Autonomous vehicles legislation coming to the UK

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/18/bill-announced-in-queens-speech-will-help-britain-become-leader/

Britain’s car industry has welcomed a new Bill announced in the Queen's Speech that will help ensure the UK is in pole position in the development of self-driving vehicles.

The Queen said measures in the Modern Transport Bill would “ensure the UK is at forefront of technology for new forms of transport, including autonomous and electric vehicles”.
The Bill is intended to reduce red tape around new technology that will allow cars to be driven by on-board computers - so-called “autonomous driving” - and adapt the legal system to take into account issues such as insurance liability when a human is not in control.Nissan has said that from 2017 it will build its Qashqai SUVs equipped with self-driving technology at its giant Sunderland factory. Paul Willcox, the company’s European chairman, welcomed the plans in the Queen’s Speech.

 .... follow the link for more.

Crowd sourcing legal frameworks in Finland

Tanja Aitamurto and Hélène Landemore. Crowdsourced Deliberation: The Case of the Law on Off-Road Traffic in Finland. Article first published online: 27 APR 2016 DOI: 10.1002/poi3.115

This article examines the emergence of democratic deliberation in a crowdsourced law reform process. The empirical context of the study is a crowdsourced legislative reform in Finland, initiated by the Finnish government. The findings suggest that online exchanges in the crowdsourced process qualify as democratic deliberation according to the classical definition. We introduce the term “crowdsourced deliberation” to mean an open, asynchronous, depersonalized, and distributed kind of online deliberation occurring among self-selected participants in the context of an attempt by government or another organization to open up the policymaking or lawmaking process. The article helps to characterize the nature of crowdsourced policymaking and to understand its possibilities as a practice for implementing open government principles. We aim to make a contribution to the literature on crowdsourcing in policymaking, participatory and deliberative democracy and, specifically, the newly emerging subfield in deliberative democracy that focuses on “deliberative systems.”

UofT Professor Shauna Brail on Uber Regulation

Shauna Brail at University of Toronto has two videos outlining the issues for regulating Uber in Toronto.

OECD regulation paper

Koske, I. et al. (2016), “Regulatory management practices in OECD countries”, OECD Economics Department Working Papers, No. 1296, OECD Publishing, Paris.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5jm0qwm7825h-en


From the Introduction

1. A competition-friendly regulatory environment can help raise living standards by increasing investment, employment and productivity. A number of empirical studies have confirmed this link, including Bouis and Duval (2011), Bourlès et al. (2010), Conway et al. (2006) and Sutherland et al (2011). There are two important elements to a competition-friendly regulatory framework. First, regulations must be designed in a way that enhances competition and encourages firms to innovate and improve efficiency without being a too heavy burden on companies and, second, these regulations must be complied with or enforced in a transparent and cost-effective way. While in many areas of product markets, regulation is designed and implemented by the government, in network sectors, it is typically network regulators that take on this role.

2. Network sectors have historically been vertically integrated natural public monopolies before the introduction of competition in the market.2 In some instances the natural monopoly elements still exist such as in electricity distribution, which is why governance matters. The importance for effective regulatory institutions to facilitate the effective and fair operation of the market in network sectors is critical (Berg, 2000) in terms of investment (Jarvis and Sovacool, 2011), performance monitoring (Jenkins et al, 2007)
and ultimately outcomes of the sector (Gutierrez, 2003; OECD 2015a)

3. This paper presents a new set of indicators that measure regulatory management practices in six network sectors: electricity, gas, telecom, railroad transport infrastructure, airports and ports.3 It is meant to complement the network components of the OECD’s indicators of non-manufacturing regulation (NMR), which measure the regulations that are imposed on network sectors, by measures of the governance of the bodies that design, implement and enforce these regulations. The focus is on economic regulators, i.e. on institutions or bodies that are authorised by law to exercise regulatory powers over the sector for the purpose of setting prices and/or improving the operation of the market so that consumers have access to secure services and service providers receive a reasonable rate of return. Regulators that deal only with health, safety, or environmental issues are not considered. The indicators are computed for 33 OECD countries.

4. The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. It first briefly discusses the database that underlies the indicators and the methodology to compute them. It secondly presents the overarching indicators and presents general findings of regulatory management practices across OECD countries and sectors. It then examines the structure of regulators in greater detail in relation to their independence, accountability and scope of action. It also provides some specific country case examples. The paper is
complemented by an Annex which gives further details on the methodology used to compute the indicators.

