the term Task Automation Service; ii) providing a semantic common model for describing TAS components and automations; iii) populating a categorized dataset of TAS components, used to learn ontologies of particular domains from the TAS perspective; and iv) designing an agent architecture for assisting users in setting up automations, that is aware of their context and acts in consequence.

Web технологии и инструменти за създаване и управление на съдържание

Доклад, поместен в сборника на Националната конференция "Образованието в информационното общество", Пловдив, май 2011 г.

Hardware reduction in digital delta-sigma modulators via error masking - part I: MASH DDSM

Two classes of techniques have been developed to whiten the quantization noise in digital delta-sigma modulators (DDSMs): deterministic and stochastic. In this two-part paper, a design methodology for reduced-complexity DDSMs is presented. The design methodology is based on error masking. Rules for selecting the word lengths of the stages in multistage architectures are presented. We show that the hardware requirement can be reduced by up to 20% compared with a conventional design, without sacrificing performance. Simulation and experimental results confirm theoretical predictions. Part I addresses MultistAge noise SHaping (MASH) DDSMs; Part II focuses on single-quantizer DDSMs..

Understanding the physical processes of pollutant build-up and wash-off on roof surfaces

Pollutants originating with roof runoff can have a significant impact to urban stormwater quality. This signifies the importance of understanding pollutant processes on roof surfaces. Additionally, knowledge of pollutant processes on roof surfaces is important as roofs are used as the primary catchment surface for domestic rainwater harvesting. In recent years, rainwater harvesting has become one of the primary sustainable water management techniques to counteract the growing demand for potable water. Similar to all impervious services, pollutants associated with roof runoff undergo two primary processes: build-up and wash-off. The knowledge relating to these processes is limited. This paper presents outcomes of an in-depth research study into pollutant build-up and wash-off for roof surfaces. The knowledge will be important in order to develop appropriate strategies to safeguard rainwater users from possible health risks.