Providing public access to educational material from schools and universities, research and teaching is viewed politically as a means of survival for industrialized countries that have few natural resources, like Germany. The author examined the conditions that provide for success in research and teaching by means of a legal comparison of the copyright laws in Germany and Sweden.

This volume analyses the theory and practice of European consumer protection in the context of consolidation initiatives seen, inter alia, in the revision of the Consumer Acquis, the Draft Common Frame of Reference and the proposal for an EU Consumer Rights Directive. The issues addressed are all the more significant given the revisions to the proposed Directive, the appointment of an 'Expert Group on a Common Frame of Reference' and the Commission's 2010 Green Paper on progress towards a European Contract Law. The contributions to this volume point to the arrival of a contested moment in EU consumer protection, questioning the arrival of the 'empowered' consumer and uncovering the fault lines between consumer protection and other goals. What emerges is a model of poly-contextual EU consumer protection law, a model that challenges the assumptions in both the 2010 Green Paper and the revised proposed Consumer Rights Directive.

In this volume, the basic principles of the administrative functions carried out by the Society for Performing and Mechanical Reproduction Rights (GEMA) are presented comprehensively and academically explained. This work is primarily focused on presenting and explaining the GEMAa (TM)s a oeinternal regulationsa: the statutes, the deed of assignment, and the distribution plan. Additionally, an overview is presented on the day to day practice of licensing the rights. The main focus of this presentation is the commentary section. The commentary presents in detail and academically considers the statutes as the basis of the organization, the deed of assignment as the foundation of the assignment of rights, and the distribution plan. The new edition brings this work up to date. The copyright law reform (a oeZweite Korba ) is taken into consideration as well as the latest judicature and the newest amendments to the GEMA's deed of assignment and distribution plan.

This conference volume on the German-Japanese colloquium a oeTransformations or Erosion of Private Autonomy?a carries the debate on the subject into the area of contract law that is central to economic life.

The third edition of Cranston's Consumers and the Law brings the reader fully up to date with developments in consumer law and includes important new material on utilities and financial services regulation. An internet home page has also been established for readers of this book. The home page has two main purposes. First, it provides links to websites containing primary sources such as codes, consultation documents and reports which are not always accessible in law libraries. Secondly it provides periodic updating information on key developments in law and policy.

This conference volume contains lectures, texts and reports on the conference a oeResearch and teaching in the information age - between freedom of access and the incentive to privatisea of the Institute for Media Law and Communication Law and the Modern History Department of the University of Cologne on 21 April 2006 in Cologne.

Coalitions of consumer groups, NGOs, and trade unions have traditionally been considered politically weak compared to well-organized and resourceful financial sector groups which dominate or "capture" financial regulatory decisions. However, following the 2008 financial crisis, civil society groups have been seen to exert much more influence, with politicians successfully implementing financial reform in spite of industry opposition. Drawing on literature from social movement research and regulatory politics, this book shows how diffuse interests were represented in financial regulatory overhauls in both the United States (US) and the European Union (EU). Four cases of reform in the post-crisis regulatory context are analyzed: the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the US; the introduction of new consumer protection regulations through EU directives; the failure of attempts to introduce a financial transaction tax in the US; and the agreement of 11 EU member states to introduce such a tax. It shows how building coalitions with important elite allies outside and inside government helped traditionally weak interest groups transcend a lack of material resources to influence and shape regulatory policy. By engaging with a less well-known side of the debate, it explains how business power was curbed and diverse interests translated into financial regulatory policy.

This collection includes essays by eleven leading public health experts, economists, physicians, political scientists, and lawyers, whose activities encompass Congressional testimonies, Surgeon General's reports on youth smoking, and clinical trials for drugs for smoking cessation. They analyze specific strategies that have been used to influence tobacco use, including taxation, regulation of advertising and promotion, regulation of indoor smoking, control of youth access to cigarettes and other tobacco products, litigation, and subsidies of smoking cessation, and set them against the latest scientific findings about tobacco and the changing cultural and political setting against which policy decisions are being made.

This report presents and analyses the legal instruments established for the protection of intellectual property in the shipbuilding industry which could be applied to ship design - the aesthetic side of shipbuilding. To what extent the vessel as a whole or its individual parts can be tangibly protected by copyrights and/or design patents is taken into consideration. Safeguards by means of contractual clauses are of significant importance as well (confidentiality agreements, contractual safeguard clauses for the security of "design rights," etc.). The issue of how this protection is legally and contractually constructed or rather, how it can be constructed, is the main focus of this examination.

This work was published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the VG WORT. It begins with an introduction to the collecting society's development and goes on to describe the collecting society's history from 1958 to 2008. Intrinsically tied to the history of VG WORT are the various intellectual property rights. This work reflects on future prospects in the face of the rapid development of technical advancements and the difficulties in exercising copyright laws in the digital and multimedia age.

