Below is my background paper for a conference held at IDS, Sussex University, a few months ago. It is being submitted for a publication, so I may need to withdraw this draft once the paper is accepted. Comments welcome!

In Ofcom v Information Commissioner, the Information Tribunal held that radio frequency waves from a BTS antenna qualifies as emission under EIR, which as a consequence, does not qualify for protection from disclosure, even if the information is deemed confidential. The discussion below is hilarious:

Mr Facenna, Counsel for T-Mobile, accepted that radio frequency waves may correctly be characterised as both "energy" and "radiation". He also accepted that it was a correct use of the English language to say that they were “emitted” from a base station. However, he argued that they nevertheless did not constitute "emissions" for the purposes of the EIR because the circumstances in which the EIR came into existence require the word to be given a particularly narrow meaning. Those circumstances were that EIR implemented the Directive which included, in its fifth recital, a statement that it was itself intended to be consistent with the 1998 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters ("the Aarhus Convention ").

Mr Facenna accepted that, even if we accepted that base station radiation should not be treated as "emissions", he was still faced with the presence of the words "energy" and "radiation" in subparagraph (b) of the definition. However, he argued that these two "factors" do not affect, and are not likely to affect, any of the elements of the environment referred to in subparagraph (a). At one stage this proposition seemed to be leading Mr Facenna and Mr Choudhury, Counsel for the Information Commissioner, into a debate on the scientific properties of radio waves. It was agreed that they are capable of having an effect on solid matter they come into contact with (for example, the agitation of the molecules of a piece of meat by microwaves for the purpose of cooking). However, it was debated whether or not they have any effect on the air through which they pass en route to such matter. We do not feel qualified to express any view on whether the less dense molecular structure of air results in all radio wave frequencies passing through it with no effect at all on individual molecules. We do not believe that it is necessary for us to do so. The definition is not intended to set out a scientific test and its words should be given their plain and natural meaning. On that basis we believe that radio wave emissions that pass through the atmosphere from a base station to any solid component of the natural world are likely to affect one or more of the elements listed in subparagraph (a) or the…

For all of these reasons we conclude that "emissions" in both subparagraph (b) of the definition of environmental information and regulation 12(9) should be given its plain and natural meaning and not the artificially narrow one set out in the IPPC Directive. As we have indicated it is accepted, on that basis, that radio wave radiation emanating from a base station is an emission.

It’s really nice to spice up the court with some Planck/Maxwell wave/particle duality

The UK Bribery Act 2011 has just been given royal assent. Some of its offences covers British companies overseas.

s. 12 (5): An offence is committed under section 7 irrespective of whether the acts or omissions which form part of the offence take place in the United Kingdom or elsewhere.

 

s.7 Failure of commercial organisations to prevent bribery

(1) A relevant commercial organisation (“C”) is guilty of an offence under this
section if a person (“A”) associated with C bribes another person intending—
(a) to obtain or retain business for C, or
(b) to obtain or retain an advantage in the conduct of business for C.

Download the Original version of the Bribery Act here.

The Serious Fraud Office is in charge in enforcing these laws. There has been prosecutions involving Indonesian subsidiaries of an English companies in the past.

Detikcom reported that two Indonesians selling Ipad through the popular www.kaskus.us forum had been prossecuted. Indonesian consumer law Article 8(1) does prohibit business actors to sell computerware without equipping it with Indonesian language manual. Failure to comply entails a 5 year imprisonment. The law was, of course, meant to protect consumer. Sadly, it does not differentiate retail selling with direct selling. As a result, anyone wishing to sell their computer products through direct selling, will be liable for imprisonment, up to 5 years.

Kasus ini bermula ketika Dian dan Rendy menawarkan 2 buah Ipad 3G Wi Fi 64 GB di forum jual beli situs www.kaskus.us. Entah karena apa, tawaran ini membuat anggota polisi Polda Metro Jaya melakukan penyelidikan. Lantas, seorang anggota polisi, Eben Patar Opsunggu, menyamar sebagai pembeli. Transaksi pun dilakukan pada 24 November 2010 di City Walk, Tanah Abang, Jakarta Pusat.

Lantas, keduanya ditangkap polisi. Jaksa Penuntut Umum (JPU) Endang, mendakwa keduanya melanggar Pasal 62 Ayat (1) juncto Pasal 8 Ayat (1) Huruf j UU/ UU 8 Tahun 1999 tentang Perlindungan Konsumen karena tidak memiliki manual book berbahasa Indonesia. Lalu, Pasal 52 juncto Pasal 32 Ayat (1) UU Nomor 36/ 1999 tentang Telekomunikasi, karena I Pad belum terkategori alat elektronik komunikasi resmi. Ancaman pidana penjara paling lama 5 tahun penjara. Kasus ini masih berlangsung di PN Jakarta Pusat.

