“Study: Piracy Could Cost EU 1.2 Million Jobs (PC Magazine via Yahoo! News)” plus 3 more |
- Study: Piracy Could Cost EU 1.2 Million Jobs (PC Magazine via Yahoo! News)
- Securities analysts' reports slow adoption of new technology, warns INFORMS journal study (EurekAlert!)
- Hamilton County High Schools Part of Full Year Math, English Study (WDEF Chattanooga)
- Suncor greenest of in-situ operators, study finds (National Post)
| Study: Piracy Could Cost EU 1.2 Million Jobs (PC Magazine via Yahoo! News) Posted: 17 Mar 2010 06:54 AM PDT A study into Internet piracy by a Paris-based consultancy published on Wednesday showed that 1.2 million jobs in the European Union could be lost over the next five years if more is not done to clamp down on illegal downloading. The study by TERA Consultants for the International Chamber of Commerce focused on piracy in Europe's music, film, television and software industries. Those industries generated 860 billion euros ($1.186 trillion) and employed 14.4 million people in 2008. But in the same year, 10 billion euros and 186,000 jobs were lost to piracy, the study found. If that trend continues—and the rapid increase in illegal downloads and advancing piracy techniques suggest it will—then up to 1.2 million jobs and 240 billion euros worth of European commerce could be wiped out by 2015. "In the near future and even today in 2010, we observe increasing bandwidth, increasing penetration rate in terms of the Internet," said TERA Consultant's Patrice Geoffron, explaining that piracy was only likely to escalate. "If we combine all those elements, obviously the impact in a few years won't remain stable compared to what it was in 2008." ARTISTS SUFFER The bulk of illegal downloading targets music, television and video sites, with consumers using "peer-to-peer" formats to download songs and video clips onto their laptops and home computers from websites without paying a fee. In that respect it has a disproportionate impact on the creative industries, with musicians, actors and artists standing to lose the most from unfettered downloading, experts say. Agnete Haaland, the president of the International Actors' Federation, believes consumers need to be made more aware of the damaging economic and social impact of their illegal activity. "We should change the word piracy," she told reporters at the unveiling of the report on Wednesday. "To me, piracy is something adventurous, it makes you think about Johnny Depp. We all want to be a bit like Johnny Depp. But we're talking about a criminal act. We're talking about making it impossible to make a living from what you do," she said. Haaland, whose group supported the study, said one of the best ways to reverse the situation would be stricter EU legislation to enforce existing laws against piracy. "The European Union should really lead the way and fill the important gap in the body of laws," she said. "Consumers have to understand that there will be nothing to consume if it's impossible to make money making the content." Marielle Gallo, a member of the European Parliament who is pushing for tighter laws on intellectual property, said the report showed how much damage could be done to industry. But she said it would be tough to secure passage of stricter rules as several parliamentary groups are strongly opposed. (Editing by Paul Casciato) Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Posted: 17 Mar 2010 08:24 AM PDT ![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small} Public release date: 17-Mar-2010[ | E-mail |  Share ] Contact: Barry List Evidence from digital photography and VoIPThe reluctance of securities analysts to recommend investment in veteran companies using new techniques to grapple with radical technological change may be harming these companies as they struggle to compete, according to a new study in the current issue of Organization Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). "Securities Analysts and Incumbent Response to Radical Technological Change: Evidence from Digital Photograph and Internet Telephony" is by Mary J. Benner of The Wharton School. The study appears in the current issue of Organization Science http://orgsci.journal.informs.org/. The findings suggest that management teams contemplating bold innovation and the adoption of radical technological change may be held back by conservative investment firms that reward firms that stick to their knitting by extending existing technologies. "This may be short-sighted," says Dr. Benner. "Existing companies may be rewarded in the short run with increased stock prices for focusing on strategies that extend the financial performance from the old technology, but they may pay later in the face of threatening technological substitutes." The study examines already existing ("incumbent") companies that contemplated major technological changes in two industries: photography and telecommunications. In the first, the author studies the period of shift to digital technology away from film. In telephony, she looks at the advent of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Dr. Benner finds evidence that analysts are more encouraging toward companies' strategies that extend existing technology than toward strategies that respond directly to the new technology. "In these settings," she writes, "analysts largely ignore incumbents' strategies that directly incorporate the new technology for several years." She found that
Photography The author studied analysts' reports covering two publicly traded companies, Kodak and Polaroid, during the twelve-year period from 1990 to 2001, when Polaroid declared bankruptcy. She studied analysts at five firms covering the photography industry: Morgan Stanley, Prudential, Smith Barney (later Salomon Smith Barney), Paine Webber, and Credit Suisse First Boston, reading and coding 814 securities analysts' reports comprising 8,166 pages. Both Polaroid and Kodak introduced digital cameras to compete with the emerging market, as well as hybrid products that combined film and digital technology. Analysts preferred the latter. Between 1990 and 1996, for example, analysts mentioned the Kodak hybrid Photo CD 38 times and the company's APS camera system, another hybrid, some 144 times but never mentioned the company's DCS 100, a new digital camera. The analysts were consistently positive to the hybrid products and critical of the digital cameras. During this same period, in contrast, a LexisNexis search shows 493 articles and business stories focusing attention on Kodak's new digital products. When upgrading Kodak ratings to "buy" or "strong buy," the analysts consistently cited the performance of film, not digital. But, Dr. Benner writes, "the securities analysts' optimism toward the incumbents' film-based products was not generally associated with successful outcomes." Only in the final year