By Norma M. Riccucci and Gregg G. Van Ryzin
Does increased representation of women in government agencies result in policy outcomes that are beneficial to women? Does it increase women’s confidence in those government agencies? These questions are at the core of democratic accountability: the ability of government to represent and serve all members of its citizenry.
The prevailing research demonstrates a number of important outcomes of gender diversity in public organizations. But does gender diversity also influence how the general citizenry judges the organization’s performance, trustworthiness and fairness? To get at this question, we designed a survey experiment in which we varied the gender representation and performance of hypothetical police domestic violence units (DVUs). Domestic violence is a problem that persists globally, and gender diversity in the units responsible for its eradication is imperative. In the United States alone, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 85 percent of domestic violence victims are women, and women between the ages of 18 to 34 generally experience the highest rates of domestic violence; 75 percent of the perpetrators are male. On average, more than three women are murdered a day by their husbands or boyfriends.
Our experiment showed that increased representation of women positively influenced people’s trust in the agency and views of its performance, independent of whether the agency’s performance was high or low. This finding is important because the more citizens view the police as legitimate and trustworthy, the more willing they may be to report domestic violence and other crimes to the police. They may also be more likely to cooperate in follow-up investigations, which can lead to improved law enforcement outcomes.
While the US Congress renewed the federal Violence Against Women Act in February of 2013 — expanding coverage to offer protections to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender victims of domestic abuse, as well as to immigrants and American Indian women assaulted on reservations by non-Indians — if the crimes go unreported, the laws and policies will be ineffectual.
The research thus far shows that the policy domain within which bureaucrats work must be linked to the interests of those being served (for example, women seeking child support or veterans seeking benefits). Even police departments that are racially diverse are seen as more legitimate than those that are not, regardless of police practices. But, would diversity or representativeness matter if the mission or outcomes of agencies were not tied in any way to gender, race, ethnicity, or shared identities (e.g., veterans)? For example, would increasing the representation of women officials in local governments’ recycling programs encourage women to increase their recycling behaviors? This issue is yet to be explored, and would contributed greatly to research on the benefits of representativeness or diversity in government.
Norma M. Riccucci and Gregg G. Van Ryzin are the authors of “Representative Bureaucracy in Policing: Does It Increase Perceived Legitimacy?” (available to read for free for a limited time) in the latest issue of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. Norma M. Riccucci is Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at the School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University, Campus at Newark. Professor Riccucci has published extensively in the areas of public management, affirmative action, human resources and public sector labor relations. Gregg G. Van Ryzin is associate professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey. He is an expert on surveys and methodology, and conducts empirical research on a range of topics, including housing and community development, citizen satisfaction with urban services, nonprofit organizations, performance measurement and evaluation, and comparative public opinion about government policy and institutions. Prof. Van Ryzin is widely published in scholarly journals in public administration, policy analysis, and urban affairs.
The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory serves as a bridge between public administration and public management scholarship on the one hand and public policy studies on the other. Its multidisciplinary aim is to advance the organizational, administrative, and policy sciences as they apply to government and governance. The journal is committed to diverse and rigorous scholarship and serves as an outlet for the best conceptual and theory-based empirical work in the field.
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By Michael A. Carrier
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has caused concern for many reasons, such as secret negotiations and controversial provisions. Today, more than 70 law professors sent a letter to President Obama asking that he “direct the [U.S. Trade Representative] to halt its public endorsement of ACTA and subject the text to a meaningful participation process that can influence the shape of the agreement going forward.”
Despite this beneficial attention, one clause has slipped under the radar. Article 2.14 of ACTA would require participating nations to “ensure that criminal liability for aiding and abetting is available.”
This liability would apply to parties that assist others in engaging in “willful . . . copyright . . . piracy on a commercial scale.” Such scale includes “commercial activities for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage.” These terms are not defined in the agreement. As a result, it would appear that any activity that would give an “indirect” commercial advantage (including the downloading of a single copyrighted song) could lead to criminal liability.
While such a consequence would appear severe, it is not even the most concerning part of Article 2.14. That distinction is reserved for the “aiding and abetting” basis for liability. Any party that plays a role in assisting infringement could be liable for criminal liability. The identity of such parties is worrisome: Personal computer manufacturers. Electronic device makers. Search engine operators. Each of these entities could play a role, however indirect, in contributing to copyright infringement.
Although copyright’s secondary liability law is not a model of clarity, courts have sought to ground its elements in balanced policies. Judicial tests have asked if devices have noninfringing uses (Sony). If the party has knowledge and materially contributed to the activity (contributory infringement). If it has a financial interest and the right to control (vicarious liability). If it has an intent to induce infringement (Grokster).