This is of course, an absolute stupidity, a barrier to trade, and probably a violation of human rights. Judges are expected to be wise when adjudicating this case, but as far as Indonesian judges are concerned, one cannot expect too much, even for something as trivial as this.

Indian economist Kaushik Basu argued that in order to deter corruption, legal immunity should be given to bribe-giver (but not bribe-taker). That is, when an act of bribery is committed and both of the doers are caught, the bribe giver should be set free and allowed to collect their money, but the bribe taker should be punished.

This is indeed an interesting method for deterring corruption by managing its supply-side. It provides incentives for suppliers (bribe-giver) to report and turn over the bribe-taker to the police. He provides caveats however, that bribe giver may have an interest to manage his or her reputation in the underworld (I can imagine that someone like Ayin will have to be ‘credible’ enough in order to earn trust from the bureaucrat – that is to say, to have some sort of an underworld moral code). He also warn the possibilities that false charges of bribery on behalf of the public officials may rise, but this can be managed by increasing penalties for false charges – somewhat dilemmatic for a lawyer.

Anyway, download the paper here.

H.T. Marginal Revolution

I come across this very interesting paper from Maclurcan about nanotechnology discourse in the global south. Of a particular interest is his elaboration on the conscious debate of both ‘short-term’ and ‘long-term’ nanotechnology:
 

In the meantime, the debate about Southern engagement with nanotechnology has forged ahead, assuming common understandings about what nanotechnology is and what it is not, as well as the general irrelevance of definitional debates. This is potentially problematic, given the conflicting way that nanotechnology is framed in the literature relating to the technology’s impact on, and in, the South. At different times, Southern nanotechnology debates have consciously drawn on understandings that correlate with both ‘near-term’ and ‘advanced’ nanotechnology. Whilst most writing presents near-term nanotechnology as the mainstream, there are instances where advanced nanotechnology has also been presented as ‘the reality’ for the South. Bruns, for example, sees answers for global poverty through a future of accessible abundance based on the application of advanced nanotechnology [27]. Al'Afghani, on the other hand, focuses on the need for future environmental laws in the South to incorporate “mechanisms for licensing, supervision and control of emissions and disposal methods for both MNT [molecular nanotechnology] products and nanofactories” [28]. Furthermore, a 2003 briefing document for a United Nations Industrial Development Organisation Expert Group Meeting, predominantly attended by representatives from the Global South, refers to the ability for advanced nanotechnology to address medical, energy and environmental challenges via “…factories operating at the nanometer level, including nanoscale conveyor belts and robotic arms bringing molecular parts together precisely…” [29].

The bottomline of his paper is that how nanotechnology is framed will affect its regulation. Most debate has been focused on ‘near-term’ nanotechnology as opposed to ‘speculative’ (borrowing Maclurcan’s own words) nanotechnology.

As I have gathered mode knowledge on regulation, my perspective on license-management in molecular nanotechnology has changed. The more detailed explanation has to wait a bit however, since I am still preoccupied with water. 

Download the paper from SSRN (click here).

• Moderated by the Rt. Hon. Jean Chrétien
• Dr. Fabrice Renaud—Conflicts and diplacement: Water as a hazard
• Bob Sandford—Global pressures on water: Have we reached a tipping point?
• Dr. Patricia Wouters—Can the history of international co-operation over water continue?
• Moneef Zou’bi—Water in the Middle East: Source of conflict or co-operation?

Linkedin opened up its job feature:

LinkedIn has made some upgrades to the Jobs section of LinkedIn groups that will make it much easier for group members and group managers to share LinkedIn jobs specifically tailored to your group. Group owners and managers can set up a keyword based feed of LinkedIn jobs into the group. Group members can also share relevant jobs into the group.

Organic postings from the old Groups "Jobs" tab are now in the Career discussions section.

We are excited about these changes. Be sure to visit the jobs section of your group and set up a targeted jobs feed for your group today.

Best Regards,

The LinkedIn Team

And so, the ILR Linkedin Group used this opportunity for its members to broadcast their talent-hunt. Join the ILR Linked Group here, and start posting your firm’s job offers.

PEW has just released its latest survey on transparency of governance in local communities. The result: if the government shares information well, they also feel good about their civic institutions. Following is the summary of PEW's findings (see p.2):

• Those who think local government does well in sharing information are also more likely to be satisfied with other parts of civic life such as the overall quality of their community and the performance of government and other institutions, as well as the ability of the entire information environment in their community to give them the information that matters.
• Broadband users are sometimes less satisfied than others with community life. That raises the possibility that upgrades in a local information system might produce more critical, activist citizens.
• Social media like Facebook and Twitter are emerging as key parts of the civic landscape and mobile connectivity is beginning to affect people’s interactions with civic life. Some 32% of the internet users across the three communities get local news from social networking site; 19% from blogs; 7% from Twitter. And 32% post updates and local news on their social networking sites.

