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The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of developments in the USA related to digital rights management (DRM) through legal, technological, and market developments in recent years.

This article summarizes recent developments in DRM in two areas. First is the legal landscape, including copyright law developments that apply to digital content and attempts to impose DRM technology through legislation and litigation. Second are recent advances in DRM‐related technology and developments in digital content markets that are based on DRM. In both cases, USA developments are compared with the situation in Europe.

Developments in American copyright law, DRM technology, and digital content markets exert heavy influences on the spread of DRM in Europe, but the legal and technological frameworks are not different, giving rise to incompatibilities.

DRM technologies need to evolve differently for European markets, because they need to exist in the context of fundamentally different copyright law frameworks (e.g., Private Copying) and incumbent technologies (e.g., Conditional Access television).

European readers of this paper should gain an understanding of American DRM technology and its legal context, and how they influence developments in Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the Future Publishing and Accessibility Conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark on June 13-14, 2013.

This report provides a general overview of events at the conference as well as its main topics and outcomes

The report reveals the current challenges facing all involved in providing accessible materials to persons with print disabilities. Not only is the number of titles currently fully accessible an issue, but the digital era and electronic publishing bring their own issues. Speakers each offered their own views on potential solutions

This report provides librarians and researchers with a general summary of the issues surrounding accessibility and the current publishing industry as they were discussed at the conference.

This paper aims to examine some of the broader social consequences of enabling digital rights management. The authors suggest that the current, mainstream orientation of digital rights management systems could have the effect of shifting certain public powers into the invisible hands of private control. Focusing on two central features of digital rights management ‐ their surveillance function and their ability to unbundle copyrights into discrete and custom‐made products ‐ the authors conclude that a promulgation of the current use of digital rights management has the potential to seriously undermine our fundamental public commitments to personal privacy and freedom of expression.

The purpose of this Guest Editorial is to introduce the papers in this special issue.

A brief summary of the main contributions of the papers included in this issue is provided.

In order to combat the digital information war it was found that important work must be done to establish both users' and content providers' trust through fair e‐commerce/digital rights management (DRM).

The paper provides an overview of the basic requirements of DRM systems.

The first autism‐specific piece of legislation in England and Wales, the Autism Bill, put forward by Cheryl Gillan as a private member's bill, has now gone forward to House of Commons committee stage, after attracting almost universal support among MPs, charities and the media. It seeks to redress the widespread lack of local authority provision for the needs of people with autism (defined in the Bill as including all autism spectrum disorders, including Asperger's Syndrome): children, adults (defined as those over 18) and their families. Currently, despite legislative and policy provision for the disabled, many autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children are without appropriate education or assistance before, during and after the transition to adulthood. At least a third of adults with ASD were estimated in the National Autistic Society's report I Exist to be suffering from serious mental health difficulties as a result of lack of support, while families and carers of adults with ASD have been found to be frequently unable to obtain assistance (Rosenblatt, 2008). This article will provide details of the Bill before considering its implications for ASD children, adults and their families.

American sex education is continually under fire due to conflicting morals surrounding hegemonic sociocultural norms. These programs, and ultimately the students, are often victims of information inequities which leverage adult control over minors to prevent access to sexual health information. Withholding salient sexual health information infringes on intertwined tenets of human rights, such as education and information access. Spurred by recent disputes and barriers to updating unethical curricula in the states of Arizona and Texas, this chapter uses a human rights lens to explore the current information inequities in K-12 sexual education and students’ precarious positions in policy spaces. This framework demonstrates how libraries are uniquely protected spaces for intellectual freedom and the roles librarians can and should play as sexual health information providers in order to help students overcome information inequities. This chapter will provide recommendations for librarians and other educators to inform and organize advocacy as well as leverage current library operations to support adolescents’ sexual health literacy.

Rural areas that are struggling to recruit and retain qualified health practitioners are caught in the crossfire of turf battles between allied health practitioners and physician groups. The most intensely political of these inter-occupational turf battles is between anesthesiologists (MDAs) and certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), who are the sole providers of anesthesia in two-thirds of rural hospitals (American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA), 2007a, 2007b). The ability of many rural hospitals to provide anesthesia services is dependent on CRNAs. This study uses data collected from CRNAs in Iowa and Arizona in 2005 to focus on the impact of the turf battle on the professional interactions and opinions of CRNAs. Arizona and Iowa were chosen for this study because not only do the policies in these states contrast with each other, but the contexts in which CRNAs practice are also dissimilar. The majority of Arizona's CRNAs work in urban areas in close proximity with MDAs. Most CRNAs in Arizona report that their workplace interactions with MDAs have suffered as a result of the turf battle, despite the lack of any action to opt out of the federal Medicare requirement of physician supervision of CRNAs. While most CRNAs in Iowa perceive that job opportunities and the quality and cost of health care have improved as a result of opting out of the federal supervision requirement of CRNAs, the impact on their social interactions in the workplace depends on location and the structural context of their work. Most CRNAs in Iowa's urban areas continue to work in a structural context of de facto supervision by MDAs. As a result, only a minority report that their professional interactions in the workplace have improved. The outcome for Iowa's rural CRNAs is decidedly different. The majority function as independent practitioners and have experienced an improvement in their social interactions in the workplace and greater economic reward. These occupational privileges should improve the ability of Iowa's rural hospitals to recruit and retain CRNAs and, as a consequence, surgical services in rural areas.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

The U.S. Census Bureau, health data providers, and credit bureaus are information organizations (IOs). They collect, store, and process large sets of sensitive data on individuals, households, and organizations. Storage, processing, and dissemination technologies that IOs employ have grown in capability, sophistication, and cost‐effectiveness. These technologies have outpaced the design and implementation of procedures for protecting data in transfer from primary data provider to IO and from IO to data user. On the one hand, it is necessary to protect the confidentiality of such data; on the other hand, it is necessary to protect the accessibility to the data by users, including researchers and analysts. Conflicts ensue in the two corresponding arenas: between the IO and data providers concerned with inadequate privacy and confidentiality protection; and between the IO and data users who find their access to data restricted. In this article third‐party mechanisms for managing disputes in the privacy and information area are both theoretically justified and their empirical manifestations examined The institutional mechanisms considered include privacy and information clearinghouses, a “Better Data Bureau,” a privacy information advocate, a data ombuds, a privacy mediator, an internal privacy review board, and a data and access protection commission. Under appropriate circumstances, these arrangements promise a more flexible and responsive resolution of the conflict between privacy/confidentiality and legitimate information access than is possible through legislative action and administrative rulings alone.