of study did analysts begin to acknowledge the importance of a technology that had already become established in the public eye. Telecommunications The author studied analysts' reports covering the four "Baby Bells" Verizon, Qwest, SBC Communications, and Bellsouth from 2002, when Vonage debuted, to 2005, when SBC merged with AT&T. She examined Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank, including 420 reports with 3,298 pages. In these reports, analysts ignored new VoIP-related devices such as Qwest's OneFlex and SBC's U-verse and Verizon's VoiceWing, despite hundreds of articles in the press. In contrast, the author found nearly 800 analysts' mentions of applications by telecommunications companies for long-distance lines in compliance with Section 271 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. "Again, as in the photography setting," she writes, "the general lack of reaction from analysts toward the incumbents' strategies to directly respond to VoIP technology is surprising." Speculating on their motives, Dr. Benner suggests that the uncertainty associated with eras of technological ferment leads them to hold onto legacy approaches until companies' profits are directly affected. Or, she writes, the difficulty of establishing the value of new technological strategies may be too difficult within traditional models. Nevertheless, the negative implications for managers are clear. "Managers interested in adaptation and survival of their organizations must take steps to respond to new technology long before uncertainty about technological standards or new profit models is resolved," she writes. "The challenges may be even greater than suggested in prior research, however, as analysts (and the investors they influence) may continue to reward firms for strategies that focus on extending and preserving an old technology." About INFORMS The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international scientific society with 10,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, financial engineering, and telecommunications. The INFORMS website is www.informs.org. More information about operations research is at www.scienceofbetter.org. [ | E-mail | Share ]
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| Hamilton County High Schools Part of Full Year Math, English Study (WDEF Chattanooga) Posted: 17 Mar 2010 02:02 PM PDT Comments Below: 0 It's back to the basics for high school students in Hamilton County. 9th and 10th graders at Hixson, Central, Brainerd and East Ridge High Schools will soon take Math and English courses year round. Hixson High Principal Christine Couch says "our High Schools for the most part across the district are on block schedules. So they have 90 minutes of instruction in 4 different classes every semester." Meaning right now, students don't have to take Math and English every semester. The change comes as part of a federally funded research project to see if students perform better without breaks, and if new teacher training techniques translate into a student desire to learn these subjects. "The message needs to be we all need to be good at math. You know no adult would stand up and proudly proclaim I can't read, nobody would say that. But its become acceptable to say I can't do Math," says Couch. Under the study, two schools will receive additional teacher training, and two wont. But all four will adopt full-year Math and English programs. School Board member Rhonda Thurman says "the federal government comes in and says it and eureka it's a wonderful idea. No. It was stupid to stop it to begin with and just have the kids take it one semester." Thurman warns the study could be skewed, since some feeder schools allow students to use calculators and multiplication tables. "We can do all the training that we want to do in high school, but until we fix the problem at the elementary and middle school level, its not going to matter." While Thurman supports full-year high school Math and English programs, she wants the system to address performance issues on the front-end. The study will take two years to complete. If it finds students need continuous Math and English courses to make the learning stick, changes will be made at all county high schools.
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| Suncor greenest of in-situ operators, study finds (National Post) Posted: 17 Mar 2010 09:09 AM PDT CALGARY -- A part of Suncor Energy Inc.'s oil sands operation was ranked the most environmentally-friendly compared with eight of its competitors, according to a new study by an organization often critical of the industry.
The Pembina Institute released a report on steam-assisted gravity drainage projects Wednesday morning. SAGD, or in-situ, projects drill for bitumen in northern Alberta, rather than use more aesthetically unattractive mining techniques.
Suncor's Firebag in-situ project ranked above eight of its competitors, followed by Cenovus Energy Inc.'s Foster Creek operation, and Imperial Oil Ltd.'s Cold Lake effort. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.'s Primrose/Wolf Lake project came out on the bottom of the list.
"Such a wide variation in the environmental performance of in-situ projects suggests a failure to implement best practices available to them," Simon Dyer, the Pembina's oil sands program director, said in a statement. "It also shows that the bar is set so low that companies are creating needless environmental impacts."
In-situ projects extract bitumen which is trapped too far below the Earth's surface to mine. Two horizontal wells are drilled beside each other, and steam is injected into the bitumen reservoir using the top well. That melts the thick, tarry bitumen, allowing it to flow to the surface through the other well. The process uses well pads, therefore eliminating massive clear-cutting necessary for mining.
The majority of Alberta's oil sands are expected to be developed using this technique. It produces more greenhouse gas emissions than its mining counterpart.
The Pembina ranked in-situ oil sands projects using 17 different environmental indicators in five categories: environmental management, land impacts, air pollution, water use and management of greenhouse gases. Companies were invited to complete the survey questionnaire and provided with opportunities to review the data and to comment on their performance, the think-tank said.
"Our analysis shows that in-situ oil sands development is actually more intensive on a per barrel basis in some environmental impact categories than oil sands mining," Marc Huot, a technical analyst with the Pembina, said. "This dispels the myth presented by some in industry and government that in-situ oil sands development is 'low impact,' and instead highlights the need for serious improvements."
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