 
University of Padova 

CALL FOR PAPERS
 
International workshop
 
Dilemmas of choice
Responsibility in nanotechnology development
 
 Rovigo, Italy, June 6-7, 2011 (deadline: March 31, 2011)
 
More information and download here <http://www.ciga.unipd.it/index.php?pg=cms&amp;ext=p&amp;cms_codsec=73&amp;cms_codcms=1037>
 

The Centre for Environmental Law Decisions and Corporate Ethical Certification (CIGA) at the University of Padua and the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, organize an international workshop titled Dilemmas of choice. Responsibility in nanotechnology development, which is aimed at presenting and debating contributions from different disciplines on several issues concerning the relationship between nanotechnology innovation and responsibility.The workshop will be held in the Italian town of Rovigo on 6 and 7 June 2011.
The workshop scientific organization is supervised by an international Scientific Committee and will be composed of 4 sessions, of which two are open to abstract submission, while other two are devoted to the contribution of outstanding scholars on the topic of the workshop.
The two sessions open to abstract submission will focus respectively on: Session 1: topics concerning regulation and regulatory systems; and Session 2: topics regarding the role of responsibility in the management and the coordination of nanotechnology development. Abstract proposals should be sent to ciga@unipd.it <mailto:ciga@unipd.it> by March 31, 2011.
 
 
Introduction and background for the workshop
 
Policies formulation, academic research, business strategies, and civil society campaigns agree that nanotechnology development should be responsible. However, the notion of responsibility is extremely diversified in the public discourse of nanoscale technologies, shifting from specialized meanings, e.g. close to liability of industrial producers, or narrower definitions, focusing on toxicological aspects to be tested experimentally, to broader interpretations, considering issues like human rights protection, social cohesion and inclusiveness. The variety of these meanings is apparently dependent on the different normative and epistemic, even disciplinary, perspectives represented in the debate, on the heterogeneity of the social actors bearing such perspectives, and on the stage of the (nano)products life-cycle that is considered, on the plurality of technical fields that are associated with nanoscale science and technology, on the more or less .
Also, these different meanings suggest to commentators and operators different foci of attention and policy measures, ranging from radical appeals to precaution, to the experimentation of new procedures for rule-making, to the implementation of public understanding and/or public engagement activities, and to the development of tests, standards, and measures of exposition for humans and the environment.
On the one hand, the formulation and implementation of these policies are affected mostly by our capacity to conjugate what "responsible development" means for us in the future tense, i.e. with regard to the consequences of our actions onto future generations, but also with regard to the assumptions about future situations that influence our way of acting. On the other, assumption about individuals and their ties to broader social communities affect the solutions for developing nanotechnology responsibly: balancing safety and the legitimate pursue of knowledge or economic opportunities, individual freedoms and collective interests (in a stronger fashion, the "common good"), distributing costs and rewards, etc..
 
 
Goals of the workshop and thematic sessions
 
The workshop attempts to disentangle these complex meanings of responsibility in nanotechnology development by focusing on the following topics:
 
Session 1:
Responsibility and regulation under uncertainty
 
One of the most critical issues for regulation and governance consists in how to allocate the costs and burdens of the lack of scientific knowledge in term of responsibility. The use of the term "responsibility" instead of  "liability" corresponds - to the aim of this session - to acquire a global regulatory view of the way technological and scientific progress in nanotechnology will impact on the assumptions of risks both at the individual and collective choices levels (here a broad meaning of the term "risk" is intended, including ethical risks; social risks; health risks; occupational risks; environmental risks, etc.).
On one hand, the well known logic of "no data, no market" has already been advocated in order to support the development of precautionary measures in the different regulatory frameworks affected by nanoparticles. On the other hand, it has been noted that «without an adequate scientific framework there is no way to know what data to collect» while «progress in developing the necessary scientific knowledge often depends on having a lot of data on specific materials».
These 'dilemmas of precaution' intersect the concept of responsibility, which extends beyond the usual framework on risks and benefits and which implicitly calls for a broad normative reflection on possible technological impacts and future visions. Therefore, the uncertainty that characterizes nanotechnology seemingly requires an analysis of hopes and seduction around nano to be able to grasp the epistemic and normative challenges posed by these technologies. In order to discuss the delineated framework, this session welcomes papers that, among others, will consider the following questions: How regulation and civil liability interact in order to allocate risks and costs of innovation? Is it possible a real «coordinated approach» in circumstances of uncertainty? Confronting exposure risks evaluation at work to uncertainty challenges is the existing workers health protection regulation safe enough? Do the nanotechnology risks invoke a safer and more specific revision of the existing duties to protect health? What is the role of public authorities (e.g. US and EU agencies) and international or national agencies for standardization (e.g. ISO) that interact for developing standards of safety and sustainability as well as approaches for the maintenance of the highest level of safety in nanotechnology? How to address consumers' safety expectationswhen an innovative product is used? Is the process of information sharing effective (that is, e.g., used in cosmetics regulation) an effective way? How are these values interrelated? How is it possible to integrate responsibility into the thinking of emerging technologies? How should responsibility be linked to technological future visions?
 