The Banking Law Day 2005 was devoted to the discussion of consumer credit for real estate assets subsequent to the Heininger jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and the area of conflict centred on claim transfers, bank confidentiality and data protection. Experts from academia, real life andthe judiciary discussed these subjects under the chairmanship of Wolfgang Gossmann and Gerhart Kreft."

This is the new edition of the leading work on the law and practice of auctions. The book looks at every aspect of auction practice from the economics of auction sales and restrictions on trading to criminal and other liabilities of the auctioneer. There is also a chapter on VAT. There have been important recent developments in the field of consumer protection and the book has been substantially revised to reflect these. In addition to general updating the new edition considers the practice of online auctions for the first time. There is also a section on looted art . The book continues to draw on case law from other common law jurisdictions.

First proposed in 1994, the Twin Peaks model of financial system regulation employs two specialist peak regulators: one charged with the maintenance of financial system stability, and the other with market conduct and consumer protection. This volume, with contributions from over thirty scholars and senior regulators, provides an in-depth analysis of the similarities and differences in the Twin Peaks regimes that have been adopted around the world. Chapters examine the strengths and weaknesses of the model, provide lessons from Australia (the first to adopt the model), and offer a comparative look at the potential suitability of the model in leading non-Twin Peaks jurisdictions. A key resource for central bankers, public policy analysts, lawyers, economists, politicians, academics and students, this work provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of the Twin Peaks model, and a roadmap for countries considering its adoption.

"The Politics of Precaution" examines the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation in the United States and Europe over the last five decades, explaining why America and Europe have often regulated a wide range of similar risks differently. It finds that between 1960 and 1990, American health, safety, and environmental regulations were more stringent, risk averse, comprehensive, and innovative than those adopted in Europe. But since around 1990, the book shows, global regulatory leadership has shifted to Europe. What explains this striking reversal?

David Vogel takes an in-depth, comparative look at European and American policies toward a range of consumer and environmental risks, including vehicle air pollution, ozone depletion, climate change, beef and milk hormones, genetically modified agriculture, antibiotics in animal feed, pesticides, cosmetic safety, and hazardous substances in electronic products. He traces how concerns over such risks--and pressure on political leaders to do something about them--have risen among the European public but declined among Americans. Vogel explores how policymakers in Europe have grown supportive of more stringent regulations while those in the United States have become sharply polarized along partisan lines. And as European policymakers have grown more willing to regulate risks on precautionary grounds, increasingly skeptical American policymakers have called for higher levels of scientific certainty before imposing additional regulatory controls on business.

The Consumer Rights Act is a vital and far-reaching piece of legislation containing provisions specific to contract and consumer law, criminal law, and competition law. It sets out a much-needed framework to consolidate the key consumer rights surrounding contracts for goods, services, and digital content, as well as the law relating to unfair terms in consumer contracts. The Act introduces easier routes for consumers and SMEs to challenge anti-competitive behaviour through the Competition Appeal Tribunal, as well as confirming enforcers' powers to investigate potential breaches of consumer law. Ultimately, the Act gives civil courts and public enforcers greater flexibility to take the most appropriate action for consumers when dealing with breaches of consumer law. This Blackstone's Guide, written by a team of leading experts in the field, provides clear and concise coverage of the Consumer Rights Act's history, scope, and application. It is the complete resource for anyone looking for an introduction to this wide-ranging Act. The Blackstone's Guide Series delivers concise and accessible books covering the latest legislative changes and amendments. Published soon after enactment, they offer expert commentary by leading names on the scope, extent and effects of the legislation, plus a full copy of the Act itself. They offer a cost-effective solution to key information needs and are the perfect companion for any practitioner needing to get up to speed with the latest changes.

