| Editorial |
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| Peer-Reviewed Articles |
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The European Regulation on Biometric
Passports: Legislative Procedures, Political Interactions, Legal
Framework and Technical Safeguards
Gerrit Hornung, p.246-262
The current
implementation of biometric data in the new generation of
European passports is progressing rapidly. On the legal basis of
an EU Council regulation, member states must include RFID chips
containing facial and fingerprint images in the travel documents
of their citizens. While the use of biometric systems itself
poses fundamental questions of constitutional and data
protection law, the political and legislative procedures
implemented prior to the adoption of the Regulation have been
highly problematic due to the absence of public debate, the lack
of participation of the national parliaments and the overruling
of the European Parliament by the Council. Furthermore,
important practical issues remain unsolved.
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Taking Sides on Technology Neutrality
Chris Reed, pp.263-284
It has often been
asserted that technology neutrality is the proper approach to
ICT regulation, but those making this assertion use the concept
in a number of divergent senses. This article analyses those
different meanings and asks whether technology neutrality really
is as desirable as motherhood and apple pie, and whether it does
in fact achieve the goals desired by legislators.
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| Analysis |
- Copyright and research: an
archivangelist’s perspective
A. A. Adams, p.285-290
Conflation of academic copyright issues with respect to books
(whether text books, research monographs or popularisations) and
research articles, is rife in the academic publishing industry.
A charitable interpretation is that this is because to
publishers they are all effectively the same: a product produced
for commercial benefit. An uncharitable interpretation is that
this is a classic Fear Uncertainty and Doubt approach, in an
attempt to delay the inevitable move to Open Access (OA) to
research articles. To authors, however, research articles and
books are generally very different things. Research articles are
produced without the expectation of direct financial return,
whereas books generally include some consideration of financial
return.
Taylor’s “Copyright and research: an academic publisher’s
perspective” (SCRIPT-ed 4:2) falls wholesale into this mental
trap and in particular his lauding of the position paper of the
Association of American Professional and Scholarly Publishers,
shows a lack of understanding of the continuing huge loss to
scholarship of a lack of OA to research articles. It should be
regarded as a categorical imperative for scholars to embrace OA
to research articles.
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| Book Reviews |
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