 
 
 
Session 2
Coordinating responsibility in nanotechnology development
 
Recently, a renovated regime in tecnoscientific governance "taking seriously" technology development as a collective experiment, has been proposed to democratize technoscientific expertise, as well as to take more robust and legitimate in a situation whose characteristic features are epistemic uncertainty, normative plurality, diverging interests, and public unease.
The public engagement strategy advocated by this model of 'collective experimentation' has to cope with the dilemma of inclusion/exclusion in (participatory) decision-making and the corresponding struggle to define the boundaries of what instances, groups, knowledge, values, behaviours are relevant for the purposes of the process and to transfer the legitimacy gained by decisions from the groups and constituencies involved in the deliberative processes to the groups of the ones that have not been involved.
This tension between 'insiders' and 'outsiders' symmetrically applies to responsibility: Who is responsible? What is the extent of this responsibility? To whom? What are the criteria, arguments, and mechanisms tracing this boundaries and determining insiders and outsiders? What are the strategies to define and allocate tasks and duties? How do the meanings of responsibility change across product life-cycles, temporal horizons and sites of innovation? How are tasks and duties to pursue what is variably defined as 'responsible development', allocated? How do farther and closer temporal horizons dynamically interact? How do engagement mechanisms perform coordination? What is the influence of social representations in mutual relationships between actors participating to innovation processes?
 

 
Submissions, deadlines and practicalities
 
Papers focusing on other emerging technological fields (e.g. Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, Energy technologies, Information technology, Material Sciences, Robotics) are welcome as they provide exemplary cases and valuable lessons for nanotechnology. All abstracts (maximum 1000 words) should be prepared and sent in electronic form (.doc or .pdf) to: ciga@unipd.it <mailto:ciga@unipd.it> by March 31, 2011.
The file submitted should contain:
* ·                Authors' identification (name, position, affiliation, postal and email addresses)
* ·                 Thematic session title
* ·                Abstract title
* ·                Abstract text (approximately 1000 words)
* ·                Contact information of the corresponding Author (for co-authored abstracts)
*  

After a blind review process, communication of acceptance will be sent by April 15, 2011.
 

Attendees are not required to pay any registration fee. Financial support for travel and accommodation is available for speakers in thematic sessions. Inquiries and applications for financial support to: ciga@unipd.it <mailto:ciga@unipd.it> .
 
Important dates:
Abstract submission: March 31, 2011
Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: April 15, 2011
Workshop: June 6-7, 2011
 
For information on the workshop:
www.ciga.unipd.it <http://www.ciga.unipd.it> or ciga@unipd.it <mailto:ciga@unipd.it>
 
Venue
 
The workshop is held in the Italian town of Rovigo, an ancient town in the Veneto Region, strategically located 45 minutes from Venice and its airport. Further information on Rovigo are available on these websites:
http://www.veneto.to/web/guest/rovigo
http://www.rovigoturismo.it/changelang-eng.phtml
 
 
Scientific Committee
 
Antonio Da Re, CIGA, University of Padua
Guillermo Foladori, University of Zacatecas
Armin Grunwald, ITAS-Karsruhe Institute of Techology
Federico Neresini, Dept. of Sociology, University of Padua
Elena Pariotti, CIGA-University of Padua
Mariachiara Tallacchini, Faculty of Law, Catholic University of Milan
George Michael Tyshenko, Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa
 
Local Organizing Committee
 
Simone Arnaldi, CIGA, University of Padua
Luca Grion, CIGA, University of Padua
Giorgia Guerra, CIGA, University of Padua
Mariassunta Piccinni, CIGA, University of Padua
Daniele Ruggiu, CIGA, University of Padua

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CIGA Centre for Environmental Law Decisions and Corporate Ethical Certification
University of Padua

Administration: via VIII febbraio, 2 - 35122 Padova (Italia) - ph. +39 049 8273461 - fax +39 049 8273479
Offices: viale Porta Adige, 45 - 45100 Rovigo (Italia) - tel. +39 0425 377511
e-mail: ciga@unipd.it <mailto:ciga@unipd.it>
 
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http://www.dundee.ac.uk/water/symposium/

National Water Law: Managing Global Water Resources

Symposium and Workshop: National strategies for promoting security and sustainability within a rapidly changing world

June 20-24, 2011; Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science, University of Dundee, UK