Consumers routinely enter into long-term contracts with providers of goods and services - from credit cards, mortgages, cell phones, insurance, TV, and internet services to household appliances, theatre and sports events, health clubs, magazine subscriptions, transportation, and more. Across these consumer markets certain design features of contracts are recurrent, and puzzling. Why do sellers design contracts to provide short-term benefits and impose long-term costs? Why are low introductory prices so common? Why are the contracts themselves so complex, with numerous fees and interest rates, tariffs and penalties? Seduction by Contract explains how consumer contracts emerge from the interaction between market forces and consumer psychology. Consumers are short-sighted and optimistic, so sellers compete to offer short-term benefits, while imposing long-term costs. Consumers are imperfectly rational, so sellers hide the true costs of products and services in complex contracts. Consumers are seduced by contracts that increase perceived benefits, without actually providing more benefits, and decrease perceived costs, without actually reducing the costs that consumers ultimately bear. Competition does not help this behavioural market failure. It may even exacerbate it. Sellers, operating in a competitive market, have no choice but to align contract design with the psychology of consumers. A high-road seller who offers what she knows to be the best contract will lose business to the low-road seller who offers what the consumer mistakenly believes to be the best contract. Put bluntly, competition forces sellers to exploit the biases and misperceptions of their customers. Seduction by Contract argues that better legal policy can help consumers and enhance market efficiency. Disclosure mandates provide a promising avenue for regulatory intervention. Simple, aggregate disclosures can help consumers make better choices. Comprehensive disclosures can facilitate the work of intermediaries, enabling them to better advise consumers. Effective disclosure would expose the seductive nature of consumer contracts and, as a result, reduce sellers' incentives to write inefficient contracts. Developing its explanation through a general framework and detailed case studies of three major consumer markets (credit cards, mortgages, and cell phones), Seduction by Contract is an accessible introduction to the law and economics of consumer contracts, and a powerful critique of current regulatory policy.

The Blackstone's Guides Series delivers concise and accessible books covering the latest legislation changes and amendments. Published within weeks of an Act, they offer expert commentary by leading names on the effects, extent and scope of the legislation, plus a full copy of the Act itself. They offer a cost-effective solution to key information needs and are the perfect companion for any practitioner needing to get up to speed with the latest changes. The Department of Trade and Industry has been conducting a major revision of consumer credit law over the past few years. Its proposals on substantial changes to existing law were contained in its White Paper published in December 2003: Fair, Clear and Competitive - The Consumer Credit Market in the 21st Century. Since then, this programme has been implemented by a series of new statutory instruments and a major new Consumer Credit Act which runs to 70 sections and revolutionises the present law and practice of consumer credit. The new Act principally amends the Consumer Credit Act 1974, which is the statute governing the licensing of, and other controls on, traders concerned with the provision of credit or the supply of goods on hire or hire-purchase to individuals. Significant changes brought in by the new Act include the following; * The re-definition of "consumers" whose agreements are to be regulated by the Act and financial ceilings on consumer credit and hire agreements removed * The consequences of trading without a license are to be made more severe and the whole process of licensing to be modernised * Consumer credit is to be brought within the remit of the Financial Ombudsman This Guide covers all of these new provisions, together with the growing importance of the internet and electronic technology to this area of the law, whilst also placing the new Act in the context of what has gone before. The commentary in the Guide is structured in a clear and logical way, thus enabling readers to quickly access the information they require.

This volume explores the relationship between constitutional and regulatory questions on the one hand, and private law on the other hand, examining how European private law has developed under the influence of regional legal traditions and the EU acquis communautaire. It focuses on the multiple actors and institutions that today contribute to legal and cultural integration within a multi-level framework, involving Member States and subnational actors together with EU Institutions. It underlines the different roles of legislators, regulators and judges in building an integrated market which is consistent with fundamental rights and social policies. It also highlights the principles and institutions that may preserve national legal identities in the context of European legal and political integration, striking a difficult balance between harmonization and differentiation. Within this framework the volume questions the current boundaries of European private laws and proposes a coordinated perspective which examines competition, regulation and private law alike. The book focuses in particular on competition and consumer law, and on tort and regulation. Attention is also drawn to the strategic role to be played by private international law. It is argued that the distinction between private and public law should be redefined by acknowledging a new balance between public institutions and private parties. The collection contains several proposals for furthering the process of Europeanization of private law without losing the richness of existing western legal traditions as they have developed in previous centuries. It calls on European and national institutions to involve practitioners in devising new patterns of legal integration and in transforming European legal education. This book is an original contribution to the scholarly and policy debates about the desirability and modes of Europeanization of private law, in a context in which the pressures of globalization and of national identities seem to question the chosen path of integration.

This is the first practitioner's work on the new rule (19.III) on Group Litigation Orders under the Civil Procedure Rules. It provides exhaustive analysis of the new rule and relates it to the extensive experience which has been gained in the major multi-party actions of recent years, setting out the key lessons to be learned in terms of how such actions should be managed. Case studies include the Sellafield radiation claims, the Lloyd's litigation, Norplant, the British Coal Vibration White Finger litigation, and other major cases.