Aiding-and-abetting liability lacks such nuance. It is borrowed from criminal law. And it is used to punish those who assisted in the crime. The getaway driver. The fraudulent check presenter. The cocaine distributor. In the criminal law arena, such liability reaches broadly to deter true criminal conduct.
In the context of secondary copyright liability, in contrast, such a standard is not appropriate. Not when copyright is subject to competing public policies. Not when technologies could be held criminally liable for allowing search, performance, or retrieval. Not when these monumentally significant issues—which would dramatically expand U.S. liability—were never even debated.
In 2004, Congress considered adding “aiding and abetting” liability to copyright law. Its attempt, the Induce Act, failed. The secretive ACTA is not an appropriate vehicle to circumvent this failure and dramatically expand secondary liability.
Michael A. Carrier is a Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School-Camden who teaches and writes in the areas of antitrust, intellectual property, and property law. He is the author of Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law and editor of the forthcoming volume, Critical Concepts in Intellectual Property Law: Competition.
Michael A. Carrier is a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law, Camden. He has published and spoken widely on the antitrust and intellectual property laws, and is one of the leading authorities in the 
country on the intersection of these laws. His new book, Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law, looks at how innovation has been threatened by the United States legal system and seeks to reverse the trend, offering ten revolutionary proposals, from pharmaceuticals to peer-to-peer software, to help foster innovation. In the post below Carrier reports on a Swedish court decision which will effect BitTorrent sites.
A Swedish court today found four operators of the high-profile website The Pirate Bay guilty of assisting in making copyrighted content available and sentenced each to a year in jail and roughly $900,000 in fines.
At issue is the revolutionary BitTorrent protocol, which allows users to easily download large files such as movies by breaking up the files into many pieces. The availability of pieces from numerous sources speeds up transfer as compared to retrieving the file from one source. Information on these pieces is provided by small files called “torrents,” which are indexed and tracked on The Pirate Bay website. Many of the downloaded files are copyrighted.
The court found that the defendants were liable for “making available” copyrighted works, which occurs when the “work is transferred to the public.” The court also concluded that the defendants “provid[ed] a database linked to a directory of torrent files, making it possible for users to search for and download torrent files as well as to provide functionality through which the users who wanted to share files could have contact with each other by sharing the service tracker function.”
To be clear, The Pirate Bay does not directly infringe copyright holders’ rights. It does not even host copyrighted material on its website. And it is far from the only website engaging in much of the activity for which it was punished. Numerous search engines, for example, can be used to locate torrent files. But rather than focusing on the merits of the court’s decision, which could have far-reaching consequences for search engines, individuals, and any others “making available” copyrighted materials, let me focus on an even larger issue: the difference between litigation and innovation.
The entertainment industry is effective in litigating. But if it was as effective in innovating, there might be less need for litigation.
Copyright holders have reacted with alarm to new technologies for quite some time. John Philip Sousa bemoaned the introduction of the player piano, which would lead to “a marked deterioration in American music.” Jack Valenti warned that the market for copyrighted movies would be “decimated, shrunken [and] collapsed” by the VCR. And the recording industry, lamenting a decline in CD sales, sued numerous peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing services.
But in fearing the potential of the new business models, copyright holders offer a classic example of market leaders that fail to appreciate disruptive innovation. Clayton Christensen famously showed that, when faced with a new technology that threatens to upset a profitable business model, market leaders tend not to appreciate the full potential of the new paradigm.
A decade ago, for example, the recording industry responded to Napster, which was striving to be “the online distribution channel for the record labels,” not by striking a deal that would have seamlessly transported the recording industry into the digital era, but by suing it. While the record labels may have won the battle in shutting down Napster, they began to lose the war, as former users migrated to other P2P networks.
Today’s Pirate Bay ruling is likely to have similar effect. Like the proverbial whack-a-mole game, it is not possible to sue into oblivion every website and search engine providing access to torrents.
What, instead, could a new business model look like? Numerous musicians have offered examples. Just to pick one, look at Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. As Mike Masnick (editor of TechDirt) explains, Reznor has creatively offered ways to connect with fans and give them reasons to buy – limited edition packages, treasure hunts for hidden tickets, and aggregation of concert photos and videos, to name just a few.
The entertainment industry will predictably trumpet its win in (at least the initial stage of) this litigation. But again, litigation is not innovation. Even the plugging of one leak on the Titanic of a 20th-century business model will not transport the industry to a new and innovative 21st-century model.
