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The United States patent system has become sand rather than lubricant in the wheels of American progress. Such is the premise behind this provocative and timely book by two of the nation's leading experts on patents and economic innovation.

Today, it has been said, the world is \"flat,\" as online media allow information to move easily from point to point across the earth. International legal differences, however, are increasingly affecting the ease with which data and ideas can be shared across nations. Copyright law, for example, affects the international flow of materials by stipulating who has the right to replicate or to share certain kinds of content. Similarly, perspectives on privacy rights can differ from nation to nation and affect how personal information is shared globally. Moreover, national laws can affect the exchange of ideas by stipulating the language in which information must be presented in different geopolitical regions. Today's technical communicators need to understand how legal factors can affect communication practices if they wish to work effectively in global contexts. This collection provides an overview of different legal aspects that technical communicators might encounter when creating materials or sharing information in international environments. Through addressing topics ranging from privacy rights and information exchange to the legalities of business practices in virtual worlds and perspectives on authorship and ownership, the contributors to this volume examine a variety of communication-based legal issues that can cause problems or miscommunication in international interactions. Reviewing such topics from different perspectives, the authors collectively provide ideas that could serve as a foundation for creating best practices on or for engaging in future research in the area of legal issues in international settings. Foreword: Considering Legal Issues in Global Contexts TyAnna Herrington Introduction: Legal Issues in Global Contexts: Examining Friction Points on the Flat Earth Kirt St.Amant and Martine Courant Rife PART I: CHALLENGES AND CONSIDERATIONS CHAPTER 1. Hiding Behind a Password: Are Online Classes as Private as We Think? Wendy L. Kraglund-Gauthier and David C. Young CHAPTER 2. The Power of Slogans: The Rhetoric of Network Neutrality Brett Lunceford CHAPTER 3. The Rules of the Game: Real Legal and Economic Implications of Second Life Marco Antonio Chávez-Aguayo CHAPTER 4. Dimensions and Policies of Metrication and Communication Ronald L. Stone PART II: LANGUAGE AND ACCESS CHAPTER 5. Legal Literacy for Multilingual Technical Communication Projects Tatiana Batova CHAPTER 6. Adapting to the Changing Legal Context: How Executive Order 13166 is Shaping Translation and Localization in Health Care Nicole St. Germaine CHAPTER 7. Usable DRM: Sailing the Pirate’s Seas for Legal Entertainment Liza Potts PART III: OWNERSHIP AND AUTHORSHIP CHAPTER 8. Workplace Realities versus Romantic Views of Authorship: Intellectual Property Issues, Globalization, and Technical Communication Pavel Zemliansky and Traci A. Zimmerman CHAPTER 9. Software Patent Law in Global Contexts: A Primer for Technical Writing Specialists Annette Vee CHAPTER 10. Orphan Works and the Global Interplay of Democracy, Copyright, and Access Martin S. Copenhaver Afterword: Global Challenges and the Value of Heuristics Heidi A. McKee and James E. Porter Contributors Index

\"Introduction The end is nigh for financial regulation. The financial revolution will not be televised; rather, it will be liked, shared, tweeted, and direct messaged. Data technology, such as \"apps\" for cellular phones, may prove to be as transformative for investing as the telegraph or even the Internet. But few people understand how these technologies impact investing. This book explores the legal dynamics and ramifications of financial regulations in the digital age and offers readers a detailed, but digestible, account of corporate finance history. It pairs lively narrative with brief applications of economic theory. This provides readers with the historical context and theoretical framework needed to understand the true nature of finance today - and where finance is trending. This book focuses on the impact of technology on investing in regulated markets. Legal regulation is lagging behind technology, leaving ordinary investors and main street entrepreneurs without safe and profitable financial options. This book recommends that \"competitive regulation\" can improve financial markets. Our story of U.S. corporate finance unfolds in three eras. The first era began with the ratification of the Constitution in the 1790s and ended with the Great Depression in the 1930s. The second era began with the Securities Act of 1933 and ended with the Great Recession of 2007-08. The third era began with the emergence of Bitcoin in 2008 and continues to this day. We are living in the third era of corporate finance. With this timeline in mind, we can see qualities that are particular to each of these eras. The first era is characterized by unbridled capitalism, rugged individualism, and western expansion. In the first era, there were many financial markets across the young nation, but they were relatively disconnected\"-- Provided by publisher.