[Writings pertaining to European and international private, banking and commercial law] Europeanization and internationalization challenge the realm of jurisprudence to an extraordinary degree. The division in special fields and the relationship with other social sciences necessitate critical reevaluation in view of many interactions. Cross-references between commercial law regulation and private, autonomous arrangement distinctly show this development. Jurisprudence emerging beyond Germany has to deal with such challenges. The law of financial services serves as an example of the cross-section material from private law and (public) commercial law. This takes into account the series at hand in terms of content and method. In addition to banking, capital market and financial law as the main emphasis, corporate law, competition & cartel law, intangible property rights, insolvency law and also labor law show similar overlaps. The intensive internationally-oriented treatment of the overlaps of classical private law - in particular contractual law - and commercial law promise a bountiful yield, especially on the European level under the summarizing aspect of corporate law. The outstanding monography also finds its place in the series, as well as the conference volume, works in German and also occasional works in English. There are economically-aligned works in addition to juridical works constituting the main emphasis. Works pertaining to Europeanization and internationalization are compiled in the series, which convey commercial law and commercially-conceived private law in an outstanding manner.

For many years, legislators around the world have responded to the particular needs of consumers by introducing dedicated rules for consumer sales contracts. In the European Union, a significant push came through the adoption of the Consumer Sales Directive (99/44/EC). Elsewhere in the world, legislation focusing on consumer sales contracts has been introduced, for example in New Zealand and Australia. This book offers a snapshot of the current state of consumer sales law in a range of jurisdictions around the globe. It provides both an overview of the law in selected jurisdictions and compares the application of these rules in the context of two case scenarios.

The 50-year anniversary of the German collecting society for performing artists, record producers and organizers, the "German Collecting Society for Performance Rights (GVL)," was marked by a symposium sponsored by the Institute for the Legal Protection of Industrial Property and Copyright, Humboldt-University of Berlin, in the fall of 2009. The now published and revised contributions to the symposium address a variety of topics including a historical review of the GVL, a critical analysis of German collecting societies' situation in light of European competition as well as the expectations of performance artists, record producers and users with regard to the GVL.

This edited volume covers the challenges currently faced by consumer law in Europe and the United States, ranging from fundamental theoretical questions, such as what goals consumer law should pursue, to practical questions raised by disclosure requirements, the General Data Protection Regulation and technology advancements. With governments around the world enacting powerful new regulations concerning consumers, consumer law has become an important topic in the economic analysis of law. Intended to protect consumers, these regulations typically seek to do so by giving them tools to make better decisions, or by limiting the consequences of their bad decisions. Legal scholars are divided, however, regarding the efficacy and effects of these regulations; some call for certain policies to be abolished, while others support a regulatory expansion.

Boilerplate--the fine-print terms and conditions that we become subject to when we click "I agree" online, rent an apartment, enter an employment contract, sign up for a cellphone carrier, or buy travel tickets--pervades all aspects of our modern lives. On a daily basis, most of us accept boilerplate provisions without realizing that should a dispute arise about a purchased good or service, the nonnegotiable boilerplate terms can deprive us of our right to jury trial and relieve providers of responsibility for harm. Boilerplate is the first comprehensive treatment of the problems posed by the increasing use of these terms, demonstrating how their use has degraded traditional notions of consent, agreement, and contract, and sacrificed core rights whose loss threatens the democratic order. Margaret Jane Radin examines attempts to justify the use of boilerplate provisions by claiming either that recipients freely consent to them or that economic efficiency demands them, and she finds these justifications wanting. She argues, moreover, that our courts, legislatures, and regulatory agencies have fallen short in their evaluation and oversight of the use of boilerplate clauses. To improve legal evaluation of boilerplate, Radin offers a new analytical framework, one that takes into account the nature of the rights affected, the quality of the recipient's consent, and the extent of the use of these terms. Radin goes on to offer possibilities for new methods of boilerplate evaluation and control, among them the bold suggestion that tort law rather than contract law provides a preferable analysis for some boilerplate schemes. She concludes by discussing positive steps that NGOs, legislators, regulators, courts, and scholars could take to bring about better practices.

The progressive economics writer redefines the national conversation about American freedom "Mike Konczal [is] one of our most powerful advocates of financial reform' [a] heroic critic of austerity' and a huge resource for progressives."-Paul Krugman Health insurance, student loan debt, retirement security, child care, work-life balance, access to home ownership-these are the issues driving America's current political debates. And they are all linked, as this brilliant and timely book reveals, by a single question: should we allow the free market to determine our lives? In the tradition of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, noted economic commentator Mike Konczal answers this question with a resounding no. Freedom from the Market blends passionate political argument and a bold new take on American history to reveal that, from the earliest days of the republic, Americans have defined freedom as what we keep free from the control of the market. With chapters on the history of the Homestead Act and land ownership, the eight-hour work day and free time, social insurance and Social Security, World War II day cares, Medicare and desegregation, free public colleges, intellectual property, and the public corporation, Konczal shows how citizens have fought to ensure that everyone has access to the conditions that make us free. At a time when millions of Americans-and more and more politicians-are questioning the unregulated free market, Freedom from the Market offers a new narrative, and new intellectual ammunition, for the fight that lies ahead.