Australian IP report

http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/current/intellectual-property/draft

The big headline comment

'Rights holders and their intermediaries need to do more to deliver timely and accessible content. The Government should also make clear that Australians should be able to circumvent geoblocking technology,' said Commissioner Karen Chester.

 This is how the public 'broadcaster' reported it.

 "Unless you've got a teenager that can help you get around the geoblocking, some people will be able to access and others won't," Ms Chester said.

"Making copyright material more accessible and more competitively priced online, and not geoblocking, is the best antidote to copyright infringement."

The practice of geoblocking prevents access to material on the basis of geographical borders but users can circumvent the technology by setting up a virtual private network, or VPN, which masks their location and identity.

The Productivity Commission report argued that the Federal Government needs to send a clear message that it is not an infringement of copyright for consumers to evade geoblocking technology.

The Government is also being urged to avoid entering international obligations or trade deals that support restrictions like geoblocking. "People actually want to do the right thing. They're happy to pay for copyright, but they want it now and they want it competitively priced," Ms Chester told AM.

"Those that won't will just breach copyright, do what we're all doing and get around the geoblock and access the US Netflix or the Canadian Netflix.

SOUNDCLOUD: Peter Ryan discusses geoblocking with Karen Chester

Productivity Commission Media Release in full
Australia's intellectual property system has lost sight of users.

Action must be taken to rebalance Australia's intellectual property (IP) arrangements, according to a wide-ranging draft report released by the Productivity Commission.

A good IP system balances the interests of rights holders and users, but Australia's system has swung too far in favour of vocal rights holders and influential IP exporting nations.

 'No matter how you measure it, Australia overwhelmingly imports more IP than it exports — and this gap is widening. Most of the profits from excessive IP rights flow offshore, while Australian consumers and taxpayers are left to pick up the tab,' said Commissioner Karen Chester.

Many of Australia's IP arrangements are locked-in by trade agreements, frustrating much needed change. Despite these constraints, the Commission has identified a workable bundle of reforms.

"Contrary to views that more patents are always better, Australia's patent system is poorly targeted. Some patented inventions border on trivial and protection can last too long. For pharmaceuticals alone, excessive protection costs the Australian Government, taxpayers and consumers over a quarter of a billion dollars each year,' Commissioner Jonathan Coppel said.

'Only genuine innovations should be granted patent protection and patent fees need to be higher to discourage rights holders from hanging on to patents longer than they need to,' Commissioner Jonathan Coppel said.

Copyright is important for rewarding creative endeavour. But in Australia, it is more a case of 'copy(not)right'. Copyright is pervasive, affecting everyone from hip hop artists sampling music, school children watching a documentary in class, libraries and museums preserving Australia's history, to innovative researchers accessing databases for data mining.

Copyright protection lasts too long — a book written today by an author who lives for another 50 years will be protected until 2136.

To correct these imbalances, Australia needs a new, principles-based, fair use exception, to protect user rights without undermining the incentive to create.

'Surveys reveal much online copyright infringement is out of sheer frustration from poor access. The best antidote to copyright infringement is accessible and competitively priced online content, not draconian penalties and big brother enforcement.'

'Rights holders and their intermediaries need to do more to deliver timely and accessible content. The Government should also make clear that Australians should be able to circumvent geoblocking technology,' said Commissioner Karen Chester.

The benefits of IP reform would be far reaching. 'True innovation and creativity will be rewarded, while consumers will have better access to new and cheaper goods and services. Australian firms won't have to engage in costly workarounds that hinder follow-on innovation,' Commissioner Jonathan Coppel said.

The Commission is inviting submissions on the draft report by 3 June 2016 and will hold public hearings in June.

MOWAT Centre note

https://mowatcentre.ca/how-can-delivery-units-work-in-a-federation-like-canada/


This is an interesting move by the federal government in Canada - delivery units. Found this on the MOWAT centre website... just a snippet.

The federal government is embarking on an ambitious new mandate with over 300 commitments flowing from its election platform and Ministerial mandate letters.

 Voters, opposition parties and the media will all be watching the government’s progress closely over the next four years. So too, will the government itself, which has made tracking progress on the delivery of its promises a key priority. It has created a new secretariat in the Privy Council Office tasked with managing the government’s Delivery and Results agenda, and supporting the Agenda, Results and Communications Cabinet Committee. In plain language, this means the new unit will track departmental performance and report to Cabinet Ministers and the Prime Minister on potential obstacles, or opportunities, that might affect key platform promises.

Delivery units have been successfully tried in other jurisdictions, but how will the delivery methodology translate in a decentralized federation like Canada when the federal government must rely on provinces and municipalities for progress on many of its key commitments?