Experimenting With The Consumer exposes the hazards of the mass-market experimentation in which every American consumer and worker is unwittingly tapped for product risk data by manufacturers, scientists, and regulators. Vioxx, Heparin, Avandia, Paxil, fen-phen, estrogens, silicone implants, pacemakers, formaldehyde in FEMA trailers, 60 buckyballs in coatings … the headlines are increasingly filled with hidden risks coming to light in popular products years after federal agencies approve them for the American public. Shapo shows readers how to get past unreasonable trust or fear and make the best risk-management choices for themselves and their families. He walks them through what questions to ask before consenting to be in a clinical trial; how to evaluate the implied bold-print claims against the small-print disclosures in advertisements for medical products; how to uncover product and environmental risks in their homes, workplaces, supermarkets, and neighborhoods; how to assess and control product risk while maximizing consumer choice and benefit; how to pressure government to tighten consumer protection; and how to seek legal redress. Through a diverse selection of dramatic case studies, Shapo lays bare the incentives of companies and entrepreneurial scientists to fake or obscure experimental data before and after government approval; the fights between interested and disinterested scientists over data; the fights between scientists and doctors over patient rights; the campaigns of activists against government agencies to release experimental drugs; the impact of the journalistic and promotional media on public knowledge and perception of product risk; and the marketing tricks that manufacturers use to harness sexual desire to product launches and to shape the prescription choices of physicians.

All U.S. agencies with counterterrorism programs that collect or \"mine\" personal data-such as phone records or Web sites visited-should be required to evaluate the programs' effectiveness, lawfulness, and impacts on privacy. A framework is offered that agencies can use to evaluate such information-based programs, both classified and unclassified. The book urges Congress to re-examine existing privacy law to assess how privacy can be protected in current and future programs and recommends that any individuals harmed by violations of privacy be given a meaningful form of redress. Two specific technologies are examined: data mining and behavioral surveillance. Regarding data mining, the book concludes that although these methods have been useful in the private sector for spotting consumer fraud, they are less helpful for counterterrorism because so little is known about what patterns indicate terrorist activity. Regarding behavioral surveillance in a counterterrorist context, the book concludes that although research and development on certain aspects of this topic are warranted, there is no scientific consensus on whether these techniques are ready for operational use at all in counterterrorism.

This is a book about the dynamics of the aspirational society. It explores the boundaries of permissible thought--deviations and transgressions that create constant innovations. When confronted with a problem, an innovative mind struggles and brings forth something distinctive--new ideas, new inventions, and new programs based on unconventional approaches to solve the problem. But this can be done only if the culture creates large breathing spaces by leaving people alone, not as a matter of state generosity but as something fundamental in being an American. Consequently, the Constitutional mandate of “Congress shall make no law…” has encouraged fearless speech, unrestrained thought, and endless experimentation leading to newer developments in science, technology, the arts, and not least socio-political relations. Most of all, the First Freedoms liberate the mind from irrational fears and encourage an environment of divergent thinking, non-conformity, and resistance to a collective mindset. The First Freedoms encourage Americans to be iconoclastic, to be creatively crazy, to be impure, thus, enabling them to mix and re-mix ideas to design new technologies and cultural forms and platforms, anything from experimental social relations and big data explorations to electing our first black president.

Wiki Government shows how to bring innovation to government. In explaining how to enhance political institutions with the power of networks, it offers a fundamental rethinking of democracy in the digital age. Collaborative democracy-government of the people, by the people, for the people-is an old dream. Today, Wiki Government shows how technology can make that dream a reality. In this thought-provoking book, Beth Simone Noveck illustrates how collaborative democracy strengthens public decisionmaking by connecting the power of the many to the work of the few. Equally important, she provides a step-by-step demonstration of how collaborative democracy can be designed, opening policymaking to greater participation. \"Wiki Government\" tells the story behind one of the most dramatic public sector innovations in recent years - inviting the public to participate in the patent examination process. Patent examiners usually work in secret, cut off from essential information and racing against the clock to master arcane technical claims. The Peer-to-Patent project radically transformed this process by allowing anyone with Internet access to collaborate with the agency in reviewing patent applications. \"Wiki Government\" describes how a far-flung team of technologists, lawyers, and policymakers pried open a tradition-bound agency's doors. Noveck explains how she brought both fiercely competitive companies and risk-averse bureaucrats on board. She discusses the design challenges the team faced in creating software to distill online collaboration into useful expertise, not just rants or raves. And she explains how law, policy, and technology can be revamped to help government work in more open and participatory ways in a wide range of policy arenas, including